The Train Experience-Part 1, Anecdotal

I continue to be inspired by my National Archives Experience brochure and will for the time being try to describe everything I do as an Experience. I think I will start with the random recollections and observations that didn't make it into the travelogue. And then I'll try to pull it all together in another post if that ends up being possible.

Although I mentioned communal seating earlier, I forgot to mention the main benefit for a solo traveler like myself. If I didn't sit at a meal table with other people, I could go for the 36 hours I was on the train without talking to anyone. Not that I have a problem with that. I know from past experience that it's hard to return to life where you do have to talk to people if you don't do any of that for a while. I was alone from Tuesday afternoon until Friday evening, so it could have been bad.

On a related topic, a couple of people asked me what I did with myself for that long a time. Part of the way I keep myself occupied is to talk to myself. I do this almost constantly. I have a running monologue going on in my head almost all the time that gets woven into everyday conversation. In this kind of situation, though, it's very much exaggerated and I feel the need to comment (to myself) on almost everything that happens and everything I do and consciously think. That and I look out the window.

I forgot to mention that I took a shower on the train. The larger sleeping compartments have their own very tiny showers, but the roomettes share a single shower on the lower level. I regret that I don't have a picture of it, but it's actually a fairly normal looking shower with decent water pressure and enough hot water. I'm pretty sure I'm the only one who used it for the duration of the trip, which is a frightening thought. I'm ashamed to admit that I did not do this while the train was moving, but rather while we were sitting the station in Kansas City. This reminded of the train trip I did 30-something years ago, where the bathrooms all had prominent warnings not to flush the toilet while the train is standing in the station. This is because flushing was pretty much just opening a trap door. You could see the tracks going by down below. Some bathrooms were missing the trap door.

Since train travel doesn't necessarily attract the mainstream, you get a cast of characters who tend to appear and reappear in your small range of movement (Compartment, dining car, Observation/lounge car). Both trains had an extended Mennonite family, with several young men, a couple of young women and an extremely well-behaved baby. They pretty much kept to themselves in the lounge car, ate food they'd brought, played cards and dice and did embroidery. I did chat with one of them who was telling me about a Mennonite man who figured out how to use the stars to design a train tunnel such that you could start from both sides and meet perfectly in the middle. They got off in Pittsburgh to go to Lancaster. The Brazilians were more out and about, but nobody could understand them (one sat briefly at my lunch table and took his food to go). The rest of the train broke into 5 main groups: budget/student, fear of flying, retired couples chilling, natives of towns not served by airlines, and train junkies. I guess I fit best into that last category, though the real hardcores frame every reference in terms of a train trip they've taken.

One of my favorite characters that I didn't really have anything to do with was Philosophy Girl, 20-ish, tall, thin, mousy/pretty, bangs, big glasses, fuzzy clothing and boots, wool hat with pom-poms hanging down. She spent the entire Chicago-Washington run sitting at a lounge car table reading Hegel and occasionally writing something. One of the young Brazilian men (OK, I've held back for a long time but here goes: Presidential Aide: Three Brazilians were killed in a military exercise yesterday. GWB: How many is a brazillion? Sorry.) seemed to be chatting with her for a little while during the evening but otherwise I never saw her move or speak.

Saw some bald eagles out the window at various points. Also went by a plowed, unplanted field where many of the rows were filled with white birds just sitting together with more swooping in and joining them. My breakfast companions wondered what gulls were doing in a place like that and I blurted out, "Maybe they're free range chickens." They looked at me and said, "That fly?" Honestly, I wasn't serious but still.

Finally (for now, anyway) on the last leg of the trip, one entire car was filled with a bunch of girls, high school seniors or maybe college freshmen, on their way to New York to go to plays. I stood behind them on the snack car line and one asked the attendant, "Can I have a cup of coffee?" Then, "Do you have different kinds or just regular coffee?" The guy behind me and I started to chuckle and he said, "There's the Starbucks generation for you. Looking for a frappucino in the train snack car." I was tempted to ask the attendant the same thing but did not.

Be back later with conclusions.