[IT APPEARS I MAY HAVE EXCEEDED A TINY LETTER WORD LIMIT IN FINALIZING MY TENTH DISPATCH, AT LEAST THAT’S THE ONLY EXPLANATION I CAN COME UP WITH AS TO WHY I CAN’T SEEM TO PACK ALL I WANTED TO SEND INTO A SIMPLE TEXT DOCUMENT WHICH TINY LETTER WILL ACCEPT. HENCE I AM NOW RESENDING THE FIRST PART OF DISPATCH #10, JUST TRAVEL BACK IN TIME AND READ THIS BEFORE THE FIRST ONE YOU RECEIVED AND ALL WILL BE HUNKY-DORY. ISN’T THE INTERNET FUN?]
Dearest All,
Hello there and a hearty good day or evening (your choice) to you from your tour director. As I warned would happen in my last dispatch (apologies for #9’s erratic application of paragraph breaks, TerrallCorp’s Quality Control Department has been understaffed and, as we all know, you just can’t get good help these days), I made it across this great, though frequently stupid, land of ours on several of Amtrak’s finest cross-country routes.
The break from email and its barrage of newsletters and links to interminable articles gave me plenty of time to ponder matters unrelated to toxic politics, ecological collapse, the obscenely rich getting insanely richer, and other signs of the apocalypse. Let me tell you I had some thoughts!
I have several high powered academic friends, who shall remain nameless (Joe and Clancy), who assure me that they get a lot of work done while riding the passenger rails. Being the can-do sort that I am, I felt compelled to try on their traveling work ethic for size and see if I could do more than stare slack-jawed at beautiful scenery, guzzle coffee, and read Victor Hugo. Turns out I didn’t get to the current paid project, which is still in the “think about it some more while doing other things” phase, but I did fill up a bunch of pages in my CoronaTime (not a promotion for the watery beer) journal.
Some might argue that it’s a stretch to call such activity work, but I’m not going to let naysayers cramp my style. We live in a country where members of Congress describe beating the shit out of Capitol Police as tourism, so if I say filling up digest sized pages with scribbling is work then doggone it that’s what it is.
Let’s start at the beginning, because I know there must be somebody out there who is craving a linear approach. On the morning of July 20, I gingerly (the ankle, remember?) climbed aboard the California Zephyr. My mission? To find that darn sleeper car so I could get in another hour of snoozing. Luckily I had professional assistance in that search and in no time I was wedged into a tiny compartment pondering the minimal space between the low-hanging upper bunk and the ceiling. No matter, there was more room where I sat on what would have been the lower bunk if it wasn’t folded up into seats, and it looked like the window had been cleaned at some point in the past year. I had my copy of Les Miserables (I know there’s an accent over the second “e,” feel free to add it for me), several pounds of interstellar grade ground French Roast, and a 5”x7” Balzic composition book to occupy my wide-open free time, so what the hell else did I need Nothing except the world whizzing by, and in no time I had that as well.
Eastward ho! Go east, young man! In short, I was off. I appreciated pretty much all of the California vistas on my initial leg of the Walk Carefully Against the Mississippi Delta Republican Variant 2021 Tour. I’d seen them multiple times in the past since I am no Amtrak virgin (that should be the name of an alcohol-free travel cocktail) but they weren’t stale to my eyes, which fortuitously are stronger after sixteen months of ditching my glasses because of the whole mask on, lenses fogged thing. I did my best to suppress several profoundly irritating boomer radio hits running through my head; I understand that both of them, The Grateful Dead’s “Estimated Prophet” and the original version of “Hotel California” as performed by The Eagles, are frequently played to the remaining political prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.
As made clear by my tour’s official name (see above), I was doing my part to stop the spread of the latest COVID variant whilst traveling. Since I hadn’t brought any vaccine doses to help me achieve that goal I decided to try out the power of positive thinking, something that is, to say the least, not exactly my forte: years ago I even wrote a rave review of my hero Barbara Ehrenreich’s book trashing that annoying concept. Hence I soon abandoned that route.
Not to fear though, as cranky anti-social grumbling still came easily. I began yielding that useful weapon in Colfax, CA. Frequent announcements reminded passengers that Amtrak has a mandatory mask the fuck up policy but it clearly didn’t occur to the two retired honkies who clambered on in Colfax that said directive might apply to them. I tried to keep my sliding door closed as much as humanly possible but the tiresome husband in said couple managed to catch my glance that evening and launched into an interminable monologue describing all the places around the world where he and his wife had traveled by train. Some of them were of interest to me but in the telling the soundtrack music should have been B. B. King’s “The Thrill Is Gone.”
Of course it takes all kinds, including dullards, to make a world, and after years of intensive meditation I have achieved a level of spiritual growth (go ahead and laugh) which allows me to suspend making caustic judgments. In non-pandemic times I would probably have come around to being friendly but the mofo was speaking directly at me sans mask from about two feet away. Hello moron, it’s not just about me catching the new viral wrinkle, I don’t want to spread the damn thing either! Quelle annoying! When, sooner rather than later, I couldn’t take it anymore I gave him what my old chum Lynn Toland used to call The Scowl, retreated into my tight quarters, and closed the curtains.
Enough with the COVID babble. After sixteen months of pandemic living a little of that goes a long way, so back to the wild, wild west. The Sierras were as beautiful as on previous trips. As everywhere else on Amtrak’s lines, the views did not duplicate anything one can see from some damn interstate. Driving the superhighways gives you plenty of exposure to the same gas stations, chain fast food operations, and other generic, ugly places to rack up credit card charges, but you don’t see many meadows, mountains, deserts, praries, decrepit rural towns, or giant rock formations. Speaking of oversized rock action, Southern Utah is the proverbial bomb if you’re staring out a 6’ by 3’ (approximately, sadly I left my tape measure in the steamer trunk built for four Marx Brothers) window. If I was given control over the train I definitely would have stopped it in Helper, UT to gaze at the geological vistas for an hour or two. Though I can felt relieved to abandon the internet for the week, I am humble and honest enough to admit that I did a little texting, including a recommendation of Helper as a vacation destination. My nephew Noah responded astutely, “Those Mormons have some great mountains and rocks” and asked me to say hello to Mitt, that zany U.S. Senator who in his most impressive presidential debate performance said he had filing cabinets filled with women.
[MOVE ON FROM HERE TO THE SECOND PART I ALREADY SENT, IF YOU FEEL SO INCLINED]