Real-Time Update 3

Monday, July 14 2008 @ 6:00 PM Central Time.

I am on Amtrak train #1 bound from New Orleans back to Los Angeles. We are near the Texas border with Louisiana. My posts are up to Day 6 leaving Albany NY.

Transit at Albany

One high point of this journey is passing through places I have been to before from another angle. Albany is the decision making client site for my most recent project. I spent a considerably amount of time here from October 2006 through April 2008 though I only worked for 4 weeks this year. Like so many USA cities I flew in and flew out. When I have time, I spiral out into the countryside to take it all in. Before this job, I had not spent time in the northeast since the late 80′s.

My favorite place to stay is a Holiday Inn Express on a high ridge on the east side of the Hudson River. This location is far enough out and far enough up to afford a spectacular skyline view of Albany in its entirety. The freeway path takes you far to the northwest before crossing the river only to head due south to the office. A local more direct westerly route takes you across and then down the steep ridges of the Hudson River Valley. Near the bottom is the main train yard that bisects Rensselaer restricting east/west traffic.

Many a time I crossed up or down the hill past the brand new Albany/Rensselaer depot without getting any closer. While working in Albany, I considered taking the train down to The City (New York of course). I lived in The City for two summers during college and lived nearby in Connecticut for three years so I know how to get around and have some idea where to go. However, I never took the train down river while in Albany. This trip will be my first time in The City, rather than NYC airports, for a very long time.

Pulling up to the depot on the Lake Shore Limited offered a kind of closure. I threaded the needle between my recent work assignment in Albany and my past to the south. My inbound train pointed to the south towards Manhattan where I was for a time and will be again in a few days. I stand in the crossover passage looking one way into the newest Amtrak station and the other way towards the bridge I so recently drove over. Fittingly my outbound train pointed north where it was destined to rise out of the Hudson River Valley heading east towards Boston.

Limited Lake Shore on the Lake Shore Limited

The Lake Shore Limited eastbound train runs from Chicago to New York City. It used to operate like the Empire Builder with two major destinations splitting the train at Albany. Now you must change from train 48 to train 448 at Albany to go on to Boston. My trip from Seattle to Boston involves 3 trains, 3 nights and 3 days.

Amtrak 48 curves around the tip of Lake Michigan and across northern Indiana to follow close to the southern shore of Lake Erie all through the night. Luckily this is just a densely industrial strip with no lake views. A sleep for over 10 hours this night.

The path in the morning runs parallel to the Erie Canal for awhile. The eastern canals look like straight rivers since they blend into the vegetation, have muddy bottoms, and brown/green water. They look nothing like the concrete ditches with metal scaffolding and sky blue water found in the west. Then again, the eastern canals were built for transportation while the western canals are for irrigating crops and people.

I am again counting off cities I worked in at some point in time. Chicago, South Bend, Toledo, Columbus in the center of Ohio, Cincinnati on the Ohio River, Cleveland, Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, and Albany. Most of my former clients in this area are not the dominant rust belt industries but many are manufacturers in stasis or decline. There cities are not sharing as extensively in the rampant renewal I witnessed in San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, and Chicago.

Rochester is a case in point. Home of both Kodak and Xerox, who have seen better days as their competitive advantages in image processing are eliminated as bits and dots replace chemicals and hardware, Rochester itself looks as seedy as it did when I worked here in the 80′s and the 90′s. Surely there is a newish suburban band around town but I firmly believe that a real city must have a vibrant core that’s alive with people and fueled by prosperity. What will it take for the good times to return to this region?

Coach with the Masses

I recover my bags from the post-911 lockers by paying the final $8 for the maximum daily rental. The next two hours will be a trial of confusion and chaos. Many of the travelers in this Amtrak waiting area are new to riding the trains. They have the same questions and make the same mistakes. The main aisle is blocked with baggage holding the place for people not wanting to stand but ever vigilante that someone else might line jump or stand up.

This will be the first time I travel in a single level coach car. A new experience awaits.

Three babies cry out incessantly. One from hunger, one from general irritability, and one from neglect. The latter was a sad example of generational malaise. A young mother told her teenage daughter to ignore the screams of the teen’s toddler strapped into a carriage. “She’s not hungry and she’s not wet. She just wants attention. Leave her be.” The baby’s out stretched arms clearly pleaded to be held as others looked on with disinterest or scorn.

I exchanged looks with the short, prim, well-dressed New Yorker in the front row of seats. Just hold her we agreed silently. This baby was not too old to comfort, too young to be spoiled. The teenager had the better maternal instincts as she winced in kind with her child but would not defy the commandments of her own mother. So we all suffered with them both.

When they finally called for coach boarding, The New Yorker and I were forced to stand up as everyone crushed in from all sides. The conductor called for over 65 and families with small children. This turned out to be 80% of the crowd that warmed around us. I stood downstream to keep her from being run over. She moved beside me to hold our place as first in line of what remained. “Don’t give another inch since we have been here the longest.” I’m impressed. We break through together hoping the masses in front of us will fill up some other car and leave us some peace.

The short lived bond is broken as she is directed to the New York City through car and I am told to follow the flow to the forward car. Ahead of me is a young man with week old clothes and a even more mature odor. Behind me was a more professional looking guy but I was not aware of this. The middle aged female coach attendant gave the young man a window seat and reached for the next stub. She looked behind me then looked me in the eyes. She smiles and I smile back. She tore off a new seat assignment slip putting me together with the career fireman from Wisconsin.

Small favors make all the difference.

Chicago: It’s Alive Part 2

The Sears Tower now has a companion tall enough rival the former worlds tallest building but far less structural looking. The Sears Tower was built using state-of the art techniques for the time that emphasized function our fashion rising in boxy self-supporting piers that end at various elevations. Its new neighbor is beige rather than black with far more ornamentation with a more integral look. This one is a true tower rather than nine square tubes representing the new architecture of Chicago.

This town is the home of many design innovations. My roommate during the last two years of the University of Chicago was a budding architect who knew the rich tradition and history of our adoptive home. (1) The first proto-skyscraper made possible by the twin inventions of the elevator and pump pressured water built with immensely thick brick walls. (2) The first real skyscraper supported by a steel skeleton that proud displayed its metal lattice work offering a move open core space. (3) The rise and fall of ornamentation leading to the first sleek glass-walled slabs with cantilevered floors. (4) Finally the world’s tallest building for most of my life built during my residence in the windy city.

Chicago is the best example of melting pot America. This is exemplified by what I believe is the widest choice in cuisine you can find anywhere in the world. All I need right now is the closest example of Chicago style pizza. My favorite is Gino’s east nestled on a side-street near the John Hancock building on Michigan Avenue; the Magnificent Mile. Unfortunately, I needed to limit my foray to the Loop bounded by the Chicago river on two sides and Lake Michigan on a third. The fourth side is delimited by the L (elevated train) that gave the Loop it’s name. Also inaccessible this day ware Uno’s and Dues’ facing one another catercorner across a street in the near north. Uno’s is the only one with a national franchise and thus is missable in any event.

That leaves Giordano’s makers of the true pizza pie. The classic Giordano’s pizza is deep dish with two differences from all the others. The bottom crust is raised high above the surface which appears to be an ordinary layer of tomato sauce but is in reality a soft coated upper crust. The added ingredients are just under this layer with a thick oozing cheese below. My 10 inch sausage pizza is complemented by two tall Blue Moon wheat beers for the most memorable meal on this trip to date. Yum.

After burning an hour and a half for dinner, I still have almost 4 hours before my next train leaves for Albany. So I wander. Nothing noteworthy till a turn south towards the bottom of the loop. Filling an entire city block and rising up over 100 feet is a brick plated structure with massive arched windows is a mystery building that, to my eyes, is obviously an homage to the world fairs of yesteryear. Crowning the corners and top faces are huge figures of Grecian gods in nautical themes. Though appropriate in Chicago’s architectural cornucopia, the cornices seem to be tacked on to an otherwise boring basic cube. Still, I find myself circling three quarters of the way around the edifice photographing these imposing features as the sunlight fades.

Only as I decide to move on, heading north again, do I find out the nature of this building. It is the Harold Washington Public Library. My buddy, my friend, this is how Chicago choose to remember you! Harold Washington gave me my first (accidental) exclusive that was the stellar scoop of my brief journalistic career. I was a spec photographer for the Hyde Park Herald assigned to do a family photo spread of our local city councilman. As fate would have it, word had just leaked out that Harold would through his hat in the race for mayor. I set down my camera and took out a narrow ruled college notebook to conduct an impromptu interview of the man who would become the first back mayor of Chicago.

State Street was the fashion shopping district during the first half of the last century. (Boy, I love referring to the 1900′s as the “last century”. It makes everything seem new again somehow.) By the time I came to Chicago in the late 70′s, the downtown was dead. The rehabilitation of the grand vaudeville era Chicago Theatre just served to emphasize the dissolution of the rest of the area.

Now the streets are full with people who linger awhile before going home at the end of the workday. This blend of people are new stir of the melting pot with a far higher portion of russians and pacific rim asians to complement the long standing polish and mainland asian population. They enter, leave and pass by a mix of old and new, of renovation and rebuilding in place, that proclaims recent and current investment.

Then I suffer the shock of my brief tour of downtown Chicago as I reach the river. River Plaza is gone. My first home after leaving Hyde Park was a 900 square foot one bedroom apartment on the 37^th floor of a 55 story building called River Plaza. Siting between the Wrigley Building and the black walled IBM Center, River Plaza was an unassuming block that was clearly younger than most everything else on the north side of the river. Now in its place is a green curvaceous form that looks like a plant growing before my eyes. It looked like a model set in a contextual photograph. Unreal. Synthetic. Even alien yet also beautiful. This replacement of my one time home is the clearest evidence of the renewal of Chicago.

The sunlight is almost gone and it started to rain. I head back to Union Station through the totally unfamiliar near west side of town.

It’s Alive: Revival of Chicago’s West Side

As I write this, our train is approaching a spot on the Connecticut coastline due south of Norwalk, Weston, and Ridgefield. These are places where I worked and lived after leaving Chicago 24 years ago. As already noted, Chicago was a very different place a quarter of a century ago. The south side was a ghetto and the west side was a post-industrial wasteland. While it was easy to see the pod of north side skyscrapers, the changes on the west side were less apparent for two reasons. One is that we never ventured to the west side because there was nothing there. The second is that the Empire Builder was first hemmed off by walls and buildings before plunging into the underground railhead that starts where the Chicago river turns from north to east bound.

My eastbound schedule allowed me 6 hours to roam around my old downtown home. First I had to unburden myself of the 60-70 lbs of gear I was lugging around. The train conductor had already confirmed the existence of new post-911 lockers at Union Station. He warned they were “a little pricey”. Boy was that an understatement. Gone are the days of quarters in coin slots. Each locker is big enough for two of those house-moving monster bags tourists are using this days. Access to a locker requires a roll of bills or a credit card and having your fingerprint recorded by on of the 3 kiosks serving the entire wall. Whether this device checks a national fingerprint database or not is unclear. Recovering your stuff requires a six digit code, a matching fingerprint, and $4 per hour up to $12 per day. Wow. In the end, it was well worth $12 for a few hours of freedom.

Ascending into the daylight through the old grand lobby on the west of Union Station, I have no point of reference to gauge the changes. Circling around to riverside, the first thing I notice is a stream of humanity coming at me from across the Jackson Street bridge. The lemming-like mass flow was intoxicating. I backed up against a corner pillar/lamppost on the bridge to watch this diverse stream of office workers pass inches away from me while performing one of their daily rituals; returning home on the train. I tracked individual faces while listening to scattered bits of conversation float by. The diversity of the crowd was underscored by the newspaper hawker calling out hellos and insults in what seemed like all the languages of America’s melting pot. I was transfixed for almost half an hour.

Then I got hungry.

I’ve Been Googled

Clockwise Around America

While feeding two dollar bills into the machine, I tell her about Clockwise Around Americathen tell her I need to reach deep in my too tight pants pocket … nebulalurker.wordpress.com/ – 103k - Cached - Similar pages

Real-Time Update 2

Friday, July 11, 2008 @ 8:37 Eastern time.

I am on Amtrak 171 in business class at the Route 128 station just south of Boston on the way to New York City. Business class in the north east corridor is my one break from coach travel Clockwise Around America. The people and the sights along the way make it increasingly hard to stay current. I am now uploading the last of day 4 arriving and leaving from Chicago.

My Old Home Town: Chicago.

In 1972, I arrived in Chicago for the first time to attend the University of Chicago. We drove from Phoenix to Chicago. It was not love at first sight given the decrepit conditions you could see from the interstate. The university is located in the heart of the south side near the lake. The south side was a dicey place to live at the time. It was primed for race riots and student revolt. This was where I truly grew up. This was a very political time for me. Little did I know that a young child named Barrack Obama lived nearby.

This was the second time we had been in the north. I spent the first three years of elementary school in Columbus Ohio while my father, a Navy reconnaissance officer, was assigned to work with North American Aviation. My understanding is he was testing a new bomb sight and photo recon package that would later be used in Vietnam. My father wanted to be an astronaut but the color-blindness that keep him out of the pilot seat also disqualified him to fly for NASA. What he never knew is that Lunar Excursion Module was being developed only three hangers away from his office. He died do what he loved best, flying off carriers, in 1964.

My arrival in Chicago was different. This would be the first time I left home. The first time I lived with people other than family. The first time in a big city. Alone. The reputation of the university and the quality of the students scared me. Soon though the city did not. Here is where I developed my love of trains. The Illinois Central suburban train ran on the eastern flanks of the university enclave but it was expensive and limited to only going downtown. The Chicago Transit Authority trains could get you anywhere in the city. Access to south side Dan Ryan line required a 20 block bus ride through the heart of the south side. For a white southern boy this was a whole nother experience. I loved it.

Now I was coming into Chicago again diagonally from the northwest. The skyline is barely recognizable. Surrounding the once isolated and majestic John Hancock Tower are more than 15 buildings over 60 stories deserving the term tower. To me they look like weeds desecrating the magnificent mile. Even the Sears Tower, for a long time the tallest building in the world, now has competition on the southwest corner of the loop.

Still it feels like home.

The Mississippi has a Mind of Its Own

Most people think of the great Mississippi River as a broad slow moving impassable channel. In the north, the river wanders in multiple channels of varying widths at multiple speeds. The Empire Builder follows along the western most bank for only a short distance before turning east to pass though the Lake Michigan cities in Wisconsin. It took seven minutes to cross all five channels of the river.

Taking the Fork at Grand Forks

We approach the headwaters of the Mississippi River during the night. The major junction in this neck of the woods is Grand Forks and it is grand in every way. Rivers converge. Roads diverge in every direction of the clock. The largest train switching yard for several hundred miles is here. The Empire Builder takes a 90 degree turn to the south here in the wee hours of the night. I know only because the sudden cessation of movement woke me up. We sat there for awhile awaiting clearance. I was asleep again soon after we started moving.

Real-Time Update 1

Wednesday, July 9 @ 5:33 Eastern Time. I am sitting on the train from Albany to Boston. My postings however have not quite reached Grand Forks.

Montana is Just Iowa Only Colder

What would you expect of the northern most train route in Montana? After rounding the lower tip of Glacier National Park, the crisp pristine looking alpine environment slowly melted away into scrub. The most interesting thing to see as the sun passed below the horizon was an example of early railroad engineering pragmatism.

Going down river, the train had to rise up hundreds of feet to emerge on the high trans-border plateau spanning the breadth of a wide state. A decision had to be made as the line approached a rounded but deep tributary cutting to our left (north) leaving a drop down to river bottom in front. Freeway designers would have built a span bridge crossing the gap and rising several hundred feet straight ahead. This was too expensive for our continent span railroads that had to cross many such natural barriers. Anyway, it would likely be too steep for a train.

The solution: Turn 90 degrees north following the dry valley for miles, rising all the time, until reaching a spot low enough to build an earthen bridge that served double duty as a flood control dam. Turning 180 to the south the train rose more steeply so that only a brief tunnel passage was required to ascend to the rim. At the head of the valley, the turn was so severe that the slowly creeping train almost looped back on itself being on both side walls at the same time.

After that, Montana was a snore, figuratively and literally. Don’t get me wrong if you are from the high plains of Montana. The land is obviously productive with lower growing produce than Iowa and more terrain variety than Kansas without the frequent tornadoes. Hopefully there is some other form of entertainment. Watching the baby tornadoes and waterspouts flit across the fields was the best thing to watch during my visit with an aunt in Waverly Kansas. So I slept after a picturesque crossing of a small town straddling a river junction. Utterly flat terrain is conducive to sleep.

One Fish Two Fish Whitefish Bluefish

One hundred on; one hundred off. Whitefish Montana is the busiest stop between Seattle and Chicago. The western and most popular gateway to Glacier National Park. Only two parks are more isolated than this cross-border preserve and they are above and below the ocean. In the southeast is Key Largo National Park the only all underwater park in the system. In the southwest are the Channel Islands off-shore of Santa Barbara.

Whitefish is also a way station for the Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad that runs the Empire Builder for Amtrak. Four deadheaders join us for the road down out of the hills. They are BNSF employees going home. Whitefish survives on tourism, logging, and freight. The town expands from a base of 9000 to double that in the winter and triple that in the summer (or the other way around).

These facts were relayed by a newly minted college graduate going back to Minneapolis after visiting family in Whitefish. His father had long been a long haul train driver and now is a reserve engineer. He drives a single locomotive up and down the line adding an extra push for overloaded freight trains that otherwise would not make it over the mountain passes. He is also on-call for the rare but deadly runaway train. You can’t stop them but someone has to be around to pull away the cars left on the rails.

This young man is unsure what he will do with his marketing degree yet. Luckily he is pulling down good money as a waiter in a swank Minneapolis area restaurant. Real estate? Manufacturing rep? Like a growing number of young people, he did what was expected of him to a point and then stopped for a moment to catch his breath rather than barreling headlong into a career.

Less than an hour later, guitar music drifts in from the vestibule in the center of the car. There he was sitting on the yellow embarkation stool playing and singing as if in a trance totally oblivious. He was good. Real good. Playing Americana, folk, blues, and possibly a tune in the set that he wrote himself. He was that good. During the entire hour of our shared breakfast in the dining car, he never mentioned he is a musician or that music was a possible vocation. I learned nothing more since I did not want to disturb him. I just listened.

The Cascades versus Mt. Shasta

The Cascade Range is dramatic mostly from afar. The overcast makes Mt Rainer on the east and the Olympics on the west invisible. No drama today. I start a discussion of the Olympic Peninsula. The Cascades are young volcanos fed by melting of one continental plate being pushed down under another. Most people assume the Olympics are also volcanic. They are actually upthrust seabed formed by another effect of plate tectonics. The terrain is also some of the most unusual in North America.

There is a valley on the northwest side facing the Pacific leading to the only temperate (non-equatorial) rainforest in North America. The ferns and toadstools and alien looking underbrush are strange enough. When you turn your eyes up hill through a break in the canopy you are utterly stunned. There is a glacier at the head of the valley. How many places in the world can you hike from a rainforest to a glacier and back in a day?

Another marvel exists near the Pacific entrance to this valley. Boulders the size of houses are strewn all over the tidewater and salt & pepper pebbled beach. The view is all the more surreal since most of the giant rocks are exposed as if they were just deposited there by some recent upheaval.

The Olympics by car or foot offer many accessible and immediate vistas. The Cascades from the train are another matter. The closer you get, the more the view pancakes to extremely close in sights. You will see babbling brooks, cliffs, forrest walls, and glances at the mountain reservoir you are cruising beside. Undeniably beautiful on a compressed close in scale.

The 2+ hour visibility of Mt. Shasta and the surrounding chaotic terrain is arguably a much more arresting and unforgettable sight. The timing is perfect on the northbound Coast Starlight in the summer.

Preparing and Packing Pillows Instead of Posting

Okay, so I barely stayed in real time on Day one and began falling behind on Day two. I quess I could have uploaded some posts during the morning of Day three in the Bellevue Courtyard but I decided to wash clothes, eat a leisurely stationary breakfast, and sleep. The hotel layovers are about getting some sleep and my land legs back.

My bus trip back from Bellevue gave me a chance to try out the GPS receivers again. I cannot abide a mystery. After restarting the phone and initializing all the software, I did one thing different. I waited. The devices normally lock into sufficient satellites for tracking after 30 second to a minute. The previous day I gave up after about 90 seconds. The behavior was odd. Rather than “seeking satellites” it said “active (0). So I waited. After more than 3 minutes, the minimum three satellites locked in with around 8 being available a few minutes later. This is how I found that Seattle’s legendary overcast was not GPS friendly. I can handled the cool damp grey but this … How can the abundance of local tech guys function her?

Which reminds me: When I got on the bus, the rather good looking female bus driver asks: “Are you running away from home”? While feeding two dollar bills into the machine, I tell her about Clockwise Around America then tell her I need to reach deep in my too tight pants pocket for a couple of quarters. She says: “I’m impressed. You even know the bus fare.” See, planning does pay.

Imagine that. Two friendly bus drivers in as many days.

Arriving at King Station three hours early allowed me time to fire up the laptop and complete work on day 2. My how time flies while you are having fun. No seriously. I sat in the pole position next to door 1 for 3 hours on a tear! The words just flowed into my MacBook while carrying on numerous side conversations with the growing line of passengers.

Maybe I can do this. When the open the door releasing the thundering herd, that on average is 8% greater than this time last year, I was number three for bordering. Number one and two were a nice enough older couple we would have granted first passage to anyway if they had only asked. My experience on the Coast Starlight allowed me to zero in on my (Chicago bound) coach and be first in my lower level compartment, again. Waiting for me is seat number 77 with the single 120 volt outlet behind, a broad window beside, and long extension tray in front that works no matter what the passenger in front of my does. The seats behind incline into the wall. The seats in front have no tray with eight feet of floor I have no use for. All the seats on the left of the car are powerless. No seat 77LL is mine.

Now I should have time to upload the rest of day two while still in the station. Me and Karen, my white haired Chicago-bound traveling companion are alone as the time of departure approaches. Unfortunately, our coach attendant was given a “cold” car not prepared for its journey. She was way behind. So much to do including stuffing more than 80 pillows into their sanitary cases. Imagine how surprised we both were when I volunteered to help. She made one attempt to protest and then disappeared to do her other (undisclosed) duties. I did all fifty that were arrayed around me knowing this was not enough for all the passengers but glad to be done. She saunters back in to tell me there is another back she had not opened for me yet. Probably so I would not see the full magnitude of the task. Happy to be of service mam!

Net result. By the time I finished her job we were out of data range in the Cascades.

Okay, so I barely stayed in real time on Day one and began falling behind on Day two. I quess I could have uploaded some posts during the morning of Day three in the Bellevue Courtyard but I decided to wash clothes, eat a leisurely stationary breakfast, and sleep. The hotel layovers are about getting some sleep and my land legs back.

My bus trip back from Bellevue gave me a chance to try out the GPS receivers again. I cannot abide a mystery. After restarting the phone and initializing all the software, I did one thing different. I waited. The devices normally lock into sufficient satellites for tracking after 30 second to a minute. The previous day I gave up after about 90 seconds. The behavior was odd. Rather than “seeking satellites” it said “active (0). So I waited. After more than 3 minutes, the minimum three satellites locked in with around 8 being available a few minutes later. This is how I found that Seattle’s legendary overcast was not GPS friendly. I can handled the cool damp grey but this … How can the abundance of local tech guys function her?

Which reminds me: When I got on the bus, the rather good looking female bus driver asks: “Are you running away from home”? While feeding two dollar bills into the machine, I tell her about Clockwise Around America then tell her I need to reach deep in my too tight pants pocket for a couple of quarters. She says: “I’m impressed. You even know the bus fare.” See, planning does pay.

Imagine that. Two friendly bus drivers in as many days.

Arriving at King Station three hours early allowed me time to fire up the laptop and complete work on day 2. My how time flies while you are having fun. No seriously. I sat in the pole position next to door 1 for 3 hours on a tear! The words just flowed into my MacBook while carrying on numerous side conversations with the growing line of passengers.

Maybe I can do this. When the open the door releasing the thundering herd, that on average is 8% greater than this time last year, I was number three for bordering. Number one and two were a nice enough older couple we would have granted first passage to anyway if they had only asked. My experience on the Coast Starlight allowed me to zero in on my (Chicago bound) coach and be first in my lower level compartment, again. Waiting for me is seat number 77 with the single 120 volt outlet behind, a broad window beside, and long extension tray in front that works no matter what the passenger in front of my does. The seats behind incline into the wall. The seats in front have no tray with eight feet of floor I have no use for. All the seats on the left of the car are powerless. No seat 77LL is mine.

Now I should have time to upload the rest of day two while still in the station. Me and Karen, my white haired Chicago-bound traveling companion are alone as the time of departure approaches. Unfortunately, our coach attendant was given a “cold” car not prepared for its journey. She was way behind. So much to do including stuffing more than 80 pillows into their sanitary cases. Imagine how surprised we both were when I volunteered to help. She made one attempt to protest and then disappeared to do her other (undisclosed) duties. I did all fifty that were arrayed around me knowing this was not enough for all the passengers but glad to be done. She saunters back in to tell me there is another back she had not opened for me yet. Probably so I would not see the full magnitude of the task. Happy to be of service mam!

Net result. By the time I finished her job we were out of data range in the Cascades.

Okay, so I barely stayed in real time on Day one and began falling behind on Day two. I quess I could have uploaded some posts during the morning of Day three in the Bellevue Courtyard but I decided to wash clothes, eat a leisurely stationary breakfast, and sleep. The hotel layovers are about getting some sleep and my land legs back.

My bus trip back from Bellevue gave me a chance to try out the GPS receivers again. I cannot abide a mystery. After restarting the phone and initializing all the software, I did one thing different. I waited. The devices normally lock into sufficient satellites for tracking after 30 second to a minute. The previous day I gave up after about 90 seconds. The behavior was odd. Rather than “seeking satellites” it said “active (0). So I waited. After more than 3 minutes, the minimum three satellites locked in with around 8 being available a few minutes later. This is how I found that Seattle’s legendary overcast was not GPS friendly. I can handled the cool damp grey but this … How can the abundance of local tech guys function her?

Which reminds me: When I got on the bus, the rather good looking female bus driver asks: “Are you running away from home”? While feeding two dollar bills into the machine, I tell her about Clockwise Around America then tell her I need to reach deep in my too tight pants pocket for a couple of quarters. She says: “I’m impressed. You even know the bus fare.” See, planning does pay.

Imagine that. Two friendly bus drivers in as many days.

Arriving at King Station three hours early allowed me time to fire up the laptop and complete work on day 2. My how time flies while you are having fun. No seriously. I sat in the pole position next to door 1 for 3 hours on a tear! The words just flowed into my MacBook while carrying on numerous side conversations with the growing line of passengers.

Maybe I can do this. When the open the door releasing the thundering herd, that on average is 8% greater than this time last year, I was number three for bordering. Number one and two were a nice enough older couple we would have granted first passage to anyway if they had only asked. My experience on the Coast Starlight allowed me to zero in on my (Chicago bound) coach and be first in my lower level compartment, again. Waiting for me is seat number 77 with the single 120 volt outlet behind, a broad window beside, and long extension tray in front that works no matter what the passenger in front of my does. The seats behind incline into the wall. The seats in front have no tray with eight feet of floor I have no use for. All the seats on the left of the car are powerless. No seat 77LL is mine.

Now I should have time to upload the rest of day two while still in the station. Me and Karen, my white haired Chicago-bound traveling companion are alone as the time of departure approaches. Unfortunately, our coach attendant was given a “cold” car not prepared for its journey. She was way behind. So much to do including stuffing more than 80 pillows into their sanitary cases. Imagine how surprised we both were when I volunteered to help. She made one attempt to protest and then disappeared to do her other (undisclosed) duties. I did all fifty that were arrayed around me knowing this was not enough for all the passengers but glad to be done. She saunters back in to tell me there is another back she had not opened for me yet. Probably so I would not see the full magnitude of the task. Happy to be of service mam!

Net result. By the time I finished her job we were out of data range in the Cascades.

Day 3 is about Waiting, Washing, and Writing

Many of the Day 2 posts were written during the three hours I sat in King Street Station waiting for the Empire Builder to board. They did not get posted till the morning of day four while waiting for the great in and out flow of tourists to ebb at Whitefish Montana. That’s the west gateway to Glacier National Park that itself was formed to promote the railroad rather than green causes.

I digress.

My first night off the train is actually my second free stay in a hotel on this journey. It’s free from the prospective that I used hotel frequent traveller points to book the hotel. In reality it is far from free considering all the hours, days, and weeks working on the road that it took to accumulate those points. Let’s just say it was not out of pocket now.

Proximity to the bus terminus, a moderate point charge, and a quest laundry were the primary selection criteria. As with the Burbank Residence Inn, it was an excellent choice. They both offered new immaculate modern and well appointed rooms complete with wired & wireless internet, more than half a dozen unused power outlets, and a refrigerator. Did I mention the great pillows? The Residence Inn wins points for being a one bedroom suite while losing for directly facing busy Interstate 5 and the main train trunk line. In all, a wash.

I am glad I chose Bellevue for the night. I got to see Lake Washington and Mercer Island again but the main inducement was traveling over the I-90 floating bridge. For the locals it is just a part of daily life. For the rest of us, it is a marvel. Remember when I said the deep waters created challenges for bridge makers? Well, this was the biggest.

The distance is too wide for cantilevered and suspension bridges and the water is too deep for pillars or towers. So the middle section floats on the water. From the east, the freeway bores through the headlands of Mercer Island emerging on a descent down to the lake surface. Passage need not be provided for ocean going vessels so the eastern and western spans afford adequate access for watercraft. Nowhere else will you ride so close to the water vertically. The western rise enters another tunnel through the cliffs that separate downtown Seattle from Lake Washington.

Today I get to take the pictures of the train stations I was not able to get the day before upon arrival. Then I sit down to wait and write.

I’m in Bellevue

The generational divide is sometimes a subtle thing. Language, fashion, aspirations, and concerns are often discussed in insurmountable terms. I think it is the little things that hinder communication more. Our points of reference change to create contextual barriers. My first son was born after “pushbuttons” replaced “dials” on phones leaving the context free term “dial tone” to explain. As pushbuttons became less mechanical and tactile, they became simply buttons not to be confused with clothing fasteners.

My second son came into the world when small, shiny coated aluminum CDs had already fully replaced “records” and “LPs” and “albums” the size of frisbees made of black plastic called “vinyl”. The record companies used this technological advance to sell us music we already owned setting themselves up for rebellion by the next younger group when the now digital music on CDs were freed from the physical platter entirely by personal computers followed by the internet. Some members of the WWII “greatest” generation think that iPods are radios

Technology is a tangible reference point that allows more adaptable people to keep up with changes. How our shared experiences are harder to disentangle. Case in point: I call up my two sons and say: “I’m in Bellevue”. One says “Ehh?” and the other says “Hmm”. They rarely use vowels except in acronyms like “OMG” and “LOL”. If you don’t know what those mean, you get my point. They do not know that Bellevue is across Lake Washington from Seattle though they should know I am somewhere in that vacinity.

When I say the same thing to my brother (“I’m in Bellevue”), his reaction is completely different. “You don’t want to tell that anyone else.” I immediately know what he means. For our generation, Bellevue is synonymous with incarceration in a mental institution. I don’t even know why. It has something to do with 1960′s or 70′s television. He also does not know where Bellevue Washington is on a map but the visceral reaction is completely different.

Bellevue is not as hip as Seattle to the west and not as famous as Redmond (Microsoft) to the north. The town is luckier than the stretch to the south towards Tacoma that was decimated by the decline of Boeing employment over the years that culminated in the move of their headquarters to Chicago. You would not know we are in a recession given the full city block of construction across from my brand new Courtyard hotel and the recently completed transit hub uphill from the upgraded freeway interchange.

The Former Homeless Man and the Future Ivy League Student.

As befits Seattle we arrive underground. For reasons unknown to me, we arrive in the smaller and externally more decrepit King Street Station instead of much larger and more ornate Union Station right next door. I am too tired to notice that evening the moderately grand well maintained tiny  little lobby by turn of the century before last standards. It even has what looks large internal portholes to complement its functional though ugly square columns. Why I don’t know?

My prior planning included finding the route and schedule of the appropriate express bus rout to the Courtyard hotel I selected two bodies of land east of the train station. It is way too expensive downtown and I could not find any hotels I could reserve with a moderate number of points. Anyway, I knew I needed Sound Transit Express Bus 550. I knew its map location in relation to the station. I even knew the scheduled frequency well enough to adjust to the fact that we arrived more than 30 minutes earlier. [Yes, you heard right. An Amtrak train arrived e-a-r-l-y.]

What I did not take into account is the 3-D nature of this town. First I had to go west to 2nd Street before going east to 5th Street on Jackson. Then I had the choice of walking up two stories via a wide curving concrete stairway or hauling my butt up the incline that is 2nd Street and virtually every other street in town. I choose the street only because I missed the partially concealed stairway in my haste to get moving after sitting for so long. My overheard compatible rolling back with the 18 lb battery and other stuff is actually siting crosswise on my roller-equipped suit bag with no suit. My overstuffed laptop backpack is providing lateral but not vertical stability. What choice would you make if you knew you had a choice?

The bus bay for ST Express 550 is beside a new clean transit court and across the street from an old seedy transit bar. Also across the street is the gate to Chinatown. The Los Angles area Chinatown is just one block west of Union Station. This one is just south of another Union Station. Food for thought.

Out of the bar comes a thin sleek black man wearing a blue King County jumper. His check of the  plaque mounted schedule for buss 545 reveals he came out just about on time. When I comment on his good fortune, we start up a conversation. I tell him about Clockwise Around America. He tells me about his life, the short version. Four years ago he was homeless after moving some undisclosed time before from the east coast. Today he is a twice promoted maintenance worker. Proud of it too as he has every right to do. He smokes and he drinks but he has held onto his job. He frequents the seedy bar he used to spend panhandling money in because it is a “man’s bar” where he became a man again.

Nice Guy.

Beside us forming a rough equilateral triangle is a young short pear-shaped African-American girl with a cute face and enough curiosity to kill a cat. Her eyes keep darting to us as our discussion progressed. I ask her if she is taking 545 or 550. When it is clear we will be on the same bus, she tells me how she just missed the prior one that was right on time. That was the bus I missed because I had to go west  before east and up two stories not revealed on the flat map.

She fidgets with her pink Palm Centro. I ask her why she is not using a Blackberry that I read is  popular with women. Too wide. Too ugly. Plus she turns out to be much young than I thought. She is proud of her pink Centro since there are only three other she knows of in her high school. Clearly she is not a conformist.

When the bus comes, I offer to pay her ticket. She already knows this is only because I have no change and no ones. I will be forced to pay $5 for a $2.50 ticket which I am glad to do to avoid pay over $60 to a cabbie. This allows me to maintain my public transit cred unlike in LA.  She owns a monthly pass so I get ready to run my five dollars through the bill reader. To my utmost surprise, the bus driver says: “This time, its on the house”.

We sit near the center joint in the articulating bus. The high rise side seat she clearly expects me to sit in is snatched as I am dealing with my bags. So I sit down in the windowless accordion joint compartment beside and below her.

“Did you go to college?”, she asks. “University of Chicago”, I say. Her plans include Stanford or maybe Cornell. These are schools I considered before settling on Chicago. Before I can stop myself, I ask: “Are your grades good enough to get into those schools”? Before I have time to be embarassed at the rude and potentially discriminatory comment, she cheerfully tells she is a grade A student.

As we talk, I am trying to get either of my two GPS bluetooth units to pick up a satellite signal through the overcast sky and laminated window. Nope. Nothing Nada. I ask her to hold one and then the other closer to window. Still no dice. So I revert to old school methods. I scan the sign posts for names and track or route manually using Google Maps on my cell phone. That’s old school for me. I don’t use paper maps.

Seattle is one of the few 3-D Cities. America’s Hong Kong.

Going anywhere in Seattle requires you to go up, down and through as often as left, right or around. Stairs, escalators, bridges, and tunnels abound. Flat land must be created by bulldozing hills or  by landfilling water courses which is frowned upon in the heavily Green city. So bulldozing it is. Before building their subway, Seattle already had a transit tunnel keeping much traffic underground.

Building rise parallel to ridges they only sometimes surmount while houses cling desperately to hills with concrete walls and cantilevered rooms. It is not uncommon to enter on one level and leave on another in larger structures. You need both limber necks and strong legs to  navigate this place.

Maybe this is why Vancouver is home to the largest expatriate community to Chinese from Hong Kong. In addition to more favorable immigration laws for former members of the United Kingdom than the USA, the greater Seattle area looks like home. Colder and greener but in other ways familiar.