Silversprite

(Note to Texans: the phrase in the title is Brit slang for “nothing”, as opposed to … oh never mind)

The train ride from New Orleans to Los Angeles is 1,995 miles. Factoring in the 3 time zones that the train crosses and the trip takes 2 days and 15 minutes. That’s a long time to spend in the confined company of a small group of people not of my choosing.

So it was with dismay that my first dining ‘companion’, just after the train left New Orleans, was a lunatic. He sat opposite and stared – without blinking – at me. Uh oh.

“I can read your mind; you can’t stop me, you know. I can tell you want me to stop reading your mind.”

He got that last part right, but probably didn’t need to read my mind. He continued:

“I am this bread roll.”

Right, enough. I left him to be at one with his roll, took the remainder of my lunch back to my roomette/cupboard, ate it and started to type.

And type and type and type. Maybe it was the intensity of the last week, maybe the lack of sleep over that time, maybe whatever I’d inhaled without knowing it in New Orleans. I wrote a whole heap of stuff, some work related, some personal, some dark, some positive. Louisiana slid past the grubby train windows, swamp and tree stumps and moss and hillocks and low flat detached wooden houses, porches holding small knots of men, drinking beer while their dogs sat in the back of nearby pickup trucks.

Enveloped, the only things that mattered were my thoughts and the ever faithful Samantha collecting them.

A smoking stop came up. I got some ciggies, joined the group, got back on. Ordered Jack Daniels, continued to type and type and type. The bite marks on my hand appeared to be getting bigger and going purple. I typed a list of all the people I’d met from this trip. Dinner time. Myself and my one dining companion (thankfully different to the last one) were professionals at the whole Amtrak dining thing. Shake hands, swap first names, sit down. Give a brief summary of where you’re from and why you’re on the train. Then see where the conversation goes.

Dinner finished. We pulled in at Houston for a while. No Wifi pick-up. The station was some way from anything, and it was pouring down, looking like the set of Bladerunner, so I couldn’t upload pictures to Flickr or download emails. I got back into the observation car, settled down with more Jack Daniels, typed and sang Rolling Stone songs. People avoided me. I was glad; a month on the road and I needed some space.

Samantha alerted me to Wifi networks that were within range. I looked out the window; it was 3am and we’d come into San Antonio. We were here for a few hours while the train was refuelled, restocked, serviced, and joined to one from the north. I sent off the build-up of offline email, did some 2.0 tidyup and update, twittered and had an e-chat with a colleague in Japan who was struggling with her exams in the language.

Then fell asleep to wake up to a huge expanse of … nothing. The open plains of Texas; “A thousand miles of weed.” And I wasn’t sure about the weed. The shower was unoccupied and hotter than the gumbo I’d had in New Orleans. For breakfast I was thrown in with a Mexican mother and grandmother who smiled but looked nervous the whole time.

The morning was spent watching Texas roll past. Have you seen No Country For Old Men? Watch it on a huge cinema screen, then watch it repeatedly for 24 hours. That’s the Texas outback (which is most of the state). Huge and empty; cactus and weed and brown grass and not much else. Dry gorges gave way to plains of scrub, and mountains so distant the curvature of the earth hid their foothills.

Lunch was fun. Dining companions were a couple aged 78 and 80 travelling back to Los Angeles, and a Texan aged 76. He used to be a conductor on Amtrak, and took advantage of the retirement option of travelling for free on the trains. Which he apparently did with avengance. His politics were interesting, appearing to be a George Bush-hating Republican (not the first one I’d met on this journey). And, with his permission, I took a clip of him while waiting for lunch to arrive; watch with the sound turned up:

The afternoon was spent more Texas-watching. The observatory car slowly filled up. Unfortunately, unlike on the LA to Seattle and Seattle to Chicago runs, no cheese and wine tasting. But as cheese had become the key food of this trip, probably not a bad thing.

El Paso. We slowly rolled in. On the other side of the border, a huge Mexican flag, visible for miles around, waved. I tried to photo the flag, but couldn’t do justice to its hugeness.

I had a carefully worked out plan. The train was going to be in the station for a while and, indeed, it arrived on time. Shades on, I headed for the bus stop. It wasn’t there. Plan scuppered. Shrug; hail a taxi. It arrived. It sped. I clung on in the back. Mexico, and the world’s grumpies border guard (but guess his job is pretty desperate). I had to see, but felt a bit gawpy, unclean, seeing (extremely briefly) the border security and controls between the US and Mexico. It’s possibly Berlin a bit pre-wall falling, except with more sunshine and the Mexican authorities (and their huge flag) not trying to stop people crossing into the US.

I had 7 minutes 15 seconds in Mexico. But then we hit traffic getting back across into the US. Uh-oh. Seriously not good. If I missed the train, the wait for the next one was two days. Though thinking about it (shrug) another adventure, perhaps. But not in El Paso, which was sprawling, industrial and mainly grim. Got back to the station just as the Amtrak train was doing its ‘all aboard’ hoot. Got aboard.

We chundered off, through west El Paso. Signs pointed out US territory. In the rapidly darkening twilight, we could see guard towers and wire fences. It was all a bit depressing, and reminded me of those posh hotels on the Platinum coast of Barbados, with wired-off beaches. I swam around one and into a rich person’s holiday den a few years back, just for the hell of it, and got into some serious trouble. Mexico and the US reminds me a bit of that.

Last dinner, and I was thrown together with the people in the roomette opposite. They were really nice, mother of about 50 and her daughter. There was obviously a back story about why they were travelling, but it was just good to enjoy their company.

Until the lunatic from my first meal on this train was put with us. “What are your names, and where do you live?” he asked the two women opposite, killing the conversation for the rest of the meal. The three of us requested the one dessert that was take-away (Haagen Daas ice cream tube), went back to the roomettes and breathed a collective sigh of relief. we split a bottle of red and called it a night.

Tucson, Arizona, the town most famous for being the birthplace of Chelsea Winter Nolen, came up well ahead of schedule.

We had two hours here, which gave me the opportunity to find and use some more Wifi and do various things. Tucson itself seemed pretty nice, though it was a bit tricky to say in the dark. Wish I’d been here for a day or so, as might then have been able to visit @alist (no, not just for your swimming pool). Next time.

Went to bed, the last of six nights I’d be sleeping on an Amtrak train on this trip. Woke up after an unusually good nights sleep with an idea in my head that had been growing since Chicago. Tried to forget about it by going to breakfast.

I was joined, for my last meal on an Amtrak train by a lovely elderly couple who were also doing a tour of the US by train. He was originally from Texas and used to be a maintenance man in a rare metals mill, she was from Minnesota and used to be a school bus driver. I guessed correctly when she challenged me to guess which state she was from, as she looked distinctly of the genetics of many of the settlers there a century ago. They both now lived in Oregon.

They spent a lot of time reading and using their public library, and had basically educated themselves to a position where they were not loaded, but were comfortable, with no debts and monies safely stashed away, even against the current economic fallout. He saw America as, still, being a land of opportunity for anyone wanting to work at it. They were both in their 80’s and didn’t have a cynical or negative bone in their bodies.

I went back to my roomette and watched Arizona slide past. Mile after mile of desert plane, then a rash of wind turbines, then huge, crumbling mountains and flat, still lakes underneath flocks of slow-flapping seabirds.

We pulled in to Los Angeles four hours late. But when you’ve been on the same train for over two days, it didn’t seem to matter. This is the train station I left from 23 days ago. After not far off 7,000 miles, this particular Amtrak adventure was done. Time for a little bit of Los Angeles, and to converge on the Getty Center for a meeting and to settle some things.

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