PLANES, TRAINS AND AUTOMOBILES: And Not Necessarily In That Order,

Trains

Saturday September the 6th my son Austin and I started our westward migration. We left Columbus by Greyhound (a real feat since we are not fond of traveling by dog) to go to Cleveland to catch a train (if only Columbus could have a depot) to Chicago to start our adventure. Try not to travel in the coach section as it is a big fast moving greyhound. I will not write about that leg of the journey because of pc issues. Anyway, once we changed trains in Chicago and boarded our sleeper car, everything changed. We left Chicago around 4 o’clock Sunday afternoon.

Roomettes are very small but functional for one person or two very small agile people or an adult and child. Each roomette has two beds. The top bunk folds up and is out of the way until you need it. The bottom bed is made from two “chairs” that pull together to from your sleeping platform. When you pull the top bunk down, there is a second mattress (already made up) that you place on the bottom bed, and voila! you’re all ready to sleep. In the morning, you just put the second mattress on top of the top one and close the upper bunk and you’re back to a sitting car. It’s really neat. There is also a small closet and a lap table that lives along the side of the wall under the window until you need it. We had two roomettes across the hall from each other. It seemed as though the sleeper cars have a much better suspension system than coach. If at all possible do travel this way. Not only is it much more relaxing but your meals are included in the cost of the room.

When you are rolling along the tracks with a nice rocking motion, watching the landscape pass you by, it is amazing how hypnotizing this is. I had planned to play with my DS or read and neither of these activities took place. I watched upper Middle America pass by instead, and it was worth it.

One little anecdote I will share with you about train travel is, if the train runs over a steer, it is likely to disconnect the air hoses under the train. When this happens, the train makes unusual sounds and movements. I heard crack, rattle rattle, rocks flying up under our car and then thththththththththwisttttttt and then silence. Eventually you will get word over the PA that they hit livestock and that the power is off as the conductors have to go under the train to re-connect the air hoses. By the way, please do not use the restrooms as the toilets will not flush when there is no power. That was useful information. It was also funny that just as the train stopped it seemed that most of us thought that would be a good time to use the rest room. Good thing that announcement came first. Nothing else exciting happened during the trip except for the gentleman who died on our car, but that, too, is another very short story that should be told, not written.

Automobiles

Our train ride ended in Lamy, New Mexico. From there, we took a shuttle (van) to Santa Fe. I must admit that I was a little surprised when I discovered you could neither fly in or out of Santa Fe, nor did the train go directly in either. Lamy is about 17 miles outside of Santa Fe. Apparently the 75 mile per hour speed limit is only a suggestion since no one seemed to do less than 105. This is not a joke. Anyway, that was the only example of fast paced anything we encountered on this trip.

We asked the shuttle driver to drop us at Enterprise car rental instead of our hotel because we wanted to make sure we checked in there before they closed at 6. We then checked in to our hotel. Santa Fe became our base camp. We settled in Monday evening and Tuesday we hit the road.

We hung a right and went to Albuquerque. One thing I noticed about this area is the lack of tall buildings. There are no skyscrapers as we know them. It may be because they are so high up (Santa Fe is 7388 feet above sea level and Albuquerque is 430+ feet above sea level) everything is scraping the sky.

The petroglyphs were fascinating. First, I guess you should know that these mountains were once active volcanoes. It is believed that the Native Americans painted these symbols on the rocks as examples of the spirits of their dead.

BEEP- BEEP! As we were leaving the petroglyphs area, something was moving in the brush to the left of our car. Suddenly, a medium sized funny looking bird darted in front of us, stopped, looked both ways and ran across the road into the brush on the other side. Yes, it was …..the roadrunner! We tried to get a picture of it but it was way too fast. Really! So once it disappeared we sat there for a few minutes waiting. Wiley Coyote had to be coming along in a minute with his ACME credit card in hand. Well, half of the duo was not bad. How often can you say a roadrunner crossed your path?

Wednesday, we drove to Roswell, which is 200 miles southeast of Santa Fe. Roswell was really weird. I felt alienated, or rather spacey. Well, the thing is, it’s really flat, like Columbus or Cleveland, or central Ohio. It had trees and plants like Columbus or Cleveland, or central Ohio. It was humid like Columbus or Cleveland, or central Ohio. All of the shops we saw reminded me of Yankee Trader. Wait. Where was I, Roswell or Columbus? There were no skyscrapers or a real downtown, although I could have been on W. Broad Street past the Spaghetti Warehouse. Ok, it was Roswell. Roswell is the home of The International UFO Museum. It had some interesting exhibits.

One of the things that this trip showed us was the vastness of the country. Roads are straight and go for miles! Notice the traffic? New Mexico is so sparsely populated that people sighting was a bigger sport than seeing antelope in the wild. Something else we saw that was exciting and beautiful was a windmill farm. Someone is thinking conservation!

We only drove around Santa Fe to get in and out of it. We spent most of Thursday visiting the shops and sites in town. This is a small city – maybe 73,000 people, and it is a walking city. Most things are within walking distance to the hotel areas. The streets are circular – one will probably take you to the few main streets in town so it easy not to get lost, but on the other hand, I found it hard to remember where I was. That could have been due in part to the fact that I had a nasty cold and was trying to breathe in a thin air environment. On the other hand, it could have been because things looked similar throughout the city. But then, all of a sudden, you’d come upon a very striking church or building that was just stunning. This area is full of history. I may go back one day (by train) when I do not have a cold just to be able to spend more time at the historic cites. However, if you want to shop here, bring your 401k plan and the rest of your life’s savings with you because that may be the only way you will be able to afford it.

Planes
Friday morning we checked out of our hotel and took another shuttle (van) to Albuquerque to the airport. During the ride to the airport, I had the pleasure of talking to a gentleman from British Vancouver who had lived in Santa Fe for years. He is an architect and gave me a lot of info on the city. As we talked we exchanged the ‘what-do- you-do info. Once he learned what I did the conversation changed from politics in the US and how the economy here relates to issues there, to WOW I love the Library! He told me a bit about the library in Victoria BC. They are providing DVD’s and CD’s on demand. The interesting thing is that according to him they had just started letting customers reserve them. Anyway, we had a great discussion about libraries and other quality of life issues.

Albuquerque has a cute airport, small with lots of shops. It was pretty easy to get to the gate, except the security area was really a bit much. I had to go through extra screening because of a tube of lotion – just about 3 oz. that they wanted in a quart sized clear plastic Ziploc baggie that they felt I should have removed from my carry on bag (too big to really call a purse) and put in the bin prior to screening. But the real kicker was the gate area. If you have seen in westerns when they herd the cattle through a narrow gate to get them in one by one so they can be counted, and then they are sorted into various pens afterward- you’ve been to this airport. We arrived at our gate, but could not tell where to line up. There were several planes leaving at about the same time and we all seemed to have to go to the same desk and exit point to get to them. There was no seating for passengers at the gate, so if your plane was late, like ours was, you had to find somewhere out of the way to stand or squat around until it did come. Then it was a real stampede to the gate to board. Boy was I glad that was over.

We had a flight to Atlanta with a three hour layover and flight from there to Columbus both via Delta, and both were great flights. Even so, ranking means of transportation in order of preference, trains would get a 10, planes a 5, and buses a 4. I do not like airports if I’m traveling. I think they are nice places to pick up trinkets but many are too big to be comfortable. I do not like take off. Once we’re up I’m fine. Take off bothers me because it feels as if the plane has not committed to the possibility of flight. Once it has leveled off, I’m ok. Landing is not a problem – we have to come down sometime so gliding in and landing in one piece is expected. It’s the take off.

Buses on the other hand are too impersonal and uncomfortable for too long, and they tend to have a generic bus odor that is not nice. And although they may be safer than planes, planes are faster. But in the scheme of current things, if we had instate rail service and even regional multi state rail service, I bet there would be a major decline in bus, plane, and highway travel – trains would win! Not only is it a pleasant trip, but I understand that it is fuel efficient as well.
Well, we landed, and came home to more humidity than I ever remember feeling here before. It felt, well, alien. Wait, where am I…..