All Aboard!!
There is maybe no moment so filled with adventure as standing on a concrete platform next to a long silver streak of train coaches, the conductor steps down from the engine and bellows "ALL ABOARD!!!". Up and down the line attendants pull in yellow step stools, passengers hug their goodbyes and disappear into the cars. Heard all along the platform the all aboard signals you are going on a journey, you'll whiz through America, meet loads of new characters, see the land folk singers write songs about, you're special, you're going places, you're leaving the world behind.
Before boarding the train in Albuquerque last weekend, I had my doubts, was this train ride going to be worth the exorbitant price I paid for a sleeper car, would I just be annoyed by all the old people at dinner, I really just wanted to get home and now I had two days in front of me before that would happen. But as soon as I presented my ticket to the car attendant, Anna Marie, and showed my brother to my sleeper compartment all that vanished and I was overcome by the thrill of adventure. My brother took one look at the compartment and said "aren't you claustrophobic in here?" For someone who's six foot two it might be cramped but to me it's the most perfect room in the world. You have your own seats, your own window, a place for the suitcase, an electrical outlet, a space that's all your own with a door you can close to shut out the world.
Maybe that's what I find so fantastic about the train, it's a world unto itself. In the observation car the first class mingle with the riff-raff, people engage one another, very few people are listening to ipods or working on their laptops. Families and friends sit at the tables playing cards, a man sat with his son to look for the space station in the night sky, a young man played guitar for three hundred miles. You can take one hundred pictures of red rocks and comment endlessly on how beautiful it all is. Or if you are tired of people you can sit quietly for hours and watch the world go by.
Amazingly enough the train is a lot quieter from the inside than from the outside. So when darkness falls and you retire to the little bed made from the two seats in your compartment it's as cozy a space as you can imagine. You hurtle through the night feet first at one hundred miles an hour the train softly rocking you to sleep. The stops in the night may wake you and so you peer out seeing a lonely train station in the middle of nowhere. But soon the train takes off and you're asleep until the rising sun peeps into the window and you can't wait to get up and start the day ahead.
Of course it's not all as rosy as I make it sound, the bathrooms aren't always clean, people are annoying, the food quality is sometimes subpar, the windows are dirty, most of the people at dinner are old and when you get home you one hundred pictures of red rocks. But for me riding the train is rejuvenating, it shuts out the world of modern distraction, lets you slow down and live life's full measure.
Before boarding the train in Albuquerque last weekend, I had my doubts, was this train ride going to be worth the exorbitant price I paid for a sleeper car, would I just be annoyed by all the old people at dinner, I really just wanted to get home and now I had two days in front of me before that would happen. But as soon as I presented my ticket to the car attendant, Anna Marie, and showed my brother to my sleeper compartment all that vanished and I was overcome by the thrill of adventure. My brother took one look at the compartment and said "aren't you claustrophobic in here?" For someone who's six foot two it might be cramped but to me it's the most perfect room in the world. You have your own seats, your own window, a place for the suitcase, an electrical outlet, a space that's all your own with a door you can close to shut out the world.
Maybe that's what I find so fantastic about the train, it's a world unto itself. In the observation car the first class mingle with the riff-raff, people engage one another, very few people are listening to ipods or working on their laptops. Families and friends sit at the tables playing cards, a man sat with his son to look for the space station in the night sky, a young man played guitar for three hundred miles. You can take one hundred pictures of red rocks and comment endlessly on how beautiful it all is. Or if you are tired of people you can sit quietly for hours and watch the world go by.
Amazingly enough the train is a lot quieter from the inside than from the outside. So when darkness falls and you retire to the little bed made from the two seats in your compartment it's as cozy a space as you can imagine. You hurtle through the night feet first at one hundred miles an hour the train softly rocking you to sleep. The stops in the night may wake you and so you peer out seeing a lonely train station in the middle of nowhere. But soon the train takes off and you're asleep until the rising sun peeps into the window and you can't wait to get up and start the day ahead.
Of course it's not all as rosy as I make it sound, the bathrooms aren't always clean, people are annoying, the food quality is sometimes subpar, the windows are dirty, most of the people at dinner are old and when you get home you one hundred pictures of red rocks. But for me riding the train is rejuvenating, it shuts out the world of modern distraction, lets you slow down and live life's full measure.
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| 20:27
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