so, we landed safely in sunny california, which at the time was locked into a state of emergency, the streets underwater from this torrential downpour, complete with people screaming, dogs stuck in canals, the whole shebang. luckily it had stopped raining by the time our train pulled into the emeryville train station, not that it mattered to me since i was going straight to the bosom of my family up in tuolumne, california, but all the same it was nice not to get drenched.
but i'll backtrack. the train ride was boring, cramped, and absolutely fantastic because i got to have a bed all to myself, and a room with a door, and a shower down the hall, and a real [looking] meal served in a different car at a table with a real [looking] plate and real [looking] silverware and everything. i think i'd like to travel by train forever. it was wonderful. except i think us being let on was a fluke of some sort, the apparent age restriction being one million years or older, no exceptions, plus the two tickets cost us about 650 dollars. so much for "costing the same as a plane ticket".
i narrowly escaped the mystery death sickness that was taking 560 by storm when we left, thank god. quentin, who i was sure was contaminated, very generously took us to the train station in kevin's car, which i was also sure was contaminated, but i'd been inhaling thyme like it was oxygen and drinking gallons of echinacea tea before i left so i got out unscathed. imagine having westcott death on a 56 hour train ride, no thanks.
Upon arrival in Chicago the next morning, we were told our layover would be four hours, and that our sleeper-car tickets granted us access to the
First Class Lounge. WELL.
Since our layover was so long, we were walking around the city exploring, Christian in his mismatched secondhand clothes, with his unshaven face and dirty hair, I in my leggings with the legs different lengths, a scarf tied around my waist, orange hat and orange gloves, both of us looking especially homeless, and we were approached by another homeless man who needed a place to sleep that night, and understandably assumed that we would be the experts on such subjects.
First Class Lounge, athankyou.
But we saw the Great Lake that's on the edge of Chicago (Superior? Who knows, it was nine blocks away from the train station), and got Chicago deep dish pizza (twice. in four hours. bleurgh), and sat sipping free soda in the
First Class Lounge while we puzzled over what the hell we were going to do with our bags, which weighed about forty pounds a-piece, no joke.
We ended up gutting them on the train. I had to throw out a lot of clothing and a bag of medicine. I learned my lesson about overpacking, throwing all that perfectly good stuff away was painful. We couldn't bring ourselves to throw out the medicine so we put it all into a ziploc bag and left it on a park bench, hoping someone who needed it would find it. Probably it got thrown out but at least we tried.
We met lots of interesting people on the train: there was a mother and daughter from Sioux City, Iowa. They had golden retrievers and reported mysterious smells in Sioux City of which nobody seemed to know anything about, except that the smells were bad. We met a couple who were quite blatantly talking dirty to each other across the table from us, but either they thought we couldn't hear them, or that we were too young to understand what was going on (tee-hee). I like to pretend they were running away together, because they were talking REALLY DIRTY to each other, but probably they were just recently remarried or revamping their marriage or something or other. But let's pretend they were having an affair, it's more fun :D
The sleeper-car train ride was beautiful and depressing, alternately. We rode through the Midwest and there was so much desolation and short brown grass and trees with their sparse leaves like burned pieces of paper holding on for dear life to the branches, and we saw the backs of warehouses and mobile homes and I thought of the poor families who had to live in those brown and gray sad places right, RIGHT next to the train tracks with the dirty dusty trains coming by every few hours to shake the picture frames off their walls. Blech. It made me want to knock down those ugly yellowing warehouses with their orange fluorescent lighting and all their trash blowing around.
After the flat brown ickiness of the Midwest (no offense Claire & Bev ;D), we went through the Rockies, which was gorgeous, but almost made everything doubly depressing because it was so, so beautiful, but suddenly seemed very very temporary. I feel like these developers and corporations and factories are these big Pacmans, and they're really good at Pacman, and I'm the stupid little ghost, and everything's being eaten all up faster than anyone can stop it. I know what I saw on the train was in all likelihood the asshole of the Midwest (sorry), but still, I never realized how untouched and pristine New York State seems compared to other parts of this country. Even in California the land is being eaten up by housing developments and whatnot. Up in the mountains where my grandparents live, the ground is littered with rocks. The rock, according to my Grandma, is where the ground had been exposed during the Gold Rush, where miners washed away the soil looking for the gold, and left thousands upon thousands of boulders just sort of standing there with stupid looks on their faces. BUT THERE ARE LLAMAS :D
Anyway. After a very relaxing and well-fed two weeks with my grandparents, tomorrow kicks off the real first leg of the journey. Christian's been down in San Francisco for two weeks, and has managed to stay out of harm's way, except that his bag was stolen in Golden Gate Park this weekend. bye bye expensive tent, all our first aid stuff, his W2 (complete with social security number), birth certificate and clothing. Ouch.
Miss you all. There's an ice storm heading for New York AS WE SPEAK. drive carefully, i expect you all to be there alive and well when we get back.
I had some pictures for you but they failed to upload. Wanh wanh.
