Posted on August 9, 2009 by offthebeatentrack
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 [...]
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Posted on August 8, 2009 by offthebeatentrack
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 [...]
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Posted on August 7, 2009 by offthebeatentrack
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 [...]
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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
(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 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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