Faustam fortuna adiuvat
The official blog of Fausta's Blog Talk Radio show.
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Back from the Zephyr
I made it home last night.
The only problem were the train delays. As I mentioned earlier, passenger trains must wait for freight trains and there is only one track in each direction (for brief parts of the trip there is only one track), so you must expect delays. There was one delay I didn't expect, however. Yesterday afternoon the train left Philadelphia during a huge rainstorm, and then the train stopped somewhere between Philadelphia and Trenton for over an hour. I was glad I wasn't in an airplane trying to land in Philadelphia or Newark.
What we didn't know was that the storm had knocked out power for central New Jersey, which affected the train lines. Trains were backed up in both directions of the Eastern Corridor. When we finally got to Trenton at 6:45 I waited for the 4:45 train to Princeton Junction. You know it must have been something when a guy from the NJ PBS affiliate, NJN news, was walking down the platform getting soundbites.
Will I do it again? Absolutely, yes. I'll probably fly to either Chicago or Colorado and then ride the Zephyr. It is an extraordinary experience. I just got this comment from Melissa, who I met in the train,
Fausta, My husband Tim and I had the pleasure of dining with you on the zephyr this week and we wanted to tell all of the cynics out there that a trainride should be experienced by everyone at least once in your life. I don’t even consider myself an outdoor person, but when you see the sights on the train, the only word that can describe it is majestic. We live in the city and usually drive from california to denver but, on the train, you get to see the "Real America" that we tend to forget about. It's also a very nostalgic experience that my husband and i will have for the rest of our lives. Who's waxing nostalgic in an overcrowded airplane or when fueling at the pump. Who I ask you? WHO?
Ask around onboard almost any Amtrak train, and you’ll get a pretty short list of reasons why people ride the rails. In the café car, chugging along one of the country’s oldest routes, I counted four types of passengers. There are thrifty ones looking to save a few bucks on plane tickets. There are those who are scared of flying, a group that has no doubt grown in recent years. There are the zealots - without exception, older men - who describe themselves with charming lack of inhibition as "rail junkies," "railroad nuts," "train buffs," or, my personal favorite, "railfans." The rest - indeed the majority - say they"re here for "the experience." Good thing for Amtrak, that romantic notion of the rails is alive and well. Naturally, it’s something the beleaguered rail company promotes to death. The experience is an important sell; nobody ever mentions reliability or practicality.
Jervey is right about riding the Zephyr for the experience: the views have a spectacul beauty of almost mystical quality, and the Zephyr is the way to enjoy them, much more so than driving through the same part of the country. I have driven trough much of the area and one gets to enjoy the views much better in the train.
You might save money over plane fare if you ride in a seat, not in a sleeping compartment. For a two-and-a-half day trip you will need a bed to sleep, so there is no saving.
As for the three other kinds of passengers, the "experience" ones outnumber all the others. While most of them are Americans, you will also find a good number of Brits, several South Americans, and an Australian couple or two.
While Jervey makes a long list of Amtrak grievances, the main problem is that freight trains have priority over passenger trains. That is the main cause of delays in all the routes Amtrak serves, and, as I mentioned on this post, the logistics for passenger rail travel in America are much different than for rail travel in Europe .
That said, I recommend that everyone take the Zephyr from San Francisco to Denver. It is a journey of wonderous beauty.
Here's a photo I took right now, just outside of Reno,
Liveblogging: From Trenton to San Francisco by train, day two
UPDATE please scroll down
After I signed off last evening the train arrived in Pittsburgh right on schedule, a few minutes before 8PM EDT.
Pittsburgh train station has no amenities at all and resembles the old NJ Department of Motor Vehicles office in Morristown from back in the early 1980s. They have a couple of vending machines that are probably worth something at the Antiques Roadshow, and their contents are worthy subjects for an anthropological essay on ancient foodstuffs.
I've had a salad in the train from Trenton and needed a hot meal, so I went out to explore.
The streets were empty - emptier than Wall Street in NYC on a Sunday morning. Another guy from the train was walking ahead of me probably also looking for a place to eat. I walked to the Westin Convention Center and went inside since the only person out on the street who didn't just get off the train looked like a male street hustler.
The restaurant at the Westin, The Original Fishmarket Restaurant, was open and lots of the hotel guests were eating there (they probably noticed the guy at the corner across the street, too). I considered whether to order some merlot but decided against it - I had to stay awake until at least midnight, way past my usual bedtime.
I ordered grilled tilapia and green beans with almonds, both of which were very good. On second thought - since it was getting dark outdoors and the neighborhood didn't look very pleasant - I asked the waitress that she box it.
I returned to the station, finished my dinner and waited for the train while the TV played Law and Order Criminal Intent. Donofrio wasn't in it, so I worked on my outlines for the BlogHer panels.
The train to Chicago left late and, like the train from Trenton, appeared to be booked to near-capacity. It was a double-decker train with tiny sleep compartments.
The sleep compartment was so small (how small was it?) that the (hard) cot was approx. 6' long and the width of a first-class airline seat. I was glad to be traveling alone. If a thought had entered my mind I would have had to leave the compartment. Several elderly couples were also in the same car, and one of them must have had a heck of time clambering up to the upper berth. ("Come on, Madge, let me give you a hand up!" "Hand up my a** Burt, YOU take the upper one")
Cary Grant would have never been able to hide in one.
The train bumped, ground, throttled, jumped, and honked its way at full speed over hundreds of track switches while us passengers lying on the tough cots held on for dear life as the jumps ground our bones into their sockets. It was
SHAKE RATTLE AND ROLL
all the way trough Indiana. At 5:30AM CDT I gave up on any hope of fitful sleep, washed, and got dressed. The train was shaking so hard there was no chance of reading anything.
Had breakfast at the dining room where I was seated with a retired math teacher from Chicago who was back from vacationing in Washington, DC. She told me that she thought "all bloggers were narcissists who think so much of their own opinions that they believe the whole world wants to hear about them." I heartily agreed with her and handed her my business (blog) card. She was a very nice lady and of course she's right.
After breakfast the train slowed to a crawl since many freight trains had priority and I had a chance to nap. We were 1:15 minutes late in arriving in Chicago.
This stretch of the trip illustrates why it'd be so difficult to have an American rail system comparable to Europe's:
The distances in the US are vastly larger than Europe's. In Europe you ride a train for 9 hours and have traveled through three countries. In the US, you're barely making it across Pennsylvania and Oregon. The passenger trains share the tracks with the freight trains. In Europe, fast-speed passenger trains have exclusive use of their tracks. Fast-speed train tracks have to be meticulously inspected before and after each train, and must be impeccably maintained. The US is much more sparsely populated than Europe. Higher population density brings about the higher volume necessary to sustain a train line.
Whoever tells you that long-distance rail travel will be practical for travel across the USA better come up with a solution to all these issues at the same time. Until they do, air and car travel are they way to go.
I am now enjoying some peace and quiet at the Amtrak Lounge in Chicago, praying that there is much less bounce to tonight's journey. The lounge is comfortable, well lit, air conditioned and has electrical sockets for laptops.
The train station is the locale for The Untouchables's baby carriage scene (which Brian de Palma borrowed from Battleship Potenkim). You can see part of it in this trailer:
4PM CDT There is no place like home: Princeton Illinois.
The landscape has changed to rolling hills of farmland, most of it planted in corn.
LIVEBLOGGING: From Trenton to San Francisco by train
UPDATED scroll down for updates
After I received the invitation to BlogHer in San Francisco I thought it would be an excellent opportunity to indulge in one of my greater eccentricities: my inordinate fondness for long-distance train travel, which even exceeds my dislike for air travel.
I have crossed the USA by train from Trenton to Seattle once, and from Newark to Miami. I have crossed Great Britain by rail. I have traveled from Amsterdam, Holland to Merida Spain.
I love trains.
When you tell people that it takes from Sunday to Wednesday to cross the country by train, six out of seven will tell you you're crazy for taking that trip. The seventh one is probably as crazy as you, and will immediately start a conversation about the last time they went from New York City to Vancouver by train.
If you're really lucky they might have taken the Trans-Siberian, the mother of all long-distance trains. You know you have a friend for life when you find a railway-travel enthusiast who actually volunteered, paid for and endured the whole Trans-Siberian enchilada.
My friend - who loves doing the NYC-Vancouver ride in early Fall - took me to the train station this morning, and now I'm on the train from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh, which is clean, comfortable, and running on time. The dialup card is working, and will liveblog.
2:35PM EDT: The landscape through Pennsylvania is mostly industrial, as the tracks follow the steel and coal routes. We just pulled out of Harrisburg PA.
The train continues to be on its Sunday schedule. It'll be interesting to see on the return trip how the schedule works, since freight trains get priority over passenger trains.
As expected, most of the passengers in business class are women traveling alone or elderly. The kind of folks who don't want to be doing long trips by car.
A friend had suggested that I drive to San Francisco. I don't enjoy long trips by car even when I'm in the company of good friends and/or family because of an old back injury which healed but which causes my back to go into muscle spasms after seating in the same position for more than four hours (yet another reason I dislike long flights). It takes nearly two days to recover from a 10-hr drive.
I don't like driving alone, either. The idea of driving alone cross-country reminds me of a Twilight Zone episode where a young blonde woman set out to drive across the USA and had an accident in Pennsylvania. She gets back in her car and keeps driving, but there is this weird-looking man in her car. He doesn't speak. He just stares at her from the rearview mirror. I'd rather take the train, thanks.
To each their twilight zone.
Susquehanna river, between Harrisburg and Johnstown:
5PM EDT Tyrone PA: The internet connection from the dialup card doesn't work too well now that the tracks are between mountains. The wooded landscape is punctuated with small towns, coal depots and commercial buildings. When we left Trenton it was 85F, dry and sunny. Now it's in the 80s and raining. The clouds are starting to break over the horizon.
I'm reading "Se acabo lo que se daba", by Luis Davila Colon, a political novel about Puerto Rico that my brother sent me last week.
6:40PM EDT The landscape through the mountains resembles at times that of western North Carolina, lush and green and chock-full of trees crowding one another while a river winds through it at times in shades of orange that changes into a silvery grey. They must have had a lot of rain. The cloudy sky changes from dark clouds to white clouds.
Every so often a cargo train comes by on the opposite track.
"Most of the Chinese people are used to the squat toilet, but nowadays more and more people demand sit-down toilets," Yao said. "However, it will take some time for this transition."
This is what the toilet in the new bathroom looks like here at casa de Fausta: Here's what a squat toilet looks like:
In my travels in Europe I encountered squat toilets and still recall the experience with great dislike. It was a thoroughly unpleasant experience.
The question is, how does one use a squat toilet?
Family travel explains how, and they include a diagram:
That said, always remember to bring your own baby wipes, toilet paper and hand sanitizer in your travels, even if you're not going to China for the Olympics.
There are a couple of noteworthy items about this lawsuit, but the most salient is that the lawsuit wasn't filed until a year after the passenger in question was told to hide his t-shirt. As it happened, two days before the incident at JetBlue, the massive plot to kill thousands of people on airplanes by Arabs living in Western countries has just made the headlines
It is not surprising, therefore, that the ACLU waited a year to file the case -- they wanted the jury pool to forget the context. I would bet my bottom dollar that as the case progresses Jarrar's lawyers will file a pre-trial motion to prevent the defense from reminding the jury of the plot discovered on August 10
The bridge connecting downtown Minneapolis and the University of Minnesota collapsed at 6:05 PM last evening. Of course the first blogger I thought of was my friend Captain Ed, since I know that his entire family live in the city. Fortunately his family is OK,
I have spent the last half-hour finding my son, daughter-in-law, and granddaughter. They're OK, and now we have to wait to see who isn't.
Instead of succumbing to ageorexia, the disease that's crippling middle-aged women (and younger ones, too) up and down the land who wish to do battle with sagging, wrinkles and bulges, I've decided to preserve what I can without resorting to cosmetic surgery, and live with what I can't. My eventual decision not to succumb to Botox, lunchtime lasers or the knife was reached after a recent trip to New York.
I happened to be staying on the Upper East Side, where the matrons of Madison Avenue hang out and walk their Pekinese. These uniformly wealthy women, with access to the shiniest cosmetic scalpels in the business, looked eerily identical, like the aged aunts of the Stepford Wives.
Not good, not youthful, but most definitely weird. Some of my friends back home are heading the same way. I decided I'd rather look saggy than paralysed.
While I was on vacation in North Carolina, Darren was moving from Richmond, VA to Los Angeles, CA.
It took my family and me 12 hours to drive back from Durham, NC to Princeton, NJ. We avoided the Rte 95 Richmond/Washington/Baltimore/Philadelphia corridor and went up the DelMarVa peninsula to New Jersey because of the holiday traffic, and traffic was pretty light that way
BUT
by the time we got home my back was in such a state of pain that I actually asked a man I've never met to lock me up somewhere if I ever think of driving anywhere for twelve hours.
Knowning what I know now, if I had started from Richmond to LA by car or truck, I fully expect that I would have gone missing somewhere near Lynchbugh, Tennessee.
It's been a rather busy week so for a change of pace it's time for a movie review.
But first for my first day in Paris, a day I have thought of often.
In my much younger and prettier days I arrived in Paris by train early on a November morning, and after having a nice breakfast, finding a place to stay, and having two cups of expresso, I went walking on my own. I was wearing my red trench coat, which I still own.
I'm a city girl and love walking when I arrive in a new city. Paris was the ultimate place for walking. I walked for at least six hours, stopping only to eat at a cafe for lunch and later at another cafe for afternoon snack. It was the most extraordinarily beautiful city I had seen in my whole life.
It still is.
The people were nice (some even understood my French), the place was uniquely beautiful, the weather was cool and clear and pleasant for a long walk, and the place was made for walking.
After walking for miles admiring the people, the shops, the architecture and the sights, the food, and even the traffic, it was getting late in the afternoon just as I started to cross the ponte Alexandre III. The bridge has everything one can throw on a turn-of-the-19th-century bridge: winged horses, cherubs, lamps on Art Noveau pillars. I was quite familiar with the story of Tsar Alexander and of his son the last Tsar, Nicholas and Alexandra his wife, but I opened my guidebook to read what they had to say about the bridge and to collect myself for a moment.
I closed the guidebook, returned it to my shoulder bag, and touched the cold stone railing. Every city smells different, so I breathed in the cold Parisian air. It smelled of bread and metal and water.
The particular setting is quite lovely, as you are standing on the bridge over the Seine, with the sightseeing boats carrying tourists rolling beneath, the Hotel des Invalides to your left, the Grand Palais and Beaux Arts buildings to your right, the Eiffel Tower in front of you and the rush-hour traffic running by.
I stood on the bridge for I don't know how long, taking it all in. Then I crossed the bridge and watched the view from the other side.
I absolutely loved it.
The sun was low in the sky. The air was clear and the light had turned everything a unique shade of light blue. I thought of my next door neighbors when I lived in Puerto Rico, three girls who loved Guerlain perfumes, and one of the perfumes was named L'Heure Bleue. "This was what Guerlain had in mind" when he named his classic fragrance, I thought.
The outdoor lights from the public buildings started to come on. As I stood on the bridge watching the Eiffel tower, the sun was about to disappear on the horizon while the entire sky slowly turned from orange to red, and the Seine changed from water to a stream of resplendent fluid silver. And just then, the evening light changed to dark blue.
It was the most amazing sight I had experienced in my whole life.
I was completely overwhelmed with emotions, elation, happiness, joy, sadness, excitement and amazement.
My right cheek felt damp and when I touched it I realized that tears were flowing down my face. A sob came out of my mouth, almost as if I were hearing it come from someone else. I groped for Kleenex in my shoulder bag.
A young and very handsome French guy walking by asked me in English (because believe me, they can tell you're American), "Are you alright? Is anything the matter?"
"Oh, I'm alright. It's just allergies", I said, and moved on.
I remembered this while I watched the ending of Paris, Je t'aime, which is not a film, but rather a collection of 18 short films by famous directors. Parts of it could be called "Americans in Paris", some parts are so-so (if you find mimes annoying), and some are excellent:
A grieving mother has a last chance to say good-bye. A lonely guy meets a vampire. A movie star gets her fix. A blind guy finds a short-cut. Oscar Wilde comes to the rescue. Steve Buscemi waits for the metro. A man's heart leaps at the sight of women in red raincoats. Ben Gazzarra and Gena Rowlands visit Gerard Depardieu's restaurant. The mail deliverer walks around the city.
Billboards to Highlight Spanish Complicity in Cuban Exploitation May 18, 2007, Miami, FL – The Spanish government is being denounced by Bloggers United for Cuban Liberty (http://bucl.org) in a new advertising campaign aimed at educating the public about oppression in Castro's Cuba.
The multimedia campaign, unveiled today, consists of bus shelter panels that target areas near the Spanish consulate and the Spanish Cultural Center, both in Coral Gables, Florida. An online component, launching today, will steer readers searching for certain information about Cuba and Spain to BUCL.org.
"This effort marks the first of several coordinated activities aimed at exposing those countries, companies and institutions that aid and abet the Castro regime in oppressing the Cuban people," said Henry Gomez, the spokesman for Bloggers United for Cuban Freedom. Gomez continues:
"Spanish businesses are dealing directly with the Castro regime and are helping perpetuate Cuba's totalitarian system by complying with that country's unfair labor laws and enforcing an apartheid system in which Cubans are not allowed to use the same facilities as tourists. From the Spanish perspective, there is no reason to pursue change in Cuba, they are benefiting from exploitation of Cuban workers and would like to see the status quo perpetuated."
The Socialist Spanish government of Jose Luís Rodríguez Zapatero has been leading an effort to normalize relations between the European Union and Cuba. Those relations have been strained since the Castro regime's crackdown on and jailing of 75 dissidents and independent journalists in 2003. In April of this year, Spain's foreign minister Miguel Angel Moratinos visited Cuba and met with Raul Castro, while noticeably snubbing Cuban dissidents that had requested a meeting with him.
"It's important for the Spanish government and business interests to know that freedom-loving Cubans will not forget who conspired with the Castro brothers and against their liberty when the inevitable fall of the dictatorship comes," said Val Prieto, editor of BabaluBlog.com and member of Bloggers United for Cuban Liberty.
If you want to see how Spanish advertising sees Cuba, take a look at this ad posted at the BUCL website I wonder if the NAACP has a chapter in the Iberian peninsula...
Fausta was born and raised in Santurce, Puerto Rico and is a long-term resident of Princeton, New Jersey. She discusses New Jersey, taxation, current events, and how news are reported in the French and Spanish-language media at Fausta's Blog.
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Paris, Je T'Aime
