Day One--What It's Like to Travel by Amtrak, and How I Trapped Someone in the Bathroom

I woke up before Allie, which isn't surprising, considering that I had neither a blanket to keep me warm and comfortable, nor had I drugged myself with Nyquil before collapsing at 2:30 when we got on the train.  I still managed to wake up only once an hour or so until around six thirty, which I figured was pretty decent considering that I usually get up at about 5 a.m.  During one of those once-an-hour conscious moments, I realized that the train had stopped and that we were, presumably, somewhere.

That somewhere turned out to be Elko, Nevada.  Unimpressed, I went back to sleep.

When I finally couldn't pretend to sleep another minute, I looked out the window to see what the new daylight would reveal of the landscape.  It turns out that there's large amounts of nothing in Nevada.  Large amounts of nothing scattered with cows, fences, and some snow.

The train itself was much more interesting than the Nevada landscape, so let's talk about it.  I'll explain the train as I experienced it.  At first glance, our coach class cars look a lot like the charter buses we used to ride in high school mixed with a large dose of airplane.  Tray tables, reclining seats, foot bars on the seat in front of you.  One of the conductors even brought around the standard pillows you get on international flights.

Unlike on a plane or a charter bus, there was ample foot room.  More than ample.  I could put two bags and my purse (the sum total of my luggage) at my feet and still have room for my feet.  Of course, I didn't need to do that; the overhead area was easily large enough hold three times what we had to put in it.

Unlike the portholes on planes, the windows on the train were large and, unlike the windows on charter buses, they were untinted.  If we hadn't been seated in between windows instead of next to one, we would have had a good view of the countryside in all its Nevada glory. While Allie still slept, I used my ninja skills to step soundlessly over her and head for the bathroom.  Unlike on planes, passengers on trains can pretty much move about wherever and whenever they want.  Our seats were up on the second level, so I followed the signs for restrooms down the narrow stairs and to my goal.  The bathrooms were almost exactly like plane bathrooms, except for the fact that there were about four of them on every single car.  Not only that, but one was a spacious handicapped restroom, another had an extended space for the fold down changing area, and one could only be reached through the women's lounge/dressing room.  That right.  I said it.  The Women's Lounge/Dressing Room.  It wasn't large, it wasn't ritzy, but it was a narrow room with a large mirror, two airplane-style sinks, and two bar stools.  It also had a small bathroom that only opened to the lounge.

Allie just before she went back to sleep...again. 

After Allie finally gave up on sleeping as well (Not until I'd been awake for close to an hour.  I passed the time by staring out the window, taking pictures of myself, and listening to the priesthood session of conference.), we began to feel the desire for some breakfast.  About this time the announcement was made that the "cafe" was open in the "sightseeing car."  Johnny, the cafe staff, cheerfully called out "Come out, come out, wherever you are."  Allie and I exchanged delighted looks, and set off for adventure.

After traipsing through a few cars (moving between cars while the train is moving is a bit frightening and rather thrilling), we found the sightseeing car, and on the bottom level of that was the cafe car.  We paid for our plain bagels and took them upstairs.

Allie's face upon our double discovery of bagels and the sightseeing car.

The sightseeing car is where we spent most of our awake time on the trains.  Half the car is filled with seats that face the window, the other is almost like restaurant booth seating.  On the train we took from SLC to San Francisco, there were outlets at every table.  Here the windows were huge and wrapped overhead.  People talked, read, worked, ate, made friends, and spent long hours looking out the window.  The sightseeing car is where the tour guides who would ride the trains for stretches of track that contained points of historic interest would set up and talk about the things we were seeing.  The sightseeing car was the best place to play Monopoly on my iPod, color in the Hello Kitty coloring book that Allie bought, and listen to This American Life.  The sightseeing car was where we shared a seat with a man who resembled an old prospector (no joke: long hair, floppy hat, missing front teeth, and talked about working the mines in a gravelly voice) who talked cheerfully as we crossed the Sierra Nevadas through winding canyons, by rivers, old mining flumes, deep snows, and periodic tunnels.

Train tunnels aren't lit the way car tunnels are, so our journey would be in the bright sunlight, almost blinding because of the snow, and then suddenly completely dark, with only the dim florescent lights on the train to show our wan-looking faces.  Then we'd be back into the light so suddenly we'd all flinch and squint.  The Summit Tunnel of the Sierra Nevadas took us four and a half minutes to travel through at 30 mph.  It was eerie, and it made me feel like watching old westerns with train robberies.

People watching and listening in on conversations were major sports on the sightseeing car.  Conversations sounded a lot light late-night Denny's philosophy discussions.  I heard discussions several hours of New Testament quoting and odd Christian philosophy, followed by The-universe-is-everything-and-inside-of-you and very very new age music is scripture discussions struck up between strangers.  This religion they were talking about also used large amounts of marijuana, apparently.  Towards the end of Friday afternoon I got real estate advice from lady whose table I shared to take pictures from that side of the train.  She says to buy, never bother renting.

In the late morning hours, before the beautiful mountains, the prospector, or California, Allie and I went to the women's lounge to change out of our pajamas and brush our teeth.  At that time we didn't know that the bathroom in the lounge only opened into the lounge, and assumed it had another entrance to the hall.  Allie and I had looked at the size of the bathrooms, considered the likelihood of being able to change in any kind of comfort and without getting our clothes grody on the floor, and then I declared I was just going to change in the lounge and take my chances with the fact that the door didn't lock.  So there I was, not nude by any means, but between shirts, when to my horror the door began to open.  Not the hallway door, the bathroom door, which was about six inches away from me.  Whoever was in there and I were about to have a very awkward and scantily clad moment.  So I reacted quickly, pushed the door back to closed with my foot and said, "Just a moment sir!--ma'am?...um...hold on a sec!"  I hastily grabbed a shirt and pulled it over my head with all possible speed, which, since my fingers had suddenly turned to celery stalks, took longer than I would have liked.  Then I sheepishly allowed the door to open, only to discover that I had trapped a very nice-looking middle-aged woman in the bathroom.  It was rather awkward, although fully clothed, and Allie's giggling certainly didn't help much.

Wrapping this insanely long blog up, Allie and I watched through the sightseeing car windows as Nevada turned to mountains and then to California and forests and snows and then back to flat.  Northern California is incredibly green in the spring.  Did you know that?  I didn't know that.  I'm sure I missed that memo some how.  It was beautiful, with water sometimes just lying around in small ponds.  When we finally got close to San Francisco (around 7 p.m.--It was supposed be more like 4, but the train was 3 hours late, see explanation on Day Zero) we were riding right alongside the delta and then the bay as the sun set.  It was beautiful.

At about 7:30, we disembarked and got pictures with our train.  The train had a big, dirty, weather-beaten Union Pacific engine, which was hooked up to the gleaming silver Amtrak cars.  It made for an interesting union that also reflects my overall impressions of traveling by train.  There are parts of it that make you feel closer to the land, and like you just stepped on the the set of the Music Man or White Christmas.  The abundance of time and the relaxed atmosphere made for easy conversation with strangers.   Other parts of train travel are very new, very modern, and have the same impersonal sterility of plane travel.

Bless their souls, Gee and Kat picked us up from the station.  Allie and I were pretty spacey and tired, but we were so excited to be finally in San Francisco that we kept up decent conversation while Gee and Kat drove us around and we eventually arrived at a sushi restaurant (It only took the four of as an hour to decide and then find it.).  The sushi was fantastic, the like of which I haven't had since Tokyo.  It melted in your mouth like cotton candy, but in a more raw fish kind of way.  By the time they drove us to their place, a basement studio apartment which they were so generous as to let us invade despite their limited space, Allie and I were pretty pooped.  Our polite conversation was getting slower and less animated.  Gee folded the futon down for us, and we collapsed in grateful exhaustion.  After so long in a train (17 hours), as I lay still I could still feel like I was moving, like the bed was swaying.  Luckily, I was so tired the phantom swaying didn't bother me at all, and I slept so deeply that I didn't move all night and woke up sore from having slept so hard.

Which brings us to the end of Day One and my Amtrak rant.  It was much longer than intended.  Sigh.  I have a feeling I'll be saying that about all my Great West Coast Extravaganza blogs.  Heaven help us all.