"Train tripping"

"It's not the destination that's important, but the journey..."

My life on a train...
Albuquerque, New Mexico to New York City and then back again.

December 27th-January 5th

I left Santa Fe, NM at 9am on a shuttle headed to the airport in Albuquerque.
An hour later, I arrived at the Albuquerque Sun-port where I got a taxi to the Amtrak Station a few miles away. The Amtrak Station was right next door to the Greyhound Station, where a month earlier, I had been stranded, waiting for a bus to take me to Las Vegas, NV. I shuddered at the thought of being back there so soon again, but I was early and wanted a cup of coffee, so I went into the Greyhound Station to purchase a really bad cup of coffee with only packets of powdered, fake milk to cool it off. I drank it anyway, because it was hot and I was cold, waiting for the train to arrive.

Even though the two stations are right next door to one another, they are like night and day. I quickly headed back to Amtrak and drank my really bad bus station coffee with the soggy tuna fish sandwich I had packed in a Whole Foods bag.
I also had a peanut butter and jelly bagel and some slices of "Marzipanstollen" in the bag as well to eat later on during the trip.
At some point I acquired a map of my train route from a nice Amtrak employee and I was happily looking at it while I waited.
I am like a little kid when it comes to maps. I can study them for hours. I’m weird, I know.

Now I decided to travel really light. I had planned for weeks what I was going to take and have learned over the years that it is best and also safest way to travel.
I took with me only one small black, back pack. This is what it contained:

A notebook, a book, a diary/calendar, hat, three pairs of socks, underwear, one t-shirt, one long sleeve shirt, a pair of jeans, a fleece jacket, pair of pajamas, my iPod, my phone, my camera, the chargers for iPod and phone, two pens, little cosmetic case, toiletry case, train/concert tickets, maps, money and a packet of "Wet Ones."

I lived for ten days and went cross country and back with only this much stuff. I never regretted it and at one point during my trip, a friend did my laundry for me.
Thanks, Tanya :) I did of course have with me the clothes and shoes I was wearing and my winter jacket.
I did pick up a wool hat and scarf in NYC one freezing evening, but that took up no room at all, the hat I wore on the train ride back home, the whole time to cover the fact that my hair was a greasy disgusting mess after 2 days living on the train without a shower.

The train was early and I was able to board after the people getting off in Albuquerque "de-trained." Amtrak slang for getting off the train.
At this point I am so happy and excited to begin my journey. I took some pictures of the train and of myself before it left the station. My friend Dante called me to wish me a great trip and adventure.

I was seated upstairs in coach class, in the very last train car in the very back seat. After the train left the station, I really enjoyed staring out the window. It to me, was better than watching any television show. There was so much to see. Graffiti spray painted on walls, twisted junk metal in piles, derelict buildings and homes, burnt rubbish from homeless fires. As the train pulled further away from Albuquerque and became more rural I saw, the bleached bones of animals killed along the tracks, a Pueblo village, flat-topped mesas, gnarled looking trees, horses, a one roomed school house/church.

On the other side of the train, I could see out the window, the powered sugar-like snow that was sprinkled on the Sandia Mountains and surrounding hills.
I was glad to be in the last train car, it was quieter than the cars up in front of the train and I there was no traffic passing back and forth, except once in awhile a dad would bring one of his kids to look out the back window. The other train cars all had their own unique smells and I would catch whiffs of them as I would pass through them on the way to the lounge car. One car even smelled like a bologna sandwich. There were a lot of kids traveling in that one, that could explain it. I am by nature a neat person and kept myself and my belongings self-contained and small. Most people that ride trains, really spread out. They bring coolers of food, pillows, blankets, games, laptops, knitting, you name it, they bring it, as well as too much baggage, which slows them down.

People can be like pack mules, so burdened by all their possessions in the name of comfort. I was more comfortable with less.
People were constantly playing with their phones and fidgeting. It’s funny to observe human nature. People are fun to watch on a train and I had fun writing down observations in my journal and staring out the window. I watched a lesbian couple a few rows down settle in to watch the complete "The L Word" on dvd. I spied on a cute old man wearing a red flannel shirt and suspenders for awhile, who was looking in an accordion file he brought with him on the train. Sometimes my train car would smell like piss. I later found out my seat was over the toilet! I eventually got used to it. Actually, most of the train car was over the toilets, which were all downstairs.

The scenery I saw, as my train went farther north along the tracks in New Mexico was beautiful and stunning. It started to snow heavily and the train had to slow down as we coasted through the winding mountain passes. I could see the front of the long train as the tracks curved to the left. I think at one point I saw a human sized grave next to a fence that ran along the tracks. There were flowers and a marker placed on it. Maybe I wanted to just believe someone would be buried out along the tracks.

The train was so quiet and I fell into a reverie as I stared out the window for hours.

My first night on the train was pretty uneventful and relaxing. I had two seats to myself and was able to stretch out and get some sleep. Which is very important.
One must sleep on a train, if one is to live in coach for two days. They handed out little pillows everyday and collected them before you leave the train.
I pulled the curtains on the window, turned the overhead light off, laid my pillow down on the and fell asleep.
I did wake up at one point during the night to pee and get some water. It’s funny watching people sleep on a train. They sleep in some amazing contortions.
Before I went back to sleep, I pulled the curtains open on the window to reveal a world in white speeding by.
It was snowing very heavily outside, the train cutting through it, like a knife. I think at this point I was somewhere in Kansas. Luckily, on both train rides through Kansas, I slept. Kansas is a long state. I remember that when I drove through it a few times.

My dreams mirrored the rhythm of the train, I became the train. Even though I slept, a part of my conscious was always awake. I was in a place in between the world of sleep and waking life. I was lucid most of the time and the last morning of my train trip, when I awoke, somewhere in Kansas, I swear that I could see spirits or energies left by people in my train car. Once I came into a full waking state, they all disappeared, but they were there for a few moments.
The rocking of the train lulls you to sleep, like a baby in a cradle.
I was glad to have been able to sleep. Two and a half days each way on a train in couch class without any sleep and I would have been a cranky zombie.

You meet a lot of different types of people on a train. A real cross-section of American people. Some of us were only on the train for a few hours, while most of us were on for a least a day or two. We all seemed to get along with one another. Strangers all, but all part of the human family. On the train to Chicago, I sat next to a woman named Mary, studying to become a nun and behind a lady bartender from Chicago, named Jenna, who was a riot and kept me laughing. She always was drinking a beer and I found out later she brought a cooler full of them! Two different sides of the human spectrum, but we all shared the same experience and adventure.

An hour outside of Chicago, our train came to a halt and sat for a few minutes, so I decided to get a cup of tea. It was then announced that a freight train de-railed ahead of us. Our train sat in a cornfield for almost five hours. I watched dusk and then dark, slowly settle on that barren cornfield. I listened to a woman shout into her cell phone, "I don’t know where I am, I staring at a friggin’ cornfield!"

Instead of getting angry with the delay, I made peace with the fact that I would get to Chicago, when I got there. I had Mary and my friendly bartender friend to keep me company. We spent hours just talking and laughing together, making jokes about being stuck on the train. Finally, we were told that we were being bussed to Chicago and would need to "de-train" soon. Then it started to lightly snow.

So, two sleeper cars and four coach cars of people and all their baggage had to be loaded onto awaiting buses. When we finally got on our bus, this funny guy yells out, "Hey, this is like that movie "Planes, Trains and Automobiles!" The whole bus burst out in laughter and it eased some of the tension. During the slow bus ride into Chicago,
Jenna told me about her tacky salt and pepper collection and this is where I found out Mary was a nun.

I made it to Chicago and they held all the connecting trains. I was envisioning myself having to spend the night at Union Station, but my bartender friend, Jenna, assured me that Amtrak would have had to put us all up for the night at a motel if we missed our connection. She knew from experience. She told me that our delay this time was nothing. On the way out west, her train was delayed nine hours and sat on the tracks in the middle of nowhere, because someone jumped in front of the train and committed suicide. It took that long to scrap his remains out of the engine. A conductor overhearing our conversation about Amtrak having to possibly put us up for the night in Chicago, laughed and said, "You gonna be sleeping in the hood tonight." and then walked away.

I said goodbye to my friends and ran to make my connection to Pittsburgh. I realized later I didn’t have to run, they held the train in the station for about an hour after I boarded to wait for other trains that were delayed because of the derailment. They weren’t about to put us all up in Chicago for the night.

On this train I met a gal who was in the US Air Force and stationed in North Dakota. She excitedly talked to me for about an hour and then passed out for the rest of the train trip. I would hang out with her later when she finally woke up. She was also a student and wanted to study on the train, but told me she was very tired. She had two seats to herself on this train connection. I wasn’t as fortunate. I did have two seats to myself for awhile and was sound asleep, but awoken by the conductor and had to give it up to a new passenger that got on in South Bend, Indiana.

I now had to sleep in one seat. It wasn’t easy and I could recline the seat, but I tossed and turned most of then night until finally settling down.
My new seat mate had brought along her own comfy neck pillow and slept like a baby next to me. It was hard to sleep because the engineer of the train was trying to make up the time that was lost. He was speeding along the rails and some of the times it felt like our train was going to derail. A few people behind me made nervous comments about this fact. I eventually made peace with it and forced myself to sleep beside the "Sleeping Beauty."

We arrived in Pittsburgh on time! I was all ready to get off the train, when it was announced by the conductor, that there had been another freight train derailment between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia and all people going to NYC and Philadelphia would be staying on this train. The train was going to Washington, DC. At this point, I felt I deserved a real breakfast in the dining car. Washington, DC was so far out of the way, I’d be lucky to even get to NYC later that evening. I now envisioned myself spending the night in DC.
A hearty breakfast of scrambled eggs, chewy grits, a biscuit, orange juice and coffee. I shared my table with a lady also named "Lori" who
was from Baltimore, MD.
Amtrak coffee by the way, isn’t too bad if you ask for real milk.

I spent most of my trip to Washington, DC staring out the window and watching my seat mate drift in and out of sleep.
The coolest thing I saw along the way were these "caves" along the tracks for a few miles, near Connellsville, PA. One of the train conductors reminded me of the rapper Snoop Dog and was helpful and easy going and another conductor on this train was moonlighting as a tour guide and had to point out places of interest along the way. We briefly stopped at a train station in West Virginia. It looked like something out of the earlier part of the last century or something from a horror movie and was in such disrepair it was scary. It looked haunted.

When I arrived in Washington, DC, my Air Force friend, Irene, finally woke up and I walked with her into the station to catch our connecting train to NYC.
What we encountered was the closest thing to pandemonium I have ever seen.
There were people everywhere, trying to get their connections. I am always thankful during times like this I have decided to pack light and not have to drag several suitcases and bags of stuff with me. We were told our Pittsburgh to NYC tickets would be honored and ran to find our connecting train.

This train was a commuter style train that was only one level and had just a lounge car to purchase snacks and drinks. The bathrooms were more spacious and modern than the overnight trains, but there weren’t as many of them. I sat next to Irene, who was going to NYC for the first time to spend New Year’s Eve in Times Square. We shared a huge turkey grinder and drank a relaxing beer each.
This kid Jeff seated next to us, overheard us talking and joined in on the conversation the whole way. He told us he was a DJ and on his way to New Jersey to work a few parties for the New Year’s Eve weekend. He was a lot of fun and the constant chatter made the three hour plus train trip, fly by.

After all the derailments and delays, I arrived in NYC at around 7pm, only two hours late! I said "goodbye" to my friend at Penn Station and pointed her towards NJ Transit. I would be taking the same trains to NJ for New Year’s Eve a few days later. I bought a subway fare, after spending a few minutes trying to figure out how to work the machine. It’s been a few years since I have taken the subway. I miss tokens! I got on the right train, headed the wrong way and got off at 14th Street and then finally decided to take a cab to Grand Central Station. I had 20 minutes to spare until the next train up North to Southeast. It felt good to be back in NYC, if only briefly. I then boarded a Metro North train headed up to see my best friends. On the train ride up to the Southeast train station in Brewster, NY, I sat next to three super-geeks. It was fun to listen to them nerd-speak and trying so hard to impress each other with their knowledge. When I arrived in Southeast, my good friend was there to greet me and I spent the next four days with my friends.

Five days later, I was back at Penn Station and then on an Amtrak train going west towards Santa Fe. I spent more time on a train, than in NY. It was fun though. I wasn’t really in a hurry and just surrendered to the flow. The trip back was pretty much uneventful and mostly pleasant. I met some interesting and unique individuals whom I shared conversations with. From New York City to Altoona, PA. I sat next to this lovely 87 year old lady, named Anna, who was so delightful and sweet. This funny young couple sat in front of us and didn’t stop moving or talking loudly the entire time. They were young college students, from NY, studying in Pittsburgh. The gal, Steph, was with her gay boyfriend, Chris. I had spotted them at Penn Station being totally loud and nutty, playing with this weird toy that talks back to you.

I told them that they were entertaining. I think they freaked out my much older seat mate a bit, though.
The couple befriended a cute punker boy on the train with lip piercings. He was adorable and the older lady wanted to know why he would do that to his beautiful face. The kid had jet black hair and had delicate features. The funny gal, Steph, painted all their nails with black nail polish. I really liked these kids a lot. They had great spirit and reminded me of how I was when I was in college.

After, Anna got off in Altoona, these two gay guys got on the train to Pittsburgh.
They had with them, a rotary style, avocado colored phone and wanted to call the number that was on the dial to say that they had the people’s old phone and to ask if it worked well. They were silly. They called the number from their cell and got a message saying that the number no longer was in service.

There was no where to eat when I got to the Pittsburgh train station, except vending machines. A sloppy guy I talked to on the train earlier, asked me if I wanted to get in on a pizza order some people were organizing. I said I would pass, but thanks and ate a rice crispy ball that I had been carrying with me in my pack since NY. Tanya had given it to me and it was crushed and barely edible.
I purchased a weak cup of coffee out of a vending machine and got my money back. Everyone who purchased coffee did. Free coffee! One of the worst cups of coffee I ever had, next to the bad coffee I had a month ago at a Greyhound Station in Phoenix, AZ.

I talked to these nice ladies for awhile and then I slept for an hour or so in my uncomfortable plastic seat, slumped over my pack. We all had an almost three hour wait. The train wasn’t leaving until midnight. When we got on the train,
I shared a seat with a guy, who was gone, when I woke up and I was able to stretch out and get some decent sleep on the way into Chicago. We were making good time, but sometime during the night, the weather slowed us down. I treated myself for a real breakfast in the dining car the next morning and this time I sat with two men.

One was young, early twenties, the other man was in his early fifties, wearing overalls, big goofy glasses and his grey hair was in a long pony tail. We talked back and forth about music. He was definitely a free-spirit. I think we were freaking the younger man out, because he kept very silent during breakfast and only spoke once. As I looked out the window, I noticed a crisp pink and orange sunrise through a patch of thinly spaced trees. The sun looked as it was cutting the sky open at the horizon. I watched it slowly rise as I ate my scrambled eggs and grits again. I really love grits!

At this point, I started to just leave my new black knit hat on for the rest of the trip. My hair was greasy from not showering since I left NYC, but I could wash my face and brush my teeth in the bathroom everyday. I took my camera into the bathroom with me and took some photos of myself. I was all dressed in black and with my knit hat on, I looked like a "cat burglar." The bathrooms and dressing rooms on the train were cleaner than I expected and were never disgusting, considering all the people that were using them and all the "ass" that sat on those toilet seats. There were also electrical outlets and one could charge a phone, laptop or iPod in there.

We arrived in Chicago two hours late, but I had a layover until my last connection, so I got to sightsee for a few hours. Lunch at an English style pub called the "Elephant and Castle," a quick peek inside the Chicago Art Institute and photos of the giant chrome "bean" at Millennium Park. Caught a glimpse of the Sears Tower and almost got hit by a bus, trying to take a photo of it. Crossed the Chicago River and then I was back at Union Station to catch my train.

Inside the station, I made plans to have a shuttle pick me up in Lamy, NM and take me to Santa Fe. Jenna, the bartender from Chicago who had gotten on the train in Lamy on my way east, had told me it was better than taking the shuttle all the way back from Albuquerque.

When I got to the Amtrak gates, pandemonium was happening again. It had just been so quiet in the older historic part of Union Station, where I sat on the long wooden benches and looked at the architecture of the building. People here were sitting on the floor, babies were crying, pre-teens were all antsy and so many trains were late because of bad weather. Luckily, my train was on time, but I wasn’t so lucky when I got onto my train. I got to spend the next 6 hours, sharing a seat next to this guy named "Jeb" and his stinky leather jacket that made my eyes burn. It was so infested with cigarette smoke, I thought I would choke. He had Charles Manson eyes and bad skin. He had the look of a convict. The top button of his pants was missing or undone. He was relatively harmless though, but I kept humoring him, just in case he flipped out.

He did flip out later, but for the first hour or so, I kept answering the many questions he asked me. Finally, when I was exhausted, I excused myself and went to get a beer. He was reading some spy paperback when I got back to my seat. He also had a book on starting a non-profit business with him. He told me he had a degree in psychology and was a psychologist for while at this non-profit job, but he "fucked that up." He was kinda nuts. He had some kind of shredded meat in a styro-foam clam shell. When I came back to my seat, he had started to eat it and shredded meat was all over the place. On the floor, on him, on the seat. It kinda grossed me out. He handed me a complimentary Amtrak train pillow and it had a greasy salmon colored fingerprint on it, from the sauce that was on the meat.

He started to read again and I fell asleep for a bit. When I woke up he was gone, but he left his stinky jacket behind. I saw him for a bit in the snack lounge. I was getting another beer, but he kind of ignored me. And I thought we hit it off so well! I had even showed him some of my artwork on my digital camera. I think my beer drinking freaked him out. I think he was a recovering alcoholic or drug addict. I went back to my seat and attempted to kick the shredded meat under the seat.

One of the female conductors came by and asked if his jacket was mine. I said, "no." His tickets were hanging out of his inner breast pocket and she tucked his jacket into the seat so they wouldn’t fall out or get stolen. "Jeb" didn’t come back to the seat until it was time for him to leave the train. He picked up his jacket and left. I said "goodbye." I was so glad he was gone. A few minutes later he came back. His said his tickets were gone!
He looked around and didn’t see them anywhere near the seat. I told him about the conductor and he went to find her.

He came back again and this time he was flipping out! He was pulling everything out of his pockets, pieces of paper, packets of generic cigarettes, maybe hoping that his tickets would magically materialize or maybe just to prove he didn’t have them.
He started to pull up the seat and
looked under the seat again. I was afraid he would accuse me or the people seated near us of stealing, but he didn’t. The conductor got him to finally leave the train. He wasn’t getting a connecting train. Kansas City was his final destination, but he would need tickets to get back home eventually. He probably dropped them as he was leaving the train. He was a mess.
Later, I got up to use the toilet downstairs and I saw that he dragged shredded meat down the stairs with him. It must have been carried on the soles of his shoes. Gross!

I finally had the two seats to myself and stretched out. I used the two pillows I had to cover the seat where his stinky-assed coat had laid and went to sleep.
I slept through the night. When I awoke, I was somewhere on the Kansas border, close to Colorado. I watched an amazing sunrise from my train window. Sharp red/orange light sliced through the darkness.

The rest of the trip was now pretty uneventful and I just had a pleasant ride with no delays.
We were actually making excellent time arriving at some stations a few minutes early. I took photos of the smokers outside, when we stopped in Raton, NM.
They looked like zombies walking around. I thought it was funny.

I finished reading the book I brought with me, Philip Pullman’s "The Golden Compass." A woman seated next to me was reading "The Subtle Knife" the next book in the series. I wasn’t the only adult reading a children’s book. I noticed her, noticing me, reading my book too. It was the perfect book to read on a cross-country train trip. It’s a book filled with magic, adventure and snow!

When I got off the train,
I met the shuttle at Lamy Station and rode the 13 miles back home to Santa Fe, NM. The rolling hills of Santa Fe were stretched out in front of me as we drove into the city. The van dropped me off within feet of my house and I had saved so much time and money, not taking the train into Albuquerque. It was a pleasant end to an interesting and exciting few days living on a train.

Would I do it again? Yes, but not right away.

Some other observations and thoughts:

Train food I ate: many tuna fish sandwiches, a micro-waved vegan burger, chips, Pepsi’s, cheap beer, coffee, scrambled eggs, grits, biscuits, orange juice, little cartons of milk, Frosted Flakes, tea, little bottles of White Zinfandel, pretzels....I stayed away from the rest of the "Franken-food" though. At one time the train was very rocky and I spilled my coffee all over the table in the lounge car.

Anton, the campy and theatrical lounge attendant on my ride back from Chicago toward Albuquerque asked to see my drivers license photo. I had to show it to him to buy beer. He said, "Who’s looking good in the neighborhood?" Every time I would go to the lounge car to buy something to eat or drink, he’d yell out loudly, "Hey look at you, how are you doing?" He kind of did it to everyone and it was fun. I think he did it mostly to amuse himself or maybe so he could get a good tip. It worked. It made me smile and I always gave him a good tip. He gave good customer service.

Some other train highlights included: A group healing in the lounge car with these, I assume, Christian teens laying hands on this one kid and praying over him. It was pretty intense and I couldn’t stop staring as I walked by. I also saw an Amish family taking up a bunch of seats, the woman had bonnets on, "Little House on the Prairie" dresses and everything!

I liked to look at all the graffiti that is written along the train tracks, under bridges, on walls, on train cars...a couple things I saw written as my train left Kansas City were: "BUSH SUX BALLS" on the side of a train car and "Revolution Now," spray painted under a bridge.

Living on a train for 2 and half days was like living in a moving hotel. A self- contained microcosm. We all ate together and some of us even brought our own meals and drinks with us on the train, while the majority of us, when we got hungry, would stagger like drunks through the moving train cars, until arriving at the lounge or dining car.
We all slept together in coach and sometimes when we weren’t lucky enough to get two seats by ourselves, we slept alongside of a stranger that got on at the next connection. And it was alright. You did what you have to do. Us folks in coach couldn’t afford a private sleeper car.

We people on the train represented a diverse spectrum of people. White, Black, Asian, Native American, poor, middle class, gay, straight, old, young, retired, students, The Amish, and we all got along and lived together on our train. Everyone for the most part was polite and courteous.
I was told some horror stories from the Jenna, the bartender, I met, about things that can happen on Amtrak trains, like people being escorted off the train by the police. Luckily, none of that happened on any of the trains that I was on.