Thankfully, the ride home on Amtrak was less eventful than
the Greyhound one. It started out ominous though but it illustrates the
difference in handling problems between Amtrak and Greyhound.
We began... all trains, freight or Amtrak, bound for Spokane from Chicago were caught in the
middle of sub-zero temperatures somewhere in N. Dakota. Buses had to rescue
passengers and crews by lest they freeze to death. That was an entirely
understandable circumstance and any delay could have had my sympathy. However,
this crises did not have any adverse effect on the schedule from Spokane.
Amtrak had charter buses standing by for us (equipped with Wi Fi and
comfortable seats) and we left for Portland on time. My only beef with Amtrak
is that it’s schedule for Spokane sucks. There is only one train arriving or departing
from the station and these are both in the middle of the night… mine for
Portland was 2:45 am.
Arriving in
Portland on time… even a little early was more than I could have hoped for. The
first leg of the trip was somewhat of a bother because I didn’t have a seat to
myself…. Boo-hoo. My assigned seat was in the front of the last car. Having no
seat in front of me meant that there was no pull-down tray for my lap-top but
there was plenty of leg room. Furthermore, the seat was an old one… the cushion
my butt had to accept was flattened out with age and slid forward when I
reclined it and the leg-rest only worked halfway up so I couldn’t lay more
prone to sleep that night; causing my sciatica to scream for mercy!
My seat
mate was a very pleasant to look at teenaged Chinese girl (I admit… I’m an old
man but can still appreciate beauty when I see it). She spoke very little
English so our conversation was limited to the necessities of the usual
courtesies on train rides…. I.e., “Excuse me,” and so on when I got out of my
seat. Her two companions in the seats across the aisle were also young Chinese
girls who only had occasional words with each other as all three were glued to
the games on the I-phones the whole time I was there. I was okay with that
because I was using the time to do some editing work on “Adrian”.
I was able,
however, to change to a good seat to the car ahead of us (I think it was
Sacramento) sometime the next morning. It was a bit too late for my sciatica
but this was a newer car and much more comfortable. While busy editing “Adriane”
a group of young men, college aged students, boarded and one took the seat next
to me. He recognized a friend a few seats back and asked the woman sitting by
his friend if they could exchange seats. The trip escalated to a higher level
of pleasantness as she was an absolutely gorgeous, twenty-something, young Asian
woman that could have graced the pages of any high fashion magazine. The
serendipity of having consecutive Asian women seat companions was blessing
enough but there was a qualitative difference this time as she held in her hand
Alexis de Tocqueville’s “Two Frenchmen in America”. I continued with my editing
when she asked what I was doing. I told her that I am writing a historical
novel with roots in the Spanish Civil War. She actually knew what that was and
also knew some of the history. From there we talked… talked about her art. She
showed me some of her paintings (which were quite good examples of classical
painting technique and her Orosco-like paintings of her own) on her smartphone and
I showed her my illustrations that go with A Taxi Romance on my Kindle. Her aim
is to tell a story with her pictures and is studying painting whenever she has
a chance. She is also getting into sculpture. We briefly shared our philosophy
of life and exchanged cards before she got off the train at Salinas to attend
another painting class.
It is
experiences like this that I have always loved about train travel. They
happened more frequently when I was a young man but I am so very pleased to have
made acquaintance with someone of her age group that wasn’t completely blank
about history and philosophy. Which brings me to the next experience on the
train that I find somewhat comical as well as tragic.
A young
woman several seats away, wearing earphones and holding an I-phone yakked on
her phone loud enough for everyone in our section of the car to hear. It was
annoying at first because I couldn’t shut her voice out even when I put in ear
plugs. The whole time from Salinas to Santa Barbara she let everyone know about
her affairs… that she was in love with Amie but Amie was in love with Amber and
Amber was in love with her. A few time they got together for threesomes but
that wasn’t what she wanted in a relationship. Now, Amber was jealous of Amie
and passed around the word that this girl was a pill junky. She protested that
she takes pain killers because she is in pain and that it is nobody’s business
what she does and insisted she wasn’t a junky. There was so much more. The
contrast between the two women of similar age was striking. I wish them both
well but I so much prefer the former to the latter.
geo 5,557
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