Time

WILMINGTON, Del. – Time is both relative and absolute.

When my flight from Los Angeles landed in suburban Baltimore at 7:00 this morning, it was 4:00 a.m. in Klamath Falls, Oregon.

It was also 5:00 a.m. in Whitefish, Montana; 6:00 a.m. at Wrigley Field in Chicago; and 12:00 p.m. at the Headingley Carnegie Cricket Ground in Leeds, England, site of the fourth Ashes test match between England and Australia.

The time of day around the world is relative, but the essence of the trip I’ve been on for the last 10 days is absolute. It can be summed up in the train timetables I’ve picked up along the way. The arrival times at each station are laid out very specifically, as are departure times for stations with service stops. If you’re late to the station, you miss the train. In cities where there’s only one train a day, that’s as absolute as time gets.

A given train might be late, and in the case of the long-distance routes it’s likely to be. The length of a delay is absolute: 20 minutes, two hours, whatever. But that number becomes relative if the journey is a vacation in and of itself. Time doesn’t matter so much when you get on the Empire Builder in Chicago knowing that you won’t be in Seattle for two days.

In other words, you have time. It’s one of the greatest luxuries in our society. People get stressed out a lot for a lot of reasons, but one of the biggest ones is a sense that we don’t have enough time to do everything that we need and want to do.

So we pledge to make the most of the time we have, and work hard to do so. I got everywhere I wanted to on this trip, with the possible and relatively minor exception of the Elote Carts in Chicago.

This includes yesterday, which I spent touring Los Angeles with a family friend who is a big fan of the Dodgers and UCLA basketball. Since the two places in the city I most wanted to see were Dodger Stadium and Pauley Pavilion, it didn’t take long for us to plan our itinerary.

We went to Pauley first. For all its history, many college basketball writers say the arena itself is not that impressive. It certainly isn’t spectacular, but it’s fairly simple and the championship banners are impossible to ignore. On the whole, it was actually nicer than I thought it would be.

From there it was off to Chavez Ravine. Because Dodger Stadium is built into a hill, the surrounding parking lots and staircases are a bit tricky to navigate. But since we were there in the early afternoon, we were able to park close to an entrance.

Much to my surprise, that entrance was open to the public, so we walked right on to the concourse. You don’t normally see that at stadiums, but I’m told that’s a regular occurrence at Dodger Stadium.

The ballpark is the second-oldest in the National League, and the third-oldest in all of baseball despite having opened in 1962. It has the feel of that era, with light-colored seats and a wave-like roof over the upper deck. There is no lack of amenities, but there also aren’t all the bells and whistles that come with newer stadiums.

Dodger Stadium is also known for its spectacular view of the San Gabriel Mountains beyond the outfield. It is definitely as advertised.

At the end of our tour, my friend dropped me off back at the hotel. I went outside and just sat for a while, staring at the palm trees around the pool and soaking up a few last minutes of sunshine. That was the most calm I felt all week, even though I knew I had to head to the airport soon.

Now I’m back on the east coast, and I’m writing this post from yet another train. This one is a regular Northeast Regional, and I’m sitting in the café car. I almost always sit here when I travel on this line, because the table affords me space to spread out and get on my computer.

But this time, I’m not on Twitter and Facebook. I’m just writing. Both those sites were hit with denial-of-service attacks last week, and I didn’t find out until well after the fact. I’m quite happy to say that my life was not affected in the least, and it caused me to think seriously about just how necessary they are.

When I step off the train in Philadelphia, I’ll have traveled a total of 4,773 miles by rail over the last 10 days. The time went by very quickly, but it definitely feels like I’ve gone a long way.

I’m sure it won’t take me long to return to the fast pace I moved at before starting the trip, not least because I have to go to work this afternoon. But I hope I’ll keep some of the tranquility I found in the Cascades and along the Pacific Ocean.

So that’s it for this year. Thanks for reading along. Maybe we’ll cross paths again some time.

Urbanist hell

LOS ANGELES – Three signs that the trip is almost over:

- The view out the window of my hotel room at LAX includes another hotel, multiple surface parking lots and an air cargo loading center.

- I slept in an actual bed last night for the first time in a week.

- I’m in one of the few cities on Earth which I have an inherent bias against, and am more than willing to prejudge despite never having properly set foot in it.

I’m not going to hold it against the people here, but there’s no way I could ever live in or near Los Angeles. It’s not just that you can’t walk places or take the subway, it’s that you don’t. The culture of using a car for everything is reflected in the layout of Southern California’s cities and the mentality of the people who use them.

I met a group of people my age yesterday who work in San Franciso and were traveling to L.A. to get away for the weekend. One of them grew up in the region, and sketched out the region for her friends on a cocktail napkin. The first thing she did was draw the freeways. Even before the coastline or any other territorial boundaries, she started with roads.

Perhaps today will change my opinion of things. My flight back east isn’t until 11 p.m., so I’m meeting up with a family friend who’s going to take me around. We’ll see whether my opinion changes any.

(It should be noted again that I can’t get much of anywhere from here without a car, and I appreciate the friend’s offer to do the driving so I don’t have to.)

The one thing I do like about this area is its proximity to the Pacific Ocean. You’re never too far from it around here, and it’s a nice antidote to the acres of asphalt that seem to be everywhere else.

The Coast Starlight runs right alongside the water for a stretch of over 100 miles between San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara. The prospect of seeing the ocean from a train was the biggest reason why I wanted to travel the route, and I wasn’t disappointed.

Here’s one shot from an area called Surf Beach, which oddly enough has its own Amtrak station. The Coast Starlight doesn’t stop there, but some shorter-range services do. I’ll be back later with more photos from yesterday’s ride and today’s sightseeing.

Baying

SAN JOSE, California – The sun is out here in the Bay Area, but I can’t help opening this post with a tinge of melancholy.

California is the last of 17 states and my native District of Columbia that I’ve traveled through over the last seven days. While there are still 12 hours to go here on the Coast Starlight before we reach Los Angeles, it’s sad to think that I’ll be flying back East tomorrow night.

For now, though, let’s wander through the Coast Starlight a bit.

It’s Superliner rolling stock, so the Lounge and Dining Car are the same as you’ve seen before. But the Roomettes are different, as are the restrooms. Specifically, the features seem a lot older. There’s no closet in the room, the double-shelf carpeting looks worn out, and the upper bunk has that same carpet-style material on the outside instead of the hard plastic that’s in the newer roomettes.

In the bathroom, the equipment is definitely older – especially the sink and the toilet. The toilet is a lot boxier, and flushes when you put the lid down instead of by pushing a button. The space is also laid out differently, with the sink on the left as you enter instead of the right.

Here are some photos of the roomette. I’ll spare you photos of the restroom.

After all the similarities, there is one major difference between the Coast Starlight and Amtrak’s other long-distance trains: the Pacific Parlor car. Unfortunately, it’s out of service right now, apparently because the air conditioning is on the fritz.

There are a lot of photos of the Parlor Car on Flickr, but the rights rules don’t allow me to display them on the blog. You can see them on Flickr.com by clicking here.

We have a substitute car, which is basically a souped-up lounge. It’s more modern, but it doesn’t have the swivel chairs. It looks like this:

It also looks a lot like one of the cars Amtrak showed off at National Train Day in Washington this past May.

It’s not bad, and there are power outlets at the seats – a major advantage over the lounge car. I’ve basically spent the whole of this train ride in here. I missed out on the Trails and Rails commentary between Seattle and Portland, but this space is really nice for just chilling out.

The Parlor Car (I’ll call it that for convenience) is also a much better place than the Lounge Car for taking pictures out both sides of the train. While the Lounge Car has bigger windows, it’s jammed full of people almost all the time. The Parlor Car is not, so I’ve been able to move back and forth easily.

As we head for San Jose and points further south, here are a few pictures from stops thus far on the Coast Starlight. We’ll start in Eugene, Oregon, which was the first rest break after Portland. It’s a town that Bally knows well, as one of his best friends spent a few quite formative years there.

From Eugene, we headed south towards Chemult. If the sky was light gray in Eugene, it got really dark and gloomy as we climbed through the Cascade Mountains. It was a pleasant 44 degrees out when we got there.

The next stop we reached where I could get outside was Klamath Falls, Oregon. It was warmer there, but not by much – the temperature when we arrived was 52 degrees.

Between Eugene and Klamath Falls (and a bit beyond), we rolled through the heart of the Cascades. I’ll leave you with two photos from that stretch: one of the Lookout Point Reservoir and one of some trees higher up in the mountains.

Sound and happiness, signifying a lot

TACOMA, Wash. – I didn’t blog yesterday for two reasons. First, I spent most of the day fixing incorrect timestamps on the photos I took in Chicago, because I forgot to reset the time zone. It may seem trivial, but you’ll notice that the photoset of the trip is presented in chronological order. Since I’m using my camera and my BlackBerry, which sets its time automatically, the photos were mixed up.

Also, by the time I got to where I stayed last night, a house in the Seattle suburb of Lake City, it was 11:30 at night. I had been up since 5:30, and you’ve probably noticed that I haven’t gotten that much sleep on the trip. So I decided to take the time I had to rest up.

So here’s how my time in Seattle went. After walking around downtown during the afternoon, I spent the evening at the event around which I planned my entire trip.

Famed Spanish soccer team FC Barcelona, the reigning European Cup holders and pretty much the best club in the world right now, visited the Seattle Sounders for an exhibition match at Qwest Field.

Although the tickets were quite expensive, there was a lot of value for the money – not just seeing Barca and its many stars, but also the chance to experience perhaps the best stadium atmosphere in American soccer.

The Sounders are averaging nearly 30,000 fans a game, and have turned their already-cozy home into a raucous sea of green and blue. They would draw more, but for league games the upper deck is closed off. It was open last night, though, and a stadium record 66,848 fans came through the turnstiles.

The match was about as expected: a 4-0 Barça rout, with superstar Lionel Messi scoring the first two. But when I look back on this trip, I’ll remember what happened before the game much more than I will what happened during it.

Before every match, the Sounders hold a rally at a park a few blocks away from Qwest Field and march to the stadium with a band leading the way.

Pioneer Square was pretty full when I got there and was jam-packed when we left. Of course the glamorous opposition was a factor, but most of the people I talked to told me the crowd was that big for most games.

Just as importantly, it felt authentic. It would be easy for a team to organize a rally and draw people, but it could very easily feel canned. This wasn’t at all. I’ve never seen anything like it in American soccer.

To accompany the photos above, here’s a video I found on YouTube of the rally.

It’s all a testament to what you can do when you put a stadium in an urban setting. Qwest Field is on the edge of downtown, and I saw people walking to the match from office buildings a few blocks away throughout the afternoon.

A number of stadiums in Major League Soccer, including the one that will host Philadelphia’s team next year, are built on suburban parking lots. It might not be a coincidence that the teams that play in such facilities don’t draw as well – including Chicago, where the atmosphere in Bridgeview is far tamer than what it was at Soldier Field.

I’m now on the Coast Starlight train headed for Los Angeles, and I’ll be back later in the morning with photos of the rolling stock. It’s different from any of the trains I’ve been on so far, and I’ll show you when I have a better wireless signal than exists in the Cascade Mountains.

I leave you with picture of the two other places I visited yesterday: Pike Place Market and the Seattle Public Library. The library is spectacular, and would be worthy of its own blog post were it not for the soccer.

Words

COLUMBIA FALLS, Mont. – I really don’t have much to say tonight, because I’ve spent the whole day either taking pictures or reading.

So go check out my Flickr page to see the pictures I took today and on previous days of the trip. You’ll find shots from just about everywhere I’ve been, and new ones will post throughout the night as Flickr’s uploader program runs while I’m asleep.

The only place you won’t see will be Glacier National Park. Between the rain clouds overhead and the early-evening hour at which we arrived, I just couldn’t get anything good. It’s a real shame, because the mountains were truly spectacular.

But as is the nature of train travel, we roll on. We’ll probably be a few hours late arriving in Seattle, but there should still be plenty of time for me to explore downtown.

I’ll leave you in the company of some of the cows we passed by traveling through Montana today.

Blame Canada

ST. CLOUD, Minn. – When I was debating whether to blog this trip, I had a hunch that a time would come when I just wouldn’t want to write.

I think this night was the first such time.

I feel that mainly because I don’t want to bore you with too many words that are just travelogue. It doesn’t add anything new to the conversation, and I say that knowing that the reason why I started this blog in the first place was to chronicle a trip.

And after all, I’ve been sitting on a train looking out the window for the last 10 hours. There’s only so many ways you can describe looking out a window, even if I did some interesting stuff before leaving Chicago.

My main goal for the morning was to get down to the U.S. Soccer Federation’s headquarters building, which located across the Metra tracks from Soldier Field at 18th Street and Prairie Avenue. Despite a steady rain that made walking around a bit annoying, I got there and took a few pictures.

No, it’s not much of a building. Were the sign not there, you might think it was a residential property like everything else in the neighborhood. But I had seen a few pictures of the building before, so I wasn’t all that surprised.

I got to Union Station at around 1:30 and boarded the train. After we left, I went to the lounge car for a few hours to listen to the National Park Service’s “Rails to Trails” narration of the route between Chicago and Winona, Minnesota.

I didn’t stay the whole time, but it was definitely enjoyable. I learned a lot about the towns we passed through and their wide variety of parks, factories and other landmarks.

After dinner, we hit our first major delay of the trip. We were about to enter a stretch of single track, and a few miles ahead of us a Canadian National freight train had stopped after tripping a “hot box” detector. The term is used when a wheel bearing overheats.

We were told that the delay would be about 20 minutes, but it ended up being over an hour. By the train finally passed us by, the sun had long since set and I could barely see the boxcars out the window.

We arrived in Winona two hours behind schedule. We were supposed to have a decently long layover there, but it only ended up lasting around 10 minutes.

Between there and St. Paul, we made up 15 minutes of time. We arrived in the Twin Cities at 12:13 a.m., and stayed for half an hour or so instead of the listed 45 minutes.

As we arrived in St. Paul, I queued up the only thing I had on my iPod that was worth listening to in this part of the country: A Prairie Home Companion’s News from Lake Wobegon.

Granting that Lake Wobegon doesn’t actually exist, we aren’t too far from the eponymous store in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington. We also passed within reasonable distance of the Lake Wobegon Coffee Shop & Diner in Holdingford after leaving the Twin Cities.

I was able to get a few pictures of the platform at St. Paul, including one of some consequence. Those of you who follow college basketball might recall that this past March, Minnesota became Bally Territory during the NCAA Tournament.

Of course I had to document Bally’s first trip back here since then.

Brick, ivy, oak and sand

When I headed out this morning, I figured that my first destination would be the highlight of the day: a guided tour of Wrigley Field.

As has happened to millions of other baseball fans over the years, I fell in love with the place when I visited it for the first time last season. The tour included stops in the bleachers, both dugouts, a suite and the press box, finishing with a short walk around the field.

Having spent all afternoon in the upper deck last time around, I was really looking forward to seeing the famed bricks and ivy from new angles.

On the tour’s first stop, I took a seat in the front row of the bleachers in right field. It was literally touching distance from the basket at the top of the wall.

After walking through the visitors’ clubhouse, we ascended to the upper concourse. I had been there before, but I’m highlighting it again this year because it might be the best view in all of baseball.

I won’t go into too much detail about the other tour stops, because Wrigley’s history is pretty well-known at this point. The images are what matter, such as this one I took after walking on to the field:

After spending a few minutes taking pictures, I headed out of the stadium and back to the subway. My destination was State Street at Chicago Street, from which I walked to Michigan Avenue and Oak Street to take in the full length of the Magnificent Mile.

Before I turned south, though, I decided to head a bit farther north. I knew there was a park of some kind north of Lake Shore Drive, but I’d never been up there.

So I didn’t know that the park was in fact a beach.

That’s right, a beach. In the shadow of a cluster of some of Chicago’s tallest skyscrapers. And well-maintained, too.

The sand was packed with sunbathers relaxing in the sunshine. I walked up to the water and found quite a few people swimming. The waves were calm, the water was brilliant shade of blue and the temptation to take my shoes off was quite strong.

But I didn’t do it, since I didn’t want to have to clean my feet off before the walk. I also didn’t see any hoses or faucets at the beach entrance. So I ran my hands in the water a bit instead.

After lingering for a while, I finally convinced myself to head back to the sidewalk. From there, it was off to Michigan Avenue, where I window-shopped my way south towards Tribune Tower and the Chicago River.

That’s it from me for today. I’m hoping to wake up early tomorrow and get to as many places as I can before my train to Seattle pulls out of Union Station at around 2:15 p.m. My next blog post will come from the train.

I leave you with one more shot of the beach. I’ve been to plenty of other beaches before, but I’ve never been to one that is literally a few hundred yards from a city center.

And while the natives might be used to it, there’s something pretty amazing about staring at a skyscraper with one’s feet in the sand.

Geese in the city

CHICAGO – Yesterday was pretty crazy, but a lot of fun.

After arriving in Chicago, I went off in search of a three-day subway pass. You would think this would be easy to find in the city’s biggest train station, but there was no indication that passes were sold there.

So I walked a few blocks north to the Chicago Transit Authority’s headquarters building, only to find it closed. I was directed to a currency exchange store across the Chicago River, but when I got there I found it no longer existed.

I finally found out that I could buy a pass at any CVS… including the one right across the street from where I came out of Union Station. So I went there, got the pass and was on my way.

It was around lunchtime at that point. So I called up the friend I was staying with and asked if he was interested in joining me. I was headed to a rather famous street cart near Wicker Park that sells elotes, a form of tamale.

After a subway ride and a bus ride (technically, a shuttle bus substituting for the subway due to construction), I made it to the corner of Milwaukee and Ashland.

And of course, the cart wasn’t there.

I realize it was Saturday, but I figured that given the thing’s popularity there was at least a decent chance it would be there.

So after meeting up with my friend, we walked back towards the Loop. It was raining a bit, but not hard enough to be annoying, and the walk was pleasant.

We ended up at a rather famous sandwich place called Al’s Beef. It should not surprise you to find out that I ordered a beef sandwich. It was good, sort of like a cheestesteak without the cheese, but not really aspiring to be compared to another city’s signature food. Which is fine by me.

The sandwich was also not nearly as greasy as I expected, which made me feel far less guilty about eating it.

From there, I left my friend and headed for the subway. The White Sox were playing the Yankees at 3:00, so I figured it would be cool to ride the Red Line down to U.S. Cellular Field with the fans.

The stadium is nice enough from the outside, but it’s surrounded by parking lots. So I did a loop around the exterior, then got back on the subway.

You may recall that last year, I went to a Cubs game at Wrigley Field. Now I can say I’ve been to both ballparks.

For this year’s live sporting event, I headed out to the suburbs. The Chicago Fire play soccer in Bridgeview, which requires a subway ride to Midway airport and a 10-minute shuttle bus ride to the venue.

This was my first ever MLS game in a market other than Washington, and as such was also my first trip inside one of the league’s soccer-specific stadium.

Toyota park seats 20,000 fans, most of which enter the seating bowl via an open-air concourse that runs along the top. There is also a small upper deck along one sideline, with general admission seating.

I bought a ticket for that section, but the announced crowd of 14,534 left plenty of open seats downstairs. I found a good one in section 124 and wasn’t given any trouble by ushers for sitting there.

My vantage point gave me a great view of Section 8, the Fire’s famed supporters club. The club is named after its home in Soldier Field before it was renovated in 2001.

Perhaps because it takes an hour to get to the ground from the Loop, I found the Section 8 crowd to be smaller than I expected. I remember watching Fire games at Soldier Field in which the supporters club took up almost the entire end zone, but this group barely filled two sections of a much smaller facility.

And they had reason to cheer when Alex Nyarko scored the only goal of a rather dull game in the 76th minute.

I’m perfectly comfortable with the level of play in MLS being what it is. It’s not England or Spain, and I don’t ask it to be. But Chicago spent 85 of the 90 minutes playing long balls to Nyarko through the air.

In the other five minutes, they passed the ball on the floor and created a goal. I left the ground wondering what would have happened had that balance been different.

By the time I got back to Chicago, I was really tired. I took a few photos of the view from my friend’s apartment, then pretty much went straight to sleep. And I’m about to head out again now. So I’ll close this post with the view from where I’m staying.

You can find more photos from the trip via the Flickr widget in the right rail.

Day 2

CHICAGO – Greetings from the South Side, home to the largest rail traffic choke point in the United States.

I woke up this morning at around 6:30, having fallen asleep in Cincinnati at around 1:00. That was far later than I wanted to be awake, but I got in a groove writing the last blog post and decided to finish it off.

I’ve also found that on overnight trains I don’t need too much sleep. Maybe that’s because I sleep with the roomette curtains partway open, which I don’t do at home. I like to be up when the sun rises so I can see as much of the landscape as possible.

Anyway, staying up late was worth the trouble, because I got a pretty good shot of the Cincinnati skyline:

A bit before 4:45, we arrived in Indianapolis. I became aware of this after being woken up by a loud bang at the back of the car. For a moment I was worried that something had crashed into us, but in fact it was two new coach cars being attached for the ride to Chicago.

The timetable says we were supposed to leave at 6:30, but we left at 5:30. Apparently this was to give us some advance time to get through track work near Chicago.

After stops in Lafayette and Rensselaer, Indiana, we got to Dyer, Ind., about 30 minutes early. That’s the last stop before Chicago, and we’re now going to be at Union Station almost an hour ahead of schedule.

On the Capitol Limited last year, we got stuck in the stockyard for quite a while and the train was late as a result. This year, we rolled right through it.

I have to finish packing, so I’ll leave you with a photo of the sunrise this morning, taken somewhere between Indianapolis and Lafayette. I’ll be back late tonight.

Close of play on Day 1

CINCINNATI – I was born and raised a city kid, and I suspect I’ll continue to be one for a long time.

But after traveling through West Virginia for the second year in a row and making my first ever trip through southwest Virginia, I can’t help being attracted to the spectacular landscapes of Appalachia.

The summer greenery along the New River Gorge is among the most lush I’ve seen in person. The hills and mountains roll along softly, but constantly, in the background, interrupted only by the trees that line the railroad tracks. The dark water moves quickly and calmly, save for the odd rock occasionally interrupting the flow.

It all but demanded a skiff and a fishing rod. But I was just a passer-by, so I could only enjoy the scene from behind a moving window.

The photos I took aren’t as sharp as I hoped they’d be, mainly because I struggled to get my camera settings right as the train rolled along. I got a few good ones, though, such as this shot in Possum Hollow, West Virginia:

This was the view a few hours earlier near Covington, Virginia, alongside the Allegheny Mountains:

You don’t get to see stuff like that living in a city, or even an inner suburb. You can go to the Lehigh Valley if you live in Philadelphia, but it’s still an hour away and you have to have a car. So when an opportunity like this comes, I make sure to seize it.

I’m about to head to sleep, but before I do there are a few anecdotes worth sharing. First, you might be interested to know that I had a grilled chicken sandwich for lunch and a salmon filet for dinner. By the standards of travel food, it was pretty healthy stuff – and it tasted reasonably good too.

After dinner, I got about 2/3 of the way through the big pile of newspapers I brought along, then decided to take a shower. Those of you who read the blog last year might remember that doing so on an Amtrak train can be a bit of an adventure.

The Viewliner shower is set up in much the same way as it is on the Superliners, the rather unique way the showers are set up on Amtrak’s Superliner trains. The Viewliner shower is set up in much the same way. I had to wrestle with the shower head a bit, but when all was said and done I was cleaner than when I started. As far as I know, that’s how it’s supposed to work.

I’m off to sleep. I leave you with another Bally photo, this one from the train station in Charlottesville. Although the town is home to a BCS school, Bally’s affinity for N.C. State allowed me to take the picture with a clear conscience.