This Blog posting comes to you from the Greenwood Mall, Annapolis Valley, Nova Scotia Canada - one week before we fly out from Boston. Photos on Picassa http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/lh/sredir?uname=peter.huxford14&target=ALBUM&id=5340229325271536049&authkey=Gv1sRgCI6YosT04NSYvAE
Leaving San Francisco
The first part of the train trip from San Francisco edges the Bay and then heads across the rich farmland towards the Sierra. The train times for this 33-hour journey seem to be set to get the maximum benefit of the scenery. After Sacramento the track heads up into the Sierra following rocky canyons and raging torrents. It’s a double decker train and there is an observation lounge with glass roof but the view from our own widow is good so the only reason to go the lounge is to socialise. Peter persuaded Margot that this was an important part of the experience and we soon fell into conversation with a gentleman from Dakota. The conversation started well enough, except when Margot said we were from the UK he though we were from the Ukraine, but after a while it turned to the state of the world and it transpired that we were heading for hell in a handcart. Quotations from Revelations and Jeremiah are always a bad sign and our friend soon revealed that God was about to visit war on all wrongdoers to cleanse the world. When Peter suggested politely that war had a tendency to impact indiscriminately on wrongdoers and innocents alike, he patiently pointed out that such wars were the work of the devil whereas God’s wars were free of collateral damage, anyone hurt was by definition a sinner. Q.E.D.. Fortunately, at this point he made his excuses and left leaving us to marvel at the purity of his logic.
Undaunted, we booked a place for dinner, where you are allocated to tables by the dining car attendant and thus guaranteed to meet new people. This time we were rewarded with a very pleasant pair of young people. They were not a couple, though it appeared the young man would have wished that they were. He was about 21 and had been training as a pharmacist in Salt Lake City but quit to find a career that would make more of a ‘difference’ in these challenging times. In fact he was taking the train journey specifically to meet new people. She was about 28 and was doing an MA in water conservation and sustainability and was impassioned about green issues so we had a lively conversation throughout the meal and ended wishing them well in their efforts to save a world that our generation has so thoroughly messed up.
The young man had referred to a conversation he had been having earlier on with a young black guy, mentioning how lacking in diversity Salt Lake City was and how this had been perhaps the first in-depth chat he had ever had with a black person. We had noticed the pair of them in the lounge car as both look very smart and ‘preppy’ and were obviously having an intense discussion.. However things had turned awkward when we had got to Reno and a K-9 cop and two burly plain-clothes colleagues got on. The dog apparently discovered some drugs in a bag in the luggage racks and the cops were going along the train trying to find the owner. They spent some time grilling the two in the seats behind us - who admittedly looked the part and didn’t help themselves by one having a ‘bong’ in her luggage, but were in fact innocent. In the end, to our surprise it was the smart young black guy they took off the train. Margot saw the haul and it didn’t look that much, presumably for personal use rather than dealing and clearly not destined for Reno. Hardly meriting holding up the train for an hour, butt a later chat with the cafe attendant revealed that this was a fairly regular occurrence and was maybe seen as a revenue earner for Reno PD.
We slept or at least dozed intermittently in our seats. We tended to do that on all our journeys as upgrading to a sleeper is very expensive and we saved the cost of a hotel. In fact the seats recline quite a long way and there is plenty of leg room so it’s not too bad.
While we were sleeping we had been crossing the Basin, miles of desert so no great loss and the next day took us through the Rockies, another day of spectacular snowy mountain views ending with a descent into Denver where we had booked one night in a decent hotel just to break the journey, with another 18 hours into Chicago.
Denver
We splashed out on a taxi and got our bags up to our room before setting out to enjoy the nightlife. Unfortunately on a Tuesday night this didn’t amount to much and we ended up having a beer in the hotel bar. Determined to make the most of our Day in Denver before we Died, we spent the morning in the hotel on the free wi-fi before taking our baggage back up to the station. We then walked down the 16th Street Mall which was now a lot livelier in a sunny lunch time. We had a great salad lunch at the Cheesecake Factory and Peter felt it would somehow be disrespectful not to try the cheesecake, which was worth the trip to Denver alone.
Refreshed, we hit on the Museum of African American Cowboys as the best bet for the afternoon and, failing to get our heads arond the transit system we set off to walk the 16 blocks that separated it from Downtown. It was appropriately located in what was euphemistically termed the Welton Cultural Quarter, a black neighbourhood of run down Victorian housing and half hearted regeneration projects. When we eventually found it in a two-storey house it was closed, though for no stated reason and we had to wearily track our way back into town intent on visiting the Art Museum which our guide book assured us was open till 9. Except, it transpired the wing we had wanted to see closed at 5pm – ten minutes after we got there so hardly worth the $8 required.
Sounds like a bit of a disaster but in fact it was an interesting afternoon with insights into the side of life not mentioned in the guide books – a parade of shops 50% of which were hairdressers, presumably the outcome of some federally funded employment initiative – and some dramatic civic architecture. The most striking thing is the proximity of the two Denvers, the urban decay not five minutes walk from the shiny new skyscrapers.
We ended the day with a coffee and muffin at one of those great bookshops where they provide easy chairs for you to read at and don’t seem to mind the risk of you spilling coffee or crumbs over their nice new books, of which Borders is a pale imitation.
Another night back on the train and we wake to a morning of rich but fairly unexciting farmland before arriving in Chicago but no time to take a look around before we caught the evening train to Ann Arbor where we were to spend a couple of nights with Ed, another expatriate friend.
Ann Arbor
It was a fleeting visit and we were probably going to see Ed in Norfolk in September but we didn’t feel we could pass so close to Ann Arbor without seeing Ed in his natural habitat. It was pretty late when we arrived but we spent the next day getting a whirlwind tour of Ann Arbor’s delights for the benefit of Margot who had not been there before. The river and Arboretum, the Food Coop, the University and of course the Shaman Drum bookshop which we get the impression Ed has single-handedly been keeping afloat for the last few years. His own book is making good progress and we will of course buy a copy, though whether we will entirely understand it is another matter.
An early morning train ride got us back to Chicago, this time with the rest of the day to explore the city before catching the “Midnight train to Memphis” (downloadable as a ringtone on kidrock.com)
Next blog – Day 1 in Chicago
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