2.0

A new year, a new laptop battery, a new suitcase and a new itinerary.

Starting July 31, this blog will come to life once again as I embark on another cross-country train trip. This year’s journey includes Philadelphia, Chicago, Seattle and Los Angeles, with many other stops and vistas along the way.

Stay tuned.

Plantains

more about "Plantains", posted with vodpod

Goodbye, Colorado

The Rocky Mountain News: April 23, 1859-February 27, 2009.

more about “Goodbye, Colorado“, posted with vodpod

“That’s insanity”

Alex the Great

I decided not to go to this game because tickets were $50 for the upper deck. So I watched it on the big screen at the ESPN Zone in D.C. over dinner instead.

That was good enough.

Charles Schultz

This thing might not be dead yet.

Lucy van Pelt: [holding football] Oh, Charlie Brown! Charlie Brown!
Charlie Brown: She must think I’m the stupidest person alive.
Lucy van Pelt: I’ll hold the ball and you run up and kick it.
Charlie Brown: Hold it? Ha! You’ll just pull it away and I’ll fall flat on my back and kill myself.
Lucy van Pelt: I wouldn’t do that. It’s Thanksgiving.
Charlie Brown: What does Thanksgiving have to do with anything?
Lucy van Pelt: One of our most cherished traditions is the Thanksgiving football game.
Charlie Brown: Gee, I guess if it is a tradition, it would be an honor. She wouldn’t pull it away if it is a tradition. This time I’m gonna kick that ball clear to the moon!

– “A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving”

Gary Larson

DULLES, Va. – I was planning to write the last post on this blog before I left Oakland last night. I composed the whole thing and was about 30 seconds away from posting it when the flight crew said they had shut the door and all electronic devices needed to be turned off.

I set my computer to Sleep mode so that I could finish the post in the morning, closed the monitor and went to sleep almost immediately after takeoff. But because of that, I never saw that my computer had never actually gone into Sleep mode, and was still running. When I woke up, the battery was dead, the computer was off and my post was gone.

So I have to start over completely. Almost exactly eight hours before I started writing this post, I was walking out of the Borders at 3rd and King in San Francisco and starting to head to the airport. As I walked past AT&T Park one last night, I felt two conflicting emotions: melancholy that the trip was finally over and urgency to get to the airport as fast as possible.

Between then and now, I’ve taken two trains, a bus, an airplane and one of those funky Dulles Airport mobile lounges, and I’ve slept just enough to write write something cognizant this morning. Now I’m sitting on another bus, one that will take me from the airport to the Metro in downtown D.C.

Although building with concrete hasn’t been fashionable for a while, the Eero Saarinen-designed Main Terminal still stands as an architectural masterpiece.

With floor-to-ceiling glass and steel bisected by soaring, curved concrete columns, Dulles harkens back to the time when air travel was a pleasure, not a burden. Walking through that kind of space on a sunlit morning definitely cheered me up a bit.

Yesterday seems long, long ago at this point, even if technically the day only ended five hours ago on the west coast. It began with another CalTrain ride into San Francisco, this one starting in Mountain View instead of San Jose.

Though it took the same amount of time to get there from where I was staying as it did to get to the CalTrain station in San Jose, Mountain View is half an hour closer to San Francisco and therefore is a cheaper ride.

(Of course, I didn’t figure this out until the last chance I had to do so.)

After arriving in San Francisco, I dropped my suitcase off at a bicycle garage next to the CalTrain station. The guy behind the desk was happy to take the bag; it certainly seemed like I wasn’t the first person to have made such a request.

From there, I headed to Embarcadero Center. It’s an open-air, but covered, shopping center that is broken into four parts by the city street grid. I walked through the whole thing, then ended up on Embarcadero Plaza. The centerpiece of the space is a big concrete sculpture that includes a number of waterfalls and a stone path under them. So I walked through the path to take some pictures.

From there, I headed across the street to the Ferry Terminal building for lunch. The terminal has a great market inside, and while it’s higher-end than Reading Terminal Market in Philadelphia or Eastern Market in D.C., there’s still plenty of good food.

I almost never got inside, though, because there was a farmer’s market outside and seemingly every stall had free samples. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen as incredible a range of amazingly tasty fresh produce. I probably sampled six different varieties of peaches, four kinds of plums and three kinds of tomatoes, as well as some grapes, hummus, kettle corn and almond brittle.

Tomatoes and onions and greens, oh my!

It was almost enough for an entire meal, but not quite. So when I finally got inside, I went to the Imperial Tea Court and got a dim sum platter. It did the job, and in what I consider a minor upset of the odds I was able to eat everything with chopsticks.

I wasn’t as fond of the Chinese version of iced tea, though. The lychee flavoring gave it a kind of sweetness that I didn’t quite like, and it had a creamy foam on top. I’m sure a lot of people really like it, but I’ll take the Diet Snapple I bought for the plane ride instead.

After lunch, I walked along the Embarcadero for a few blocks, then cut across town to the TransAmerica building to take some more pictures. That was followed by a MUNI ride to the Mission District, where I visited a bakery that a friend recommended. The line was really long and slow, but everything looked very good and I could tell why the place was so popular.

When I got back downtown, I decided to check out Union Square. In addition to having a really nice public park, the area is full of high-end shops and department stores. I went in the Nike store and Macy’s, albeit just to look instead of buying anything.

By that time, it was getting close to dinner – and closing time at the bike garage. So I went back to King Street, and spent the rest of the evening over there.

After getting a bite to eat and picking up my suitcase, I spent an hour recharging batteries at the Borders. Then it was time for one last ride on the MUNI and BART, and finally the flight back east.

It’s hard to believe the trip is over. These last eight days have been an incredible whirlwind of sights, sounds and the full range of American cultural identities.

It started with the rolling green West Virginia countryside, then turned into the majestic Chicago skyline that rises so magnificently along the Chicago River. Endless flat rows of corn and soybeans in Iowa led to soaring panoramas in the Rocky Mountains and small towns across the Nevada desert.

And finally, the Sierra Nevada redwoods rolled down into Sacramento and on to the Bay Area, with San Jose’s sun-drenched office parks and San Francisco’s laid back, post-industrial chic.

Yet as great as the scenery was, the real meaning of the trip was found in the people I spent time with. I got to visit a number of people I hadn’t seen in a long time, and got to know some very interesting fellow travelers on the train.

All of us who use social networking tools on a regular basis know that they help us create a cyber-manifestation of ourselves that can easily become the person that we want to be instead of the person we really are. These tools are all useful, and are often enjoyable as well.

But I value real, face-to-face interactions a lot more. Sure, we’d all probably rather be something other than what we are in reality. But that reality is what we have to face in the present tense, so we might as well embrace it and make the most of it.

Just after I took the photo at the top of this post, my camera said the memory card was full. It was a fitting way to draw this amazing journey, as well as this blog, to a close.

Writing this blog has been a blast. And the truth is, pretty much all of you know the reality-based version of me. So you know how much I was looking forward to the trip, why it mattered to me so much and why I so dearly wanted to write about it.

I did struggle through one period last night where I felt too tired to get on here. But I decided I should at least try to say something, and suddenly I hit a groove and was off and running. That’s just the way it is sometimes.

I thank all of you so very much for reading along over the last week. Perhaps some day, I’ll have an opportunity to do something like this again. Until then, I’m headed back to the real world, for better or for worse.

I’ll see you there.

Zen

SAN JOSE, Calif. – It’s late, I’ve spent most of tonight being angry about the train system in Silicon Valley and I have to get up early in the morning if I want to have any chance of spending a good amount of time in San Francisco.

But I feel like I ought to give some kind of accounting of what I did today, so I’ll do most of it through pictures instead of words.

After going to AT&T Park, I rode the MUNI (which I like, as opposed to the confusing and infrequent VTA light rail system in San Jose) to Fisherman’s Wharf. Yes, it’s the city’s biggest tourist trap. But it’s also home to an In N’ Out Burger. Of all the culinary opportunities I’ve had on this trip that is unquestionably the one I can’t replicate at all on the East Coast.

Maybe the food made me feel lazy, or maybe the tourist-filled air overcame me for a few minutes, but I decided that instead of taking the regular MUNI back to Market Street I’d take a cable car. Five dollars and a really long wait later, I was on my way up Hyde Street at something like a 60-degree angle to the ground.

I suppose the ride was worth it, though the driver had a somewhat discomforting habit of stopping right in the middle of every intersection we crossed on the way back down the hill.

From there, I made a brief and unsuccessful attempt to find some free wi-fi. It was a few minutes before 4 p.m., and I figured I had enough time before meeting a friend for dinner that I could try to get over to Golden Gate Park.

I succeeded, and ended up spending almost an hour wandering around the Japanese Tea Garden. For as much as I like the development in the ballpark district, the Japanese Tea Garden is probably my favorite place in all of San Francisco.

After that, it was off to dinner – at a California Pizza Kitchen. Which may seem odd, but it’s really hard to get in Philadelphia. Then after an hour or so at a nearby Kinko’s, where I managed to upload a few photos to Flickr, it was time to head back to San Jose.

Finally

Waking up in San Jose.

SAN MATEO, Calif. – It took a mighty long time, but I’ve finally made it to the Bay Area.

I last blogged when the train left Colfax. Soon after that, we  were given permission by Union Pacific to divert onto a different track and pass the freight train that had been delaying us so much.

We ended up reaching the next station, Roseville, at 8::00 p.m. – five hours and five minutes after the scheduled arrival time. Roseville is best known for being home to a massive Union Pacific depot, and it’s no coincidence that right after we left there we took off like a rocket for Sacramento.

The timetable lists the travel time between Roseville and Sacramento as one hours and 16 minutes; we made it in 30 minutes. Obviously, there’s some schedule-padding in there, but there’s clearly good reason for it.

Sacrament to Davis is listed as 31 minutes but we made it it in 25; Davis to Martinez is listed as 42 minutes but we made it in 30.

Then came the final leg of the trip, and the railroad gods decided to play with us again. Martinez to Emeryville is listed as a 46-minute trip. After leaving Martinez at 9:25, we got to within a few hundred yards of Emeryville at 10:05. But because we were so late, all the platforms were full when we arrived. So we had to wait until 10:23 for a train to leave, and we finally disembarked at 10:26.

Emeryville is a major hub for long-distance and commuter trains in the Bay Area. In addition to trains that go north to Sacramento, they also go south to Oakland and the San Joaquin Valley. But there is no BART station anywhere near Emeryville; instead, you have to go 19 blocks across town to MacArthur Boulevard. It’s not walkable, and it’s even less walkable late at night.

Problem was, there weren’t any taxis at the station. It took 20 minutes for one to show up, and the driver wasn’t in a great mood. But after a very fast ride across town, I only had a brief wait for a train.

Forty minutes later, I made it to Fremont and met an old college friend who I’m staying with in San Jose until I leave town late tomorrow.

I woke up this morning at 7 a.m., and headed out a few minutes after 8. My friend lives all the way across town from the CalTrain station, so it took a 15-minute walk and a 30-minute light rail ride to get where I am now: en route to San Francisco.

We’re supposed to arrive at King Street just after 11 a.m. That means my first stop after getting off will be SBC Park, the spectacular home of the San Francisco Giants. I went to a game there three years ago and totally fell in love with its dazzling views of San Francisco Bay.

After that, I’ll probably hop on the MUNI towards Fisherman’s Wharf and walk around for a while. I’d like to get out to the Japanese Tea Garden at Golden Gate Park, but I’m not sure I’ll have enough time.

I also have to get to a Starbucks or a Kinko’s somewhere along the way, because I’ve been working off the aircard ever since leaving Chicago and I have a gig and a half of photos to upload.

It’s official

Pretty, but not Emeryville.

COLFAX, Calif. – We have reached a milestone on the trip, and as you’ve figured out by now it’s not a good one. It’s now after 6:10 p.m. Pacific Time, and the schedule says we’re supposed to be at our final destination of Emeryville, California right now.

Except we aren’t anywhere near there. In fact, we only just now got to Colfax, where we were supposed to arrive at 1:46 p.m. So that’s almost four and a half hours late and it wouldn’t surprise me if it gets to five by the time all is said and done.

Instead, we’re still high up in the Sierra Nevadas, slowly making our way through the Cold Stream Canyon and down towards Roseville and Sacramento. It’s spectacular, and there’s been some interesting commentary on the public address system by a group of narrators from the California State Railroad Museum.

But we’re really late now, and it’s starting to grate on me a bit. We’ve been told that we’re stuck behind a freight train, though we’ve been given no indication of how much longer this will be the case.

So who knows when we’ll get to Emeryville. The schedule says that’s four and a half hours after Colfax, so we seem to be looking at an 11:00 p.m. arrival.

And just as I finished writing this post, a freight train passed us in the other direction.

I’m glad the conductor couldn’t hear me.