I wrote and schedule this long before I took off on my train journey to Chicago, so I have no idea where I am at the moment. Somewhere in the mid-Prairie, I'd think. With no certainly of Wi-Fi, we does our best. And rely on the elves back at the homestead, always a wary proposition. And okay, given that this is a train journey and Chicago is at the core of it, how on earth can I not play Steve Goodman's great song, "The City of New Orleans"??! Yes, I know "New Orleans" is in the title, but that train departs (or arrives, depending on your direction) from Chicago. (In the song, it departs from Chicago, going "southbound." It was on the Illinois Central line, and as one of the lines says, "The train pulled out at Kankakee," which is a town about an hour or so southwest of Chicago. I have a couple of versions here. The first, of course, is from Steve Goodman, recorded in 1972. Arlo Guthrie has a terrific version, and made the song famous, which Steve Goodman also credited. Willie Nelson won a Grammy for it. But this is how the song is done -- This second video is not from Arlo Guthrie or Willie Nelson. Nor the wonderful version by The Highwaymen -- Nelson, Wayland Jennings, Johnny Cash and Kris Kristofferson. (Little known fact: John Cash was the first person offered the song, but he turned it down. And spent the next several decades saying it was one of he great regrets. But on a TV special he invited Steve Goodman on to sing the song. By the way, he didn't turn it down because he didn't like it -- he thought it was wonderful. But he'd recorded SO many train songs, he didn't want to keep being identified with them alone.) Instead, this is performed by Jimmy Buffet, and is fairly similar to Goodman's original. Which isn't surprising since he and Steve Goodman were very close, and even collaborated on songs. In fact, when Steve Goodman passed away shortly before his beloved Chicago Cubs finally made the post-season in 1984 for the first time in 39 years, he had been scheduled to sing the National Anthem before the first game of the playoffs at Wrigley Field...and Jimmy Buffet sang it his place. Which makes this performance all the more touching. This version takes place in the right field bleachers of Wrigley Field, when Jimmy Buffet was the first person ever to give a concert there, in 2005. It's a nicely-edited video...and this is how he ended the concert --
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Well, I'm here live. It turns out that the sleeping cars do have WiFi -- though it's very slow, and pretty much only good for email. Browsing is useless. But I've been able to create a mobile hotspot with my phone's cellular connection, and that's working better. By the way, typing on a train in an experience. With the shaking and rolling, it's sort of a game never knowing exactly over which keys your fingers will land. It's not bad, mind you, just sort of an adventure. And at least I know have an excuse for typos. Just a minor report. We left Los Angeles last night at 6 PM and are now in New Mexico. This is the view from my roomette window when I got up this morning -- Best was last night when I went to bed. You barreling through the desert, and the sky is covered with stars, so I left my curtains open and just watched it all as I lay there. (Even the elves taking care of the homestead where a bit jealous, and that takes a lot.) The roomette itself is pretty small, though very comfortable. (Larger rooms are available.) There's an upper and lower berth, both tucked away, and the porter sets them up each day, though you can do it yourself. The opposite seats are both comfortable and can roll out to recline at a pretty good angle. They're close enough that you can stretch out and rest your feet on the one across the way. A fold-out table in the center, AC/DC plug, and a bunch of light switches, though you can't get things all that bright. Try as I might, I couldn't take a good picture of the roomette, so this will have to do. Happily, there's even a shower on board. The room for it is small, so changing getting dressed is somewhat tight, but it's just nice having it there at all. One fun fact: despite the knob saying "Cold" and "Warm", the concept of "Warm" hasn't apparently hit the Southwest Chief. Hopefully that will be better tonight. They just came through with the call for lunch reservations. (All three meals are included with a roomette.) The food last night was fine -- the crabcake was quite tasty, though they had a little trouble with getting the temperature right on the steak. I ended up being fine with well-done over red rare. And the desert was delicious. Dining on a train is a joy, though I'm looking more forward to lunch since half the fun is eating as you watch the countryside zip by. (I got that at breakfast, though we were stopped for much of it, which kind of defeats the purpose. Bad timing on my part.) Eating in the dark at night hardly has the same impact. It's communal dining, so they stick people together at tables unless you're a group of four. That's a toss of the dice, but I lucked out last night with a nice group of three older folks who were headed for Kansas City. A nice group but even they admitted they were a bit odd. As the guy said, "This is my current wife -- and the lady sitting next to you is my second wife. And it's a bit more offbeat -- usually they travel together, and I stay at home. I've done my traveling, and don't like to that much anymore. But I hadn't taken a train and decided to go along." It got funnier when they added that there is a first wife, too, who the two subsequent wives often travel with, but she couldn't make this trip. Hey, I said, as long as it works for you all. And it does, they said they all like each other. There's a very nice porter taking care of the car. He's been with Amtrak for 17 years, and loves it. We talked for a while and he spoke about how meaningful the job is to him, not just helping the passengers, but getting to some of them them well who take the trip a lot. Even having stayed with some of them in their homes. "Management look at this as doing the job properly," he said, "but to me it's very personal." Anyway, I'm glad to see that the automatic scheduling seemed to work perfectly, so even if I don't check in as regularly, those will keep getting posted. Onward... Continuing with our pre-scheduled pieces that I wrote before taking off on my train journey to Chicago, as you read this I should be somewhere in the Southwest, heading towards Albuquerque, I think. Hopefully the elves back at the homestead are making sure these go out properly. But relying on them is never a sure thing... The train appropriately enough is called the Southwest Chief, but this run used to be the famous Super Chief -- and that's the train that the 1976 movie, Silver Streak, was based on -- starring Gene Wilder, Jill Clayburgh and Richard Pryor. You'll no doubt recall that the story begins with Wilder boarding the train in Los Angeles and taking it to its memorable conclusion crashing into Union Station in Chicago. As whimsy would have it, that's exactly the route I'm taking...though hopefully without the "crashing into Union Station in Chicago" part. Here's an eight-minute featurette on the making of that film. And we're off!! As I said, I'm taking the train to Chicago, and there's no Wi-Fi as we head through the desert, mountains and prairie, so I've prepared some pieces ahead of time and scheduled them to post over the next couple of days until I arrive Thursday afternoon. I've asked the elves watching over the homestead to make sure this all gets out, but I can't swear to their reliability. The train is scheduled to leave at 6 PM from Union Station in Downtown L.A., so by the way you read this, we should be on our way. And I thought that that would make this especially appropriate. It's one of my favorite scenes from a train movie -- the opening sequence from the 1974 movie of Agatha Christie's, Murder on the Orient Express. All aboard!!! As I mentioned a month or so ago, I have a trip planned to Chicago, and will be taking the train there. It will come as a shock to no one who reads these pages that I love trains. In fact, I've taken this particular trip before, though it was several decades ago -- and I got a coach seat that time. This trip will be with a roommette.
The coach seat turned out tremendous, as I wrote here a while back when I told the story. (If you want to read the full version, you can find it here. The short version is that I had an empty seat next to me for the first part of the trip, but then a passenger got on in Albuquerque, I think, with the seat reserved -- and she was an absolutely beautiful German girl, Katarine, who was working as an au pair in San Diego...and she was going to Chicago. When she and I both got back to California, we stayed in touch and even got together, when she came up to Los Angeles to visit. And no, I don't expect lightning to strike. Another reason I got the roommette...) I take off this evening, and have the elves taking care of the homestead, so things should keep running properly. The "problem" is that there is no Wi-Fi on the train as it heads through the mountains, desert and Prairie. So, I won't be able to post here along the way. There might be Wi-Fi connections when we reach some big cities, like Albuquerque, and can pick up the signal at the stations where there's a longer stop than usual. But I can't count on that, and don't expect it. However -- I've prepared a bunch of pieces ahead of time, and the software here is supposed to allow me to schedule things in advance and have them posted throughout the journey, generally in the early morning and early evening. We'll see. Here's hoping. The first piece is schedule for around 6:15 PM, Los Angeles time, so you should have a pretty good idea if it works at that point. But you will be the only ones, since I won't likely have a clue... More on the trip later, of course. But for starters, here's my train, the Southwest Chief... Next month I'll be going to Chicago, and will be taking the train there from Los Angeles. This is the second time I've made the trip. The first time was about 15 years after grad school, which I wrote about here. I got a coach seat then, and it was a wonderful trip on general principal, but all the better since around Albuquerque an absolutely beautiful German girl got on and had the seat next to me, all the way to Chicago. And it turned out she was working as an au pair in San Diego. (I tell the tale in the article, and yes, we actually did end up going on a date, though alas it didn't get any farther than that.) This time -- in part because I don't expect lightning to strike twice, but mainly because I don't want to sit in a coach seat for two days gain -- I got ticket for a roomette. It's definitely more expensive, but I look at it like it's part of a vacation, not just transportation.
For no particular reason, I'm thinking of calling this the Honorary Chris Dunn Half-Country Tour, though I'll probably settle for something significantly less divisive -- like maybe the I Hate Trump Train Ride Across America. But perhaps it will just simply be Train Fest 2018: Back on the Rails Again, This Time Though in Total Comfort. (By the way, the coach seats are quite comfortable, and they stretch out extensively with footrests. Besides which you can move around to the club car, dining car and -- best of all -- the observation car, which I especially loved going to at night, when they darken the car as you head through the Western plains. But for two days, 40 hours actually, "quite comfortable" has its limits. Especially if you don't have a beautiful German girl sitting next to you who actually seems to like you. I'm a guy -- I'd have happily stayed in a coach seat all the way to the East Coast under those conditions...) This here, though, isn't about the train trip but the Amtrak reservation system. As I said, the trip years before was wonderful, even going coach, and I expect it to be the same next month, all the more so traveling in a roomette. But as wonderful as the trip should be, Amtrak reservations is utterly screwed up. And therein lies the tale. My ticket is $520 one way. Which is fine. As I said, I look at this as part of the vacation, and you get a room for two nights and three meals included. So, $520 is absolutely OK By Me. But here's the thing: if I had decided to leave the very next day – a Wednesday, not a weekend, mind you, just the middle of the week -- the cost would $1,100!!!!. One way. And if I left the day before, on a Monday, it would have been $700. Expense aside -- and that's admittedly a lot to put aside -- it's the overwhelming inconsistency that's at issue, and the whole schedule is screwy like that. (Actually, it’s even worse if I had wanted to leave a month earlier. Not just more expensive, but with wider price swings.) That’s why it was so hard to figure out a good schedule when to make my trip. I don’t mind paying $520 – but to pay SO much more the day before or after?? No way. Especially when flying that same day is about $130 each way. So, to pay $1,100??? But here's the thing -- it’s even more odd than that. I could have made the reservation online, but the problem is that you can’t specify upper roomette or lower level when booking that way – which is utterly nuts. You have to call. (And worse, they don't even tell you that on the website, about being able to pick a particular roomette if you phone them, but I did a lot of online searching for information beforehand, which is how I discovered that.) And selecting which roomette is pretty valuable -- not just for getting upper level or lower level, but whether you're close to the stairs, or bathrooms and showers which might be convenient, but have more foot traffic, or near the back where the car is coupled which might be a little noisier. It just seems a pretty good idea to be able to pick your roomette So...okay, I called to make the reservation. And specify the location, I said upper level. Fine, she checked and said she got me Room 7 and it’s $670. Hmm, hold on, I said, online it shows only $520. She checked, saw that I was right and said, “Well, let me search again, only this time I won’t specify upper level. I’ll just do a search for ‘Any Room.’” She came back and said that, yes, she was able to get it for that $520. “So, it’s probably lower level, then, right?” I said to her. It wasn't my first choice, of course, but there were some okay things about lower level, so...whatever, it would be saving my $150. Oh, no, she answered, it’s the very same Room 7. Can you imagine!!! By doing a search for “Any Room” – rather than search specifically for Upper/Lower -- she got the exact same room for $150 less!!! As I said, they are all screwed up there. At least that's all out of the way now, though. The only thing that's left is the trip itself. Looking forward to it. But man, the next time people in charge get around to discussing the commercial viability of train travel in the United States, they should really grasp the concept that -- forget the whole deal with actually traveling by train -- when you make simply buying a ticket THIS NUTS, you're only and always going to screw yourself. |
AuthorRobert J. Elisberg is a political commentator, screenwriter, novelist, tech writer and also some other things that I just tend to keep forgetting. Feedspot Badge of Honor
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