Well, I’m here. I decided that I needed to take the train across country once, just to see what it’s like. Well… it kinda sucks. The scheduled 31 hours from Utah to Illinois was harsh enough, but the additional 4 hours delay was an added bonus. The seats are pretty good… vastly better than the torture devices employed by the airlines. The food was like rubber, but at least it was overpriced. And while it passed through some of the most beautiful terrain on earth, the optical quality of the windows was abyssmal. And thirty-six or so hours sitting in the same seat in the same clothes… let’s just say I wasn’t exactly “springtime fresh” at the end of it.
On the plus side, the last 4 hours or so just flew by, as I spent them in conversation with a very nice, very smart, extraordinarily gorgeous blue-eyed redhead who reminded be a great deal of The One girl I was extremely fond of, lo those many years ago. It’s always shocking to me when such a beauty seems to find me interesting (which means I’ve been shocked, what, maybe three times now. Gah.). Pity about the age difference… and her boyfriend. Oh, well. An old broken down geezer can still appreciate a pretty girl who flits in and then out of his life.
Anyway, I took hundreds of photos, but only a few turned out really decent. None of the telephoto shots came out… I simply could not get the lens to focus. And anything taken at any angle other than straight out tended to be ruined by the waviness in the plastic window.
20 Responses to “Gah. Trains.”
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What is it with you and redheads?
🙂
I like redheads. But then, I also like blondes and brunettes. Typically, the three groups are unified in thier disinterest in *me.*
Can’t say what drove this particular redhead to be briefly interested in me. Presumably the crushing boredom of *days* spent on a train, coupled with fact that I was looking through my photos on the laptop.
And as I mentioned, she bore a passing relationship to someone specific from long ago, who was also (at least occasionally) a redhead.
Whats not to like about redheads!?!?!
Hey, agt least you did not need to use your snowshoes. At least till you got to Ill.!! And yea, AMtrak is like a shopvac, sucks AND blows. Are you still allowed to carry your own food/drink? We used to carry coolers, beer and food, back in the ’70s-’80s. Then again we were only on for 12 to 16 hours.
Gah, You sound like me. Only difference? I’m young and broken down. And yes redheads can be quite nice.
Scott:
Warning! (I may be too late :o) Don’t get a “sleeper” cabin and think you can actually like “sleep” either. I had a trip to L.A. from Northern California and after paying and boarding was told that the beds can ONLY be lowered and used after night-fall! (Well I suppose you could bring a pad and sleeping bag) I recall it had no toilet but I do seem to remember a shower in the cabin.
The other down-side is you probably would have missed out on the redhead… But that’s not a given since unlike an airliner you can actually move around quite a bit and stretch your legs and meet people :o)
Randy
Welcome to Illinois,Land of Greed.
You’re gonna get hammered with snow. You know that, right?
Gonna hit the museums in Chicago?
> You’re gonna get hammered with snow.
Already have been. Hospitals do not wait upon the weather, so I had to venture out into it anyway. Fortunately I heard that the I-74 bridge was a sheet of ice before I took it, and found another way to get across the river. Heard some entertaining horror stories about cars bouncing off the rails across the bridge.
>Gonna hit the museums in Chicago?
Not a chance in hell.
1) Not getting anywhere near Chicago
2) Got to Chicago a few years ago and hit the Field museum, Science& Industry, Shedd Aquarium, Adler Planetarium. Places I’d visited as a child and remembered fondly. Places I should *not* have visited as an adult, thus replacing fond childhood memories with adult memories of “this place is overpriced, poorly maintained, not very well done and seriously chock-foll-‘o-suck.” Not to mention the fact that I had a .45 at hand when travelling the area…. not for the reason I do in Utah (habit) but because I felt I might actually need the thing at a moments notice in that craphole.
> Are you still allowed to carry your own food/drink?
Yup. There was that, at least.
Trains suck but they suck a lot less than most commercial air travel: better seats, better food, and you can use the loo just about any time. (Some of the older cars, not in the train station, for reasons you discover when you flush on a sunny day. Increasingly, they use modular, airliner-type facilities instead).
Mr. Admin, of course you misremember; you never, ever carried a handgun in Chicago, or anywhere else in IL, either. That’s a felony. Unless you are a current or former LEO. Hoping to see that fixed, I’d like to visit that state occasionally,
My enduring memory from my cross-country train trip was being back in the dining car and watching the food plate migrating across the table from the vibrations caused by the poorly maintained tracks…sort of like trying to eat while riding on a ascending Shuttle.
The passengers seemed to be a pretty nice bunch though.
One wild thing I did get to do was ride in a actual Vista-Dome coach car from the 1950s; these got used east of Chicago due to the smaller size of the railway tunnels on the east coast compared to the newer ones to the west: http://calzephyr.railfan.net/cars/domecoach.html
The combination smoking/men’s room under the dome was done entirely in polished stainless steel which gave it a great retro look.
As far as those redheads go: “G-I-N-G-E-R! They don’t have souls, Kyle!” 🙂
1) US trains will kill you.
2) Chicago will kill you.
3) Redheads will kill you.
The combination is too terrifying for me to contemplate. 🙂
So if I am a red-head (old-copper color, not the true red) who has taken the train to Chicago, am I zombiefied already?
Hey, who’s feeding the cats?!!
I have red hair. I refuse to go near Chicago. I last rode a train in 1965 (to Philadelphia).
Hair color may be less important than some may hope. The most blond woman I ever knew was born with jet black hair. On the other hand, all the redheads I know and have known share a lack of predictability but all are consistent in their approach to life.
> who’s feeding the cats?!!
In one case, a neighbor. In another, a great big huge pile of dry food.
> you never, ever carried a handgun in Chicago
Notice I said “.45” without specifying exactly what that was, and I said “at hand,” which is not necessarily equivalent to carrying.
>Not to mention the fact that I had a .45 at hand when travelling the area….
Didn’t know they made a 45mm DSLR lens… >;->
> Didn’t know they made a 45mm DSLR lens…
I will point out that they *do* make another 45…
If you can’t bribe the badguys with it, you can whallop ’em upside the head with it.
>I will point out that they *do* make another 45…
OMG!!…..
I remember the TV ad for that brand here in Englandland when I was a kid, too many years ago.
It had _the_ cheeesiest jingle, EVAR…..
Are you ready for this, ‘cos it hurts…,
‘Any Tom, Jack, or Walt,
Who loves the taste of malt,
will love the malt,
in a Colt,
FORRTY FIVE!!!’……..(Ouch!)
Needless to say, I don’t think it’s available here, anymore.
It’s a bizarre planet: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_hair
The amusement value of humans cannot be overestimated.