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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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. [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Underway

MANASSAS, Va. – That’s the view at the moment from inside Roomette 7 on the Cardinal.
It’s a pretty tight space, but not much more so than the Superliner Roomette I had on the California Zephyr last year. I’ll have that same accommodation on the Empire Builder to Seattle on Monday, and again on the Coast [...]

Here we go again

I’m back.
Exactly nine hours from now, I’ll be on an Amtrak train headed for Chicago. For the second year in a row, I’m traveling across the country by rail, and this time I’m head to Seattle and Los Angeles after spending a few days in the Windy City.
While I know where I’m headed, I’m not [...]