Well, it was time for me to once again get out of town and start some traveling! I hadn’t been to Spain since the springtime, so I had my sights set on a trip there.
I decided that on the way, I’d visit my daughter (and her husband) in Wilmington, Delaware, and also my brother in New Jersey.
I had some Amtrak rail-travel credits burning a hole in my pocket, so I decided to go by train. The distances were long, and American trains are excruciatingly slow, quite unlike the high-speed options in Spain and China. So, to get from Denver to Wilmington (through Chicago and Washington, D.C.) would take three days! Well, off I go!
First it was the bus, then Denver’s “light rail” to get to “Union Station”, which was all decked out for the holidays, and buzzing with activity!
The train was late. Ah Amtrak, SLOW *and* LATE!
So, I had a beer and some fries to kill time and take the edge off my hunger.
The train finally arrived, so it was time to board the clunky, vintage (out of date) double-decker coaches.
I had a sleeper-compartment, so that meant I would travel in the lap of luxury! Well, sort of… the “roomette” is a bit cramped, but at least it is private space. And traveling in a sleeper, all meals are included! Hello dining car!
Of course, since I had snacked at the station, I did not have much of an appetite, so I just ate a salad, and half a dessert.
Th next morning, we were traversing the great plains. One of my favorite spots along the Denver-Chicago route is crossing the Mississippi River! Many years ago, we used to see Bald Eagles along the river, but not recently, and not this trip.
Eventually we arrived in Chicago’s Union Station. The train platforms are dark, cramped, and smell of diesel fumes. Pretty hellish.
Please, let me out of here and get me to the remodeled magnificence of the public areas of the station!
Well, the “Great Hall” did have some nice holiday displays, but Chicago’s station has none of the vibrancy of Denver’s remodeled station. Basically it was new walls, new paint, and no new features.
Time to brave the cold and walks the nearby downtown Chicago streets!
Outside, the weather was actually pleasant! Every other time Rhonda and I stopped over in Chicago, there were freezing cold winds and often snow. I had looked forward to visiting the showroom of the “Paragon Book Gallery”, a specialty book seller that I used to go to in New York City with my Dad. It carries a vast stock of obscure books related to Asia. But alas, I had contacted them ahead of time, and they do not currently have any physical store-front, doing all their business online while they keep their eyes out for some suitable retail location. Next time!
As I lazily wandered the streets I did pass a few nice restaurants. When I saw a Potbelly sandwich shop, (which I love) I considered picking up a sandwich “to go” that I could eat on the train. But why? As a sleeping car passenger, all the fancy dinner options on the dining care are available at not extra cost!
So I returned to the lounge and waited until it was time to board my next train, heading to Washington D.C.
OK, mega-fail! Some background. America is doing its darnedest to kill off the few remaining long distance train routes, and push all travel to heavily polluting aircraft, and heavily polluting private cars plying the highways. So far, try as Amtrak may to make riding the train a disagreeable experience, people still ride the rails. So, in a more recent move, they have started eliminating kitchens for the dining cars. Now all passengers except those in sleeping cars are banned from the dining car. And rather than cooked food, they offer some crappy TV-dinners. To go along with this new experience, they hand you the new “Flexible Dining Menu”. The dining room staff, in an effort to not be ejected from the moving train by passengers, did offer a free beer along with “supper”. Well, the beer was good, the food terrible. Bummer! I really wished I had known ahead of time and picked up a sandwich in Chicago!
And no more pancakes, waffles, eggs etc for breakfast. Now you choose which boxed cereal you want. Well, the banana was real. The coffee? None available. I had to go back to my sleeper car and bring some from there.
Ah! Washington, D.C.! My birthplace! I was able to check my bags and wander a bit. Union Station… the Capitol building…
I decided to head to the White House to see what was shakin’
Machine gun toting cops (don’t dare take their photos!) were keeping the protesting crazies at bay.
Well, this is America. The tens of millions of people who are disgusted by the actions of the occupant of the White House, (who sneaked in the back door with three million votes less than his opponent), just spend their time jogging, staring at sitcoms on the boob-tube, watching sports, and (mostly) sleeping.
From Washington I took the Northeast Regional to Wilmington, Delaware, where Andrea, Jimmy, and Rhonda picked me up at the station. (Rhonda did not come on the train, opting to travel to the east by plane)
Andrea and Jimmy had moved into a new house since I last visited them. Nice place. We spent the first evening listening to Jimmy’s records. Yep, records… those vinyl disks. Remember them? Heard your grandpa mention them? ha ha.
From Wilmington, I next took a train to Trenton (Capital of New Jersey), where my brother picked me up and drove me back to his house in Pennington. We had a great weekend, starting with a few slices of pizza at “Beniamino’s” in the Montgomery Shopping Center. This is the new incarnation of pizza at the old “Rudolfo’s” which I adored. They told me that the guy who last ran Rudolfo’s, who since moved back to Italy, does stop by when he is in town.
Chris and I had a great time driving around New Jersey, then Pennsylvania, then New Jersey again. Lots of memories from our youth! We even got near the site of an old Boy Scout camp that our parents packed us off to a few years during the summer.
When the day came from my flight to Spain I took the train up to Newark Airport. Good lord! the terminal was out of control. Everything there seemed to require interaction with one of the thousands of fixed tablet devices positioned *everywhere*. You couldn’t order food at a restaurant by just telling a waiter/ess what you wanted. You had to negotiate an inane set of screens. I couldn’t figure it out Neither could anyone around me. So staff and to press the screen selections for everyone. And then, in the end, it disconnected the humans who worked there from the customers. Every person around me (and including me) ended up with a problem with the order and the “customer service” ended up horrible, because the “computer” was the waiter, not the person.
Out of control technology. “Fixing” a system what was not broken, and in the end, breaking it.
Then, on to Spain!