Musings of a Restless Mind

Now for the rest of the story. I talked about boarding the train from DC to Atlanta, and it was a shorter, but nonetheless overnight trip.

West of the Mississippi, the views from the train (outside the cities) were quite interesting. On the east of the Mississippi, however 90% of the tracks were bordered by narrow stands of trees that lined the rails, and were all you could see other than brief glimpses of the landscape. To a Westerner like me, the most amazing part was flowing water. You can live in Southern California a long time and never see more of a river than the LA aqueduct (famous for all the movie car chase scenes because it’s almost always bone dry). Rivers and lakes were a common sight on the other side of the Appalachians though, and sometimes the rails were bordered on one side with a river rather than stands of trees.

On the way to Atlanta, I got talking with a young family—3 sweet kids from 9 to 12 years old and their parents. The family lived in a very small town on the Gulf Coast and they had taken the kids up to see DC and get an idea of what an actual city was like in addition to taking in all the sights and museums. I discovered that the husband worked as a seasonal firefighter, combatting brushfires when he needed the work. Apparently calls would come in to the network of trained brushfire fighters whenever someone needed more manpower. He drives a tractor with a large, heavy roller behind it to crush the loose brush and make it easier to clear an area quickly. He noted that he didn’t fall for calls for help from California any more because they would put out the call for specialized folks like him, but then just hand them a shovel when they got to the fire. Way to go California! Can’t even pay firefighters to come out and help with your craziness anymore, so you fly in manual labor from across the country. Very cost-effective I’m sure.

I happened to mention Lamy and its abandoned and overgrown fence fragments and the father chimed in, “Oh yes, those are the worst. If you don’t see them and run them over, you have a heck of a job untangling the barbed wire wrapped around the huge rollers.”

At Atlanta we parted ways as they were picked up to take a ride to an uncle’s place where they had left their car, and those of us going on to New Orleans were told that, because of the heat, they weren’t running the trains. Apparently the rails tend to swell up in excessive heat, raising the risk of derailment. Who knew? So they boarded us all on buses to New Orleans from Atlanta. Fortunately this time there was no drill instructor speech.

The New Orleans stop was one I hadn’t made any plans for. The train was scheduled to arrive at 9pm, and the next one depart the next morning at 9am. Was it worth it to try to find a hotel for a less than 12 hour stay? Should I just go to one of the infamous New Orleans bars and stay up all night? As it became clear the bus would get us there much sooner than the train would have though, I decided to use my phone to see what I could find. There was indeed a hotel within 6 blocks of the station, so I called in a reservation. Oddly they didn’t ask for any information other than my name.

As the bus crossed over the estuary/river/bay (I wasn’t sure which) into the city, I was rather surprised at the dozens of billboards for personal injury lawyers. Not exactly reassuring. One proclaimed itself, “A Human Kind of Law Firm. Serving New Orleans since….” Good to know there was at least one law firm in the city that wasn’t run by Artificial Intelligence. New Orleans seemed different from anywhere else I’d been.

At the station, one of the employees told me she’d stand with me until I, and the duffel bag that clearly marked me as a potential target, were picked up by a cab or uber. She assured me that it wasn’t safe to walk even six blocks in that part of town, so I logged into the app and ordered up an uber. It was only moments later that my ride pulled up. It was a couple, and we’d gone 3 blocks before I realized I hadn’t pressed send yet. Generously, they said it was no problem, and pulled up my destination on their GPS. After they dropped me off with my thanks, presumably they went back to pick up their real fare. Once I managed to hail someone to let me into the Victorian-style building, I realized I had accidentally stumbled upon a youth hostel of sorts. For $20 for the night, I got to choose my bed in a room with 8 bunkbeds and went down to where there were a dozen or more folks from all over the world, sitting at a long table in the backyard, drinking and playing whatever game occurred to them.

A few words about youth hostels to the uninitiated. They are cheap, no-frills, places for young people to stay while they have fun wandering the globe. As I understand it, they’re marketed heavily to young people in Europe. Apparently a customer can map out a whole excursion across the US, hitchhiking, walking, or finding some other mode of cheap transport from one to another. Clearly the point is the journey, not the destination. Maybe because all-seeing google knows I’m more of the age to which cruises rather than youth hostels are marketed, I hadn’t heard about them for years until I wandered into this one.

I was the only one in the room when I went up around 11pm. I think I heard others stumble in around 3 in the morning, and I was up, showered, and downstairs to await my uber on the porch before any of them stirred. More cautious this time, I didn’t try to hail the first uber that came by, apparently to pick someone up from the AA meeting next door that had just broken up. A few minutes later, my ride showed up and I was soon back at the station to await my next train.

The trip across Louisiana, Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona proved much more scenic, from the lowlands and farms of lower Louisiana to the vast flat plains of Texas. It’s much more fun to ride through Texas in an air-conditioned train than to drive through it, trust me on that. Interestingly southern New Mexico and Arizona were well populated with pecan orchards along the train route. I don’t know how long that’s been going on, but I don’t remember it from trips in my long-lost youth.

In New Mexico I met Janna, a teacher from LA who is planning on homesteading in Deming New Mexico with her fiance. Is homesteading still a thing? Who knew? But I applauded her sense of adventure. I also met Richelle, a teacher and part-time Methodist minister.

Finally there was Jerome Broomfield and his son Aaron. Aaron didn’t talk much. He just let his Dad and fellow old Boomer reminisce. Jerome is a retired math teacher, who was a singer with The Young Americans, a famous youth choral group, perhaps less famous than the similar Up With People, but along the same lines. Jerome had also sung backup for Sammy Davis Jr. and many others. Now, in retirement from teaching, he’s revisiting his singing career and has a CD coming out on which he both writes and performs.

We rolled into Union Station at about 7:45, and I waited for my next train. I had reserved it for 9am, figuring my cross-country arrival might not have been on time. That train took me back to Fullerton and then down to Irvine. The tracks were still out, and it seemed to be just me heading down to San Diego, so Amtrak paid for an uber to take me down to Old Town Station, where I, now an experienced public transit rider, now took the Number 9 Bus back to Pacific Beach, walked the 6 blocks home, dumped my duffel bag on the floor, took another much-needed shower, and started catching up on sleep, laundry, and all the email that I had neglected for 18 days.