Guardian of the Non Sequitur

I woke around day break on the train, but not having slept well napped on and off all morning. A slight soreness in my throat that had begun in Chicago, likely due to drainage, had increased a bit.

I was sitting on the east side of the train, which was keeping fairly warm from the sun. The terrain was typically southern, heavily wooded. The few times I saw farming, the corn was about head high, whereas across Iowa and California it had been knee high or lower.

When we stopped in Jackson, Mississippi many people got out to stretch their legs and commented on the heat outside.

By far the staff on this leg of my trip has been the least friendly, least helpful, and least informative. And the patrons had a vocally boisterous subset of urban blacks and rural whites. Though there was one little girl who’s “oh, lawdy” quite humored me.

When we got past Hammond, we broke out of the forests and into open swamp and inland waterways. Then the track came along the coast of Lake Ponchetrain.

We passed Zephyr Field on the way into town, the home of a minor league team associated with the Astros.

I won’t ever say one city or town is better than another. I enjoy most places. I like to experience life lived differently. Most places i’ve been I’m glad for having been and am happy for the experience.

There are very few places I’d like to call home, and Houston is by far on the top of that short list. I don’t think it’s better than any place else, it’s just my preference.

But staying in one place is stagnating. You should travel when it’s within your means. You should move somewhere else in your youth if you can. Experience different things.

If you do move to some place unfamiliar, you should act like a tourist. I would tell everyone who lives where they have for ever to do the same, but they wouldn’t listen to me.

There are some really cool things to experience 5 miles from your home. There are quite unique things to experience 15 miles away. Have you been there?

Give yourself an hour one-way road trip, I guaranteee there’s something you can do that others in the world can’t. Have you been there?

Go.

(written on the City of New Orleans train, drinking Buckbean Black Noddy Lager in a pink Houston Roller Derby coozie)

I slept till almost 9:00a and woke to join Marsha who works at home. I was treated to Dr Pepper on ice (otherwise known as the breakfast of champions) and a variety of Entenmen’s Classic Doughnuts.

I spent the morning catching up from being offline for three days and somehow not having the right OS on my iPod Touch. It’s good to note that I reinstalled, recovered from backup, and all the writing I had done with the WordPress application was still intact.

I also watched the first 20 minutes of the Keynote speech I had missed while in line to get in last week.

Marsha made me a nice salad for lunch while I was having a teleconference with the FlipSide5 crew. The rain I had been draging about the country with me had caught up with Chicago and I stayed in the rest of the afternoon working.

John got home from his commute with a new umbrella and we stayed in for the night. We ordered delivery Chinese/sushi and just spent the evening hanging out at their place.

John K met me at the station. It was quite busy with commuter traffic. We walked a few blocks, salmon like against the afternoon commuters to get to the Brown Line, took it around the loop and met up with the Red Line which we went a little north to the Addison stop near Wrigley Field.

From there it was a moderate walk to John and Marsha’s place. I took a well deserved and needed shower after 3 days on a train, and we went out to dinner at Goose Island Brewery near the ballpark. The quietness in the neighborhood belied what the following night was going to be: the only night game of a three game interleague series between two Chicago teams, the White Sox and the Cubs.

We had tickets for the second game which was in the afternoon, and would be slighty more tame… we hoped.

After dinner we went by Chicago’s Gingerman which was in no way like and is not related to the Houston original or its cousins. One beer was enough to convince me of that, and then we went to Marsh and John’s local: Joe’s.

It was a small dive and we hung with the locals till almost midnight. I had to sample the Hamm’s and the Blatz to complete the regional experience.

A nice walk home to a very welcome air mattress and I was out like a light.

The guy next to me was off the train in Lincoln, and the spot was soon filled by 1 of a group of 3. I was soon back asleep.

I awoke around 7am, it was raining in Iowa. It remained overcast and puddled throughout. A while later I went up to the lounge car and got a cinnamon bun and some orange juice for breakfast.

Not having slept well, and with the help of the overcast mood, and the monotony of farm land, I napped a bit.

Afternoon we passed over the Mississippi River into Illinois and more farmland.

I moved up to the lounge car, read a central Illinois paper, and grabbed some lunch.

I found it odd that as the sun broke through the clouds and I rode the train through a pre-suburban countryside somehow so near to Chicago that I was reminded of Liz Phair.

As I came into Chicago, we went into a switchyard that was under the station.  It was the end of the line and with all the unpacking of checked baggage and old-people movers, it was slightly difficult to make it down the narrow, dark, and loud platform.  When I made it into the station, John K was right there waiting for me.

I woke around 7:30 pacific time, but the train was now in the mountain time zone. The scenery was an ever changing collection of typically stark mountains that Utah is known for.

The engineer commented that the type of rail we were passing over would lead to a rougher ride than normal, and he was correct.

I got up to get a cup of ice from the lounge for my Dr Pepper and was then tempted by the Prairie City donut holes only to realize I had left my wallet at my seat and the attendant was about to take his morning break.

However the attendant gave me what I wanted if I would bring him the money later on account it would make his comment easier to produce: “if Paul Giamanti and David Crosby could produce a child, I belive it would be you.”. Made all the more humorous for his resemblance to Ray Liota.

We took a brief break at Green River along the foothills of the longest east-to-west mountain range in the US.

Did a bit of reading, watching, listening, and working for much of the day. The guy who had sat next to me in the middle of the night found an open seat after we stopped in Grand Junction, Colorado.

I decided to skip lunch since I wasn’t doing much to burn calories.

We stopped in Winter Park just before 4:00p, and soon thereafter passed through the Moffat Tunnel that goes under the Continental Divide, over 9600 feet in altitude.

After that we passed through some amazing views into a canyon and passed through 44 tunnels in total. The approach into Denver was fabulous, with nice weather and amazing views.

We were early into Denver and had about an hour to kill. Unfortunately, I had dinner reservations on the train only an 30 minutes later. Fortunately, there was a brewpub across the street.

I went across and had one beer, and checked my email. Suspiciously, I had only 7 emails after a day and a half on the train. Twitter API didn’t work, but the website did.

I got back to the train to hear that the 7:30 reservations were running late. Luckily I wasn’t seated with any of quite a few oddball groups. They sat me with a very interesting British journalist who had flown to San Francisco and was heading to Boston via train. All the while stopping at the oddball small towns on the route.

He had actually stayed in Winnemucca (sp?) and said the nearby hotel had a fabulous Basque restaurant, and they were having a Basque festival (as well as a rodeo) the few days he was there.

He was disembarking the train in eastern Colorado.

After dinner I hung out in the observation car until after dark, enjoying a book and an apertif. I suspected that I had gathered a travelmate since my absence, and indeed I had.

While many of the other single occupancy seats were being maintained by what seemed like bag ladies, my spot was relatively clean on top of being unoccupied through several stops.

When I returned at 10p the car was dark and the spot wad occupied; luckily he was still awake. He was disembarking at 4a in Lincoln, Nebraska.

I sat down, finished my wine, read some, and listened to a Skeptics Guide to the Universe podcast I had managed to download to my iPod Touch at the brewpub.