Growing up in South King County, independence started with a bus ride. Today, it looks very different.
I recently rode the light rail from the airport to Federal Way, and the smooth, quiet glide brought back a flood of memories. In the early 1980s, growing up in Kent, independence cost exactly 25 cents. My friends and I would climb onto those old white, brown and yellow Metro buses — always racing for the bendy middle seat — and ride the 174 up Pacific Highway to the airport. A quarter bought you a transfer, and that flimsy slip of paper was our passport to the whole region.
We’d return abandoned luggage carts for more coins, ride the airport tram like it was an amusement park, and eventually head back down Pacific Highway to Sportsworld — the bowling alley with its waxed‑lane smell and faint cigarette haze, the arcade humming with 8‑bit soundtracks, and the corner store where we’d spend whatever change we had left on candy and soda.
Our parents weren’t chauffeurs. They were working, tired and believed that if you wanted an adventure, you figured out how to earn the money for it. No cellphones. No tracking apps. Just daylight, trust and a promise to be home by dark. Freedom was earned one quarter at a time.
One afternoon, getting off the bus and walking into the airport baggage claim — the honey hole for abandoned carts — I ran straight into my grandmother. I had never known what she did for a living until I saw her pushing a janitor’s cart through the terminal. She and a co-worker were laughing about the mysterious handprints that kept appearing high above the men’s room urinals. At 12, the whole thing made no sense, but the joke landed years later. Childhood stores those moments until you’re old enough to understand them.
But the airport wasn’t the only place those buses carried us. One day, feeling braver than we probably should have, we stayed on after the airport loop and let the 174 take us into Seattle. From there we hopped on another bus, because at 12, we assumed every bus eventually circled back home if you just stayed on long enough.
That’s how we ended up in Kirkland. At one point, trying to get our bearings, we asked the driver if the water we were seeing was Puget Sound. He shook his head and said, “That’s Lake Washington.” I knew right then we were cooked. When we finally asked how to get home, he pulled over, turned around in his seat, and explained — slowly, like someone breaking bad news — that the last bus heading south was coming soon. If we missed it, we weren’t getting home that day.
The idea that a bus route could simply end had never crossed our minds. The world felt like one big loop, always returning you to where you started. Suddenly, it didn’t. We made it back — barely — but that moment stuck with me. It was the first time I understood that freedom wasn’t just about going wherever you wanted. It was also about knowing how to get yourself home.
There were other bus adventures too. One summer, my friends and I rode to First Avenue because we’d heard there was a place that made fake IDs. Not to buy alcohol; we weren’t aiming that high. We just wanted into the 16‑and‑over dance clubs. My fake ID said I was from Pocatello, Idaho, and it cost me $20 — a fortune at that age. The doormen didn’t buy it for a second. But the bus ride itself felt like a rite of passage.
Eventually, I saved enough money to buy a car. And at the time, that felt like real freedom. But as the region grew, the roads filled. Brake lights replaced scenery. The freedom we thought cars guaranteed slowly shrank under the weight of congestion.
That’s why the light‑rail ride surprised me. After growing up on the old 174 and spending adulthood stuck on I‑5, the smooth ride, the safety, the simplicity, and the $3 fare felt like a glimpse of the freedom we used to have, updated for a region that finally outgrew the idea that cars are the only way to move.
What stays with me isn’t the buses or the airport or even the quarters we chased. It’s the way we learned responsibility one small job at a time: mowing lawns, tossing newspapers at dawn, babysitting for a couple of dollars. We earned our adventures long before we understood that’s what we were doing. Amazing how far a single ride can take you — no matter how big the system gets, it still bends time just enough to warp you back into a familiar moment.
