Posted on August 13, 2008 by offthebeatentrack
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 [...]
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Posted on August 12, 2008 by offthebeatentrack
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 [...]
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Posted on August 11, 2008 by offthebeatentrack
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 [...]
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Posted on August 11, 2008 by offthebeatentrack
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 [...]
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Posted on August 10, 2008 by offthebeatentrack
WINNEMUCCA, Nev. – As was the case yesterday, I set the alarm clock this morning for 5:45 a.m., but it never went off.
That’s because the sun woke me up 15 minutes early, as it began to creep over the mountains in the Great Basin. Though part of me definitely wanted to sleep some more, the [...]
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Posted on August 10, 2008 by offthebeatentrack
(Did you really expect me to use anything else for the headline?)
We finally reached Denver at around 11:30 a.m. MT. We spent about 20 minutes there, during which time the train was cleaned a bit and some supplies were restocked. We also got newspapers delivered, in this case the Rocky Mountain News.
I was a bit [...]
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Posted on August 9, 2008 by offthebeatentrack
FORT MORGAN, Colo. – I had a hunch that we wouldn’t be able to make it all the way across the country without running into rain somewhere.
And so it was overnight, as I rolled over at one point and saw two bright flashes out the window. Once my ears woke up, I could tell that [...]
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Posted on August 9, 2008 by offthebeatentrack
OSCEOLA, Iowa – A couple of things happened this afternoon that were reasons to pause and think for a while.
The less prosaic events were delays, a few of which were considerable. Two were the result of stop signals on the Burlington Northern Santa Fe-owned tracks, while a third was the result of tugboats traveling on [...]
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Posted on August 8, 2008 by offthebeatentrack
CHICAGO – Now for the main course.
For as much as I enjoyed my time in Chicago and am looking forward to visiting the Bay Area, the centerpiece of the trip starts now as I sit in Superliner Roomette 7 of Car 531 on the California Zephyr en route to Emeryville, Calif.
I’m on the left side [...]
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Posted on August 8, 2008 by offthebeatentrack
DEERFIELD, Ill. – What a day this was.
I covered a lot of ground, from the Magnicficent Mile to Soldier Field and a lot of Millenium Park in between.
Once again, I took a lot of pictures. You’ll find highlights within this post and the full batch here.
I started in Deerfield with breakfast at the house of [...]
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