MELISSA BLOCK, Host: People come from all over the world to the nation's capital. And once here, they discover that it has a state of the art underground transportation system - circa 1976. Well, today's Soundclip is a measure of just how long it's been since the Carter administration.</s>SARAH SCHMELLING: My name is Sarah Schmelling. I'm a writer in Washington, D.C.</s>SARAH SCHMELLING: We decided to move to Washington, D.C. last year from Los Angeles. I was so excited for public transportation that I sold my car in L.A. and was ready to take the Metro. What I didn't know about the Washington Metro system is that it has about 600 escalators. It has the longest single span escalator in the Western Hemisphere. It's 230 feet long. But the thing about the escalators is here, not only are many of them are broken a lot of the time, but they make these incredible noises.</s>SARAH SCHMELLING: At first, you know, it unnerved me a little bit. But now that I have to hear them every day, it's almost kind of soothing.</s>SARAH SCHMELLING: They can sound like any combination of a pod of sick whales or an orchestra warming up.</s>SARAH SCHMELLING: They are almost talking to each other like co-workers saying isn't it great we're back here helping these people get to work.</s>MELISSA BLOCK, Host: Subway escalator rider Sarah Schmelling of Washington, D.C. If certain sounds mark the passage of your day, please let us hear them. You can find out about Soundclips at npr.org.
Listener Sarah Schmelling rides the Washington, D.C., Metro system and enjoys the soothing sounds of dying escalators. She shares this SoundClip with us all.