Blogs and adventures for August,
2007
- A day once dawned as sleepers yawned, a day of leaves so
greeny oh!
- And a man rode high in a tinker sky and bad me to go a
running oh! On
- The trail of the enchanted gypsy oh!--Donovan
August 13: I was so busy getting my stuff together, I
totally forgot to watch Enterprise on the telly. Boy, I AM
worked up.
August 14 thru 15: I’ve packed too heavy of course. I tried
to take out a few things, tossed them on the floor, manfully lugged
the over-stuffed duffle bag to the Ranger. Off I goes to Tacoma. I
had considered boarding in Seattle, that way I could have ridden the
ferry over and hiked to the bus, leaving the car at home. However,
that part of Seattle is pretty dodgy at night, and coming home it
would be after dark when I arrived back. Not good. So, I parked right
at the terminal in Tacoma, and lugged it all to the desk, checked in.
The train arrived. I really had no idea what to expect, and was
pleasantly surprised. The Amtrak cars are like silver double-decked
busses, all linked together. The upper levels are the coach, and you
can run between the cars in relative safety and comfort, making your
way back and forth to diner cars, or lounge cars, or sleeper cars. I
wasn’t expecting so much motion on the train, you practically had to
be a dancer to get down the middle aisles and maintain your balance.
You DO have to have good balance though, the cars tend to jounce
around, and it can be a real challenge jumping between the cars,
especially balancing food. (I got some serious bruises on my upper
arm bouncing off the walls this way). The commodes had Rest Assured
seat covers LOL. There is an observation car where the party tended
to be (they sold beer and BAAD wine on the lower deck) it was more
open and you got some great views from there. The chairs are nicer
than airliners, and there is much more leg room too. I’m a convert, I
HATE being crammed into tight airplanes, feeling like SPAM in a can.
The train seems a good way to travel. You can bring bikes if you
want. No airplane hum, which is what keeps me from sleeping on the
plane (I worked too long around aircraft, that hum has a certain
pitch, and jacks me up pretty badly) trains are much more restful
than planes.
So many places are really accessible from the train. I think. Ft.
Vancouver is only 2 miles to the East of the Vancouver train station,
a real historical site. The Portland Union station is very close to
OMSI, and the tracks wind picturesquely under old bridges and down
rivers. The stations were mostly well kept, but it was a pretty
crusty station in Sacramento, clean in Salinas ( I figured out how to
get to Cannery Row from the train, and will do that another day). Old
abandoned convectors and electrical are all along the tracks, glass
insulators by the socres, which are collectibles. Found Schnitzer
steel (scrappers!) in Emeryville (near Oakland, and Jack London
Square). Some graffiti art was very beautiful on the boxcars. Peter
Max wanted to paint the entire world; train graffiti artists have a
good start on that mission indeed.
Fellow Travelers: I got lucky going down, they seated me
next to this old lady who was dripping in jewelry, and apparently
rich as Croesus, she and I talked all the way down. Marge turned out
to be a former roller skate competitor! She knew the guy who invented
the Heelie, Roger Adams and he had knocked out his front teeth
testing them! (which are those little wheels kids attach to the
bottom of their tennis shoes, then can retract them, pretty neat).
She told me all sorts of stories (she took a liking to me as I use
good English, and we were unsurprised to find that each of us had
studied Latin). I got a few stories about her 2 lb. Teacup Poodle,
which was fine (even though a confirmed cynic, I actually like
poodles). The best story she told me, was about being the Shriver’s
Music operator! Back in the early years of pop music, there was one
lady who sat in a room with racks of 78 RPM records, and as someone
dropped "a nickel" at the Chinese restaurant, or the hotel, she would
play the music they had selected. She had like 50 turntables I think
she said. She wasn’t real hep on how the wiring was done, the
technical end of it, but the effect was she was running a huge juke
box for all the subscribers in Tacoma who wanted her to pipe in music
to their establishment. She could also eavesdrop on people at the
other end, which would make life interesting indeed!
My friend Marge alternately talked, or went to the lounge, or
slept, and I did much the same, as we were on there for about one and
a half days. I met a mad Hawaiian the first day who was telling some
pretty raunchy stories to other "guys" in the lounge, and pretty soon
I had introduced my seat mate to them. We had a good laugh with them,
and then at them, as we agreed the guy was really full of sh** and
probably running dope. He was telling about a wild party on the train
once when he rode it: the proof was that on the way back several days
later, exactly that happened, a bunch of young punks trashed the
lounge car in the night while rational people crawled off to quiet
places and slept.
I met one young fellow who was enamored of the Romance of the
rails, and had brought his guitar. (He was only a beginner, I was
polite). I remember discussing "Bobby McGee" on the Isle of Wight
video, he didn’t know about that and was off to find it. I met
another gal, Linda on train coming back, she had a home for troubled
youth in Pomona, she was a real old time hippy and we had some great
laughs and talked shop. Kids on train mostly well behaved, parents
are parenting, and that was a very good sign; I've seen much worse
behaved kids on planes, and that's a fact.
Trains still have a few hazards from other folks. Marge warned me
about people going by and groping you in the night <ick!>
Someone had such a bad cough they sounded like Gollum!!! Hope I don’t
come down with TB! Mostly people seemed nice and innocuous. I passed
some young girls sitting with their painted toes up in the air,
pretty cute. Some ultimate symbol of relaxation… gorillas sleep with
their toes up too.
Scenery: The scenery at times was breathtaking, much as you
see while driving, but you can LOOK when on a train. Salinas is very
much like the Skagit River Valley near me (where they shot the
daffodil scene in Dr. Zhivago). Saw a rainbow from the train,
very nice. We cruised by Moffett Field (where I used to work as a
coolie on airplanes for the USN), I languidly sipped my beer. This is
the life! I felt very grand like looking out at peasants in the
fields as I ride by in my coach, especially near Salinas. People
waved to the train as it went by! Something about trains makes you
want to smile, like you are some part of the Arlo Guthrie road show.
The SAC river was cleaner than the Rhine in Koln!! The wetlands were
gorgeous, like something from Howl’s Moving Castle (pretty
indeed)
The nicest part of the trip was running down the California Coast
just north of Santa Barbara; up there the ocean was very grey and
sultry, then the sun came out and turned it a deep azure. I couldn’t
soak it all in, can you imagine living in such a place and there
being no cities to go back to? Just you and nature out on the sand
dunes? A good place to go over the edge spiritually. There must be
cold water upwelling here, rich with nutrients.
this is somewhere south of Salinas, I'm not
sure where
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This is up near Lompoc
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Back in the 60’s my Dad used to vanish and not talk about where he
was working. Later he told us he had been working on military missile
gantries up in Lompoc (Vandenberg) which is this area north of SB.
There is an entire place like Cape Canaveral right there north of LA,
which even today is semi-functional, had a vertical assembly building
for missiles. The bad part is, apparently that land is really
unstable. Dad says he saw an entire CAT (earth mover) sink down into
a hole on site, it’s all clay and sand.
On the other side of the train, there had to have been the bluest
water I have seen this side of Diego Garcia. There are kelp beds, and
I spotted dolphins both coming and going, a whole pod of them (I
think they were spinners, but could have been tursiops too).
Close enough to the dolphins to be surprising, were beaches of
surfers, and lonely families hiking around, building lean-tos of
driftwood………. I had no idea all that area was up there, a wildlife
refuge so close to Los Angeles, City of Slime. I think the government
owns it all, which is all that keeps it from being developed. Seeing
all that was worth the entire trip down. Yes, there are pretty places
in California after all.
As the train cruised into the town "proper" we got a splash of
bougainvillea. You could see oil rigs doing their thing off shore
(absolutely no harm to the critters……….) I've loved Santa Barbara
since I went there years ago to see Justin Hayward solo shows; SB
(and Lake Havasu) has these seasonal bungalows where people live only
part of the year. It's a great place to leave year 'round though.
Train tracks always fascinate me. They look like they are going to
fly apart (so many spikes are missing!), but they always hold
together somehow, as the train runs over them. There are places,
bridges in the Siskyous and Sierras I know the bridges are old, and
very very high, I’m just as glad we went over those in the night and
I didn’t have to look down into gorges, rickety scaffolding and such.
I just hope the Big One (quake) doesn’t happen while I’m on a train,
or in a tunnel. Anyway there north of SB I thought the tracks looked
very scary. I wonder if the Gandy Dancers ever go out there and do
repairs.
August 15 Evening: Everyone knows I’m slightly nuts. I
suspect the military is what drove me around the bend, finally.
Anyway this night I would begin to believe it myself, as we shall
soon see.
People were getting the "late bus" syndrome, some were cackling
loudly, saying incongruent things, muttering to themselves (like I
was). Trains sped up in LA, having no regard for locals on the tracks
probably, but blowing the horn quite loudly. We got into Los Angeles
Union station about 9:30 pm, after sweating if some of us would make
the connection to other trains. They always run late, but as Marge
commented "toward the end they are like a horse headed to the stable,
they speed up" and they did, getting in only a half hour late after
all.
LA Union is a truly historical land mark, and is used in
movies both past and present. (Likewise other stations along
the way, namely Portland Union. Tacoma Union Station is no
longer a mahjor transfer station llike it was inWWII, and
has been turned into a museum, but is just down the street
from the new smaller station). SOME of the stations were old
and run down, but for the most part, they are cleaned up
(There were actually mosaic quilt block parquet in LA Union
station), and it was very pleasing to see the historical
sites being taken care of. They have old lamps, inlay on
ceilings, tile work on the walls, and copper drinking
fountains. The LA station is right against the Water
company, and their fountains and gardens were wonderful.
There was even this fountain with snake-like tiles wrapped
around it, like a continuous serpent spouting water……. Very
metaphorical.
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the floor
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When I got back, my parents told me stories about trains. Dad said
when he went to bootcamp in San Diego, they put him in with the guys
from Oklahoma and Texas naturally, and then they got put on with MORE
recruits from Mississippi and Alabama! Naturally fights broke out, as
each state defended their "honor". They were such hooligans, the
conductor actually had their car uncoupled, and they put them on a
side track in the middle of the Mojave Desert, and left them there
for a day. Since our country was in need of such energy, they came
for the young men eventually and tootled them on into San Diego. Mom
said she was in Union Station long long ago too, and still remembered
it. I'm really super glad I finally decided to take the train, there
is so much history wrapped up in it.
While I waited in Union Station, there was one nut yelling odd
things in the station, well groomed gal too, wonder if it was a
diabetic reaction? I pointed her out to security and they chivvied
her on out the door. Hope she got home ok. It could have been drugs
too....... or schizophrenia.
Many of us were going on the Surfliner, which is a run that has
been there a LONG time, ran in the 60’s through Fullerton and Anaheim
(my towns, and Disneyland of course) and on down to Oceanside where
the good beaches are. It was a regular hippy run indeed. ANYWAY I
made the Anaheim connection. It wasn’t the way I originally planned,
I wanted to get off in Salinas, and pick up a rental car there, and
then drive on down thru Tehachipi to Escondido to see the Wild Animal
Park. There wasn’t a car to be had on the Monterey peninsula! JEEZE
probably some damn golf tourney in going on. Thus I had to X off my
stop on Cannery Row, both coming and going. Another day I guess.
>>>>go onward to the next
day