photo by Steven at DigitalPhenom
Rolling back into New York City was surprisingly tolerable after a few thousand miles on the Iron Horse tracking through some of the best terrain in the world. I was expecting to be despondent, depressed, and overwhelmed by the masses of people and the daily ritualistic melee of the boroughs, but your combatant was quelled by the seduction of travel and held no malice toward the citizens of the Lost City today.
Amtrak is a surprise. I was not anticipating that traveling from NYC to Seattle by train to be as enjoyable as it was reflective. It may seem obvious, but, on a train, there is nowhere to go and little to do except engage in an archaic form of communication — face-to-face interaction. There is no annoying movie car; cell phone coverage is luxuriously spotty; and the crew is a quirky and funny cast of characters that season the experience. What I noticed is that instead of getting hyped up over nonsense, everybody just lets the track take over in a sort of 3000-mile, rhythmic cradle rocking.
In an airplane, everybody seems a least a little pissed off (not just former JetBlue employee Steven Slater) as this mode of transportation dances a dim, necrotic Hokey-Pokey signaled by ever-thinning margins and increasing dependence on subsidies. But, don’t get it wrong — Amtrak is plenty subsidized and gets the transpo-crap beat out of it by the extensive US highway system that obliges a nation utterly demised by fossil fuel addiction. Why not let the true cost of air and car travel dominate the industry and push US citizens back into a slower mode of travel? Track infrastructure is still intact and ready for service even as Amtrak gets its guts stomped out as the transportation whipping boy for being so wasteful.
I see no great need for billions of dollars to be spent on faster trains — just a few pennies spent on retraining the American mindset that slower does not always mean crappier. In other words, there is no solution but three words: Lower Your Expectations. Of course, I’ll admit my naivety to expect such a thing in the wake of the ultimate 21st century human cloning experiment highlighted by two-week vacations, stock market induced pension swindles, real wage execution, time-value-of-money religion, and a forced march toward mediocrity.
I set out thinking that traveling by train with my family was going to be a trip of a lifetime, but have come to realize it was more of a trip toward a lifestyle. Watching my girls reading books, chatting up other passengers, and napping in the giant window as the open plains of North Dakota or the forested canyons of Washington state pealed away was enough to convince me that we don’t always have to move faster to be better.
{ 21 comments… read them below or add one }
Tommy, welcome back! I’m glad you had a good trip.
Rail travel is the only way to go, and that will become apparent if the price of oil goes back up to pre-”recession” levels and the airlines start folding (again).
Good stuff as always. We’ve missed your posts.
Welcome back. It seems the best trips are those which give you time to self reflect and “see” the world around you without distraction. The best trips are those that let you travel inside yourself and help you understand who you are and what is really important.
The train trip is a pretty cool way to do it too!
Welcome back Tommy
At age 8′ish, I saw the movie “Silver Streak” with Richard Prior and Gene Wilder, and ever since then I’ve wanted to take a train trip. I thought the movie did a good job of capturing a trip in a rail car, scenery lazily passing the large cabin window, the dinner car, the zaniness of some of the passangers and staff.
I hope I can take a nice rail trip like that someday soon.
It’s a good day when I open my inbox and find a little gift from FG. I halfway expected that you might have decided to become a nomad; a modern day “Travels With Charley”, sending missives from the hinterland. But Steinbeck had a dog…a much more compliant traveling partner than young children.
I have grown daughters who live in Brooklyn and Queens, and I love to visit them. They drag my ass around the city for a couple of days, and then I return to Virginia to heal. NYC is an amazing, confounding, and exhausting place, and I am enamored with it. But I don’t have to live there. I hope you had enough time to recharge, you certainly need it!
Welcome back to the salt mines…
I remember my first, and only, train trip. Took the Amtrak from Denver to Chicago. Left on the evening of July 4th, and for an eight year old boy, what a joy to look for fireworks as we crossed the inky darkness of eastern Colorado and Kansas. Woke up in Iowa, and I’ll never forget my father taking me outside between the cars as we crossed the Mississippi. I couldn’t believe a river could be so big. Even at that young age I thought, why don’t we take the train everywhere, all the time?
Thanks for bringing back these memories Tommy, and welcome home.
Oh man, what a way to travel. Thanks for pointing this out.
What gets me is that so much more of America used to be connected by rail, and we pulled most of the tracks up. Overall, transportation policy in this country just sucks. We could have been so much more…
AMEN to:
“I set out thinking that traveling by train with my family was going to be a trip of a lifetime, but have come to realize it was more of a trip toward a lifestyle.”
HAPPY to hear your voice…thoughtful insight – reflecting and interperting the REALITY of it all. Glad you are back!
Slower isn’t necessairly better, it’s just another WAY. The contrast was obvious and significant. Since it takes at least a week to unplug from the faster way of living, you gave yourself the opportunity to re visit the softer, gentler, slower WAY OF BEing. IMAGINE how transforming all that face-to-face time with real people can be!
What a GIFT for you and the FAMILY.
@ ONEGUY: LOVED this line:
“The best trips are those that let you travel inside yourself and help you understand who you are and what is really important.”
Perhaps we could “Shift/Realign” our expectations vs lowering them? This wonderful opportunity should be viewed as growth/change (Realignment) and not a loss (lowering). What do you think?
Welcome back Thomas.
This tune just happened to shuffle up on my iPod this weekend and left me feeling very melancholy. Perhaps it is appropriate.
The City of New Orleans
Ridin’ on The City of New Orleans
Illinois Central, Monday morning rail
Fifteen cars and fifteen restless riders
Two conductors and a-twenty-five sacks a’ mail
All along the southbound odyssey
The train pulls out at Kankakee
And moves on along past houses, farms and fields
Passin’ trains that got no names
Switch yards full a’ old black men
And the graveyards full of them rusted automobiles
[Chorus]
Good mornin’ America, how are ya?
Well, don’tcha know me? I’m your native son
I’m the train they call The City of New Orleans
And I’ll be gone five hundred miles when the day is done
A-dealin’ cards with an old man down in the club car
Just a penny a point ain’t nobody keepin’ score
Say won’t you pass that there paper bag that’s a-wrappin’ the bottle
Feel them wheels rumblin’under that floor
And the sons of Pullman porters
And the sons of engineers
Ride their daddy’s magic carpet made of steel
Mamas with their babies asleepin’
Are rockin’ to the gentle beat
And the rhythm of the rockin’ rails is all they feel
[Chorus]
Night-time on The City of New Orleans
A-changin’ cars a-down in Memphis, Tennessee
Well, a half way home, and a we gonna be there by mornin’
Through the Mississippi darkness
Rollin’ down to that sea
Now all a’ them towns and all the people seem
To fade away into a bad ol’ dream
But the steel rail, well he still ain’t heard that news
Conductor’s a-singin’ that song again
Sayin’ “Passengers will please refrain
“This train done got the disappearin’ railroad blues”
[Chorus]
[Fade out.]
Mamas with their babies asleepin’
Are rockin’ to the gentle beat
And the rhythm of the rockin’ rails is all they feel
Mamas with their babies asleepin’
Are rockin’ to the gentle beat
And the rhythm of the rockin’ rails is all they feel
Hey man, good to see you back.
Dig the train. Dig the time to be with family for a couple weeks.
Goodness.
When you are in a railroad mood, read about The Milwaukee Road. There’s a good cynical coverage of it in “Internal Combustion” by Edwin Black, but I don’t know if anyone but me wants to tolerate the whole book. The ironic part is in how we built the best electric trains in the world: but we didn’t use them and instead sold them to other countries.
I truly love train travel and have travelled through many countries with varying standards of train; Switzerland, China, India. Each different, each an amazing experience. With train travel, it’s not about the destination, it’s all about the journey. Later this year, Hubby and I are spending a month travelling by train through France and Italy. I can’t wait.
Just back from YOGA class…in the middle of a forward fold/seated stretch, our teacher made this statement:
“The SLOWER you go the faster you’ll get there.”
Ok. So I pulled back and restarted being more mindful of my effort. No longer pushing myself into position but allowing the fold to happen on it’s own schedule – gradually, peacefully. The result? Deeper stretch. More JOY. Both of which came through the process (the journey) of forward folding.
When MIA says its about the JOURNEY (and not the destination) she is correct. Slower/faster are not relevant as you transcend them by practicing MINDFULNESS in the PRESENT MOMENT.
Om Shanti to ALL.
Auntiegrav – Every diesel train you see today is an electric train. They have a large diesel motor, a large generator and multiple electric motors that actually drive the wheels. All it would take to convert every diesel to an all electric woulb be to string the wires over the tracks, install pantographs on each locomotive and make a simple wiring change in the locomotive itself. You could even leave the diesel and generator in place to add weight for better traction.
Whoa. Rockin’ comments.
@Susan Marie,
Maybe a better way to think about it — realign. I think of the “lowering of expectations” as a sort of acceptance that we are not so in control.
@Mia,
Your statement, “it’s all about the journey” is right on. I hope you hit us with some more of your incredible pics when you’re in Europe. When are you moving back to Australia?
@Steve Dearlove,
Loved it. thanks.
@TaosJohn,
The Sunset Limited rolls through your neck of the woods. SW is the area I’ve got my eye on next, and would love to see this whole country via the train — a new quest I guess.
@Steve,
The 2-year old was surprisingly compliant! I just had to take her out at the long stops and let her lose her mind until they called us aboard again. I could totally lose myself in that train system and write from the tracks. No problem. I like that idea.
@Oneguy,
Totally agreed. I think the “travel inside” is the last frontier.
Amen, brother. Trains rule. I’ve traveled Amtrack from MT to NY, CO to NE, Los Angeles to Santa Barbara, and all over Europe. The other great way to travel is on the ferries between Denmark, Sweden, Finland & Poland, as they have all the same virtues of travel by rail. I think people are more friendly and inclined to socialize because they’re not forced to sit next to each other, can get up, move around, and stare into the plains or ocean that’s staring back into them. There’s a nice balance between alone time and conversing with others, for those who want it. Everyone is from someplace else, and all on the go, so it seems there’s an equality between people not encountered in the day to day.
Ps. Speaking of slow, the most epic things are built the slowest. Just think of the Sequoias or the Grand Canyon…
@Tommy/Susan Marie: In seeking an agreement between lower expectations and realignment, I’d say we are half in control and half surrendered. No one is the boss of me, but sometimes I’m not either.
Steve Dearlove-
One of the best songs ever written. Steve Goodman was a genius who passed too soon.
GONE: Yes. The point is that the diesel part is unnecessary and only there because the fuel was more profitable to the stockholders in the short term than investing in stringing the wires. Milwaukee Road did most of the work to get to the west coast from Chicago on electric, but eventually it was cannibalized after various board members helped themselves to company resources. With no competing system or societal support (government oversight?), it just went ‘away’ and we are stuck with diesels, which can’t dump the downhill side back into the grid like the Milwaukee Road could.
Tommy,
We are heading back to Australia at the end of the year. I have a month off before I start my new job (not nearly enough time) but we’ll be spending that time travelling ‘slowly’ around Europe.
Mia
That was a good read, thanks. Taking time off work for my family is very expensive, as my wife is self-employed. Slower travel turns out to be more expensive as well, because it adds to the actual vacation, which in our case is always a week. We drove 3,600 miles to explore distant regions of Idaho and Montana, and through Wyoming to and from. We hate flying, but traveling slower becomes a drag after the six hour mark. Still, we got to see some areas we’ll probably never see again that only a car could provide.