Train Travel

I returned on Sunday from the longest train trip I've taken in quite some time, maybe ever (I'm not sure if I remember taking a train from Chicago to NYC in the early 60s). My aunt passed away on Oct 28th, just before her 80th birthday. Yesterday was the memorial service and wake in North Carolina. We decided to go by train from Trenton NJ to Cary NC, about 9 hours and 540 miles (775km) each way.

We found the train trip to be both cost-effective and sane. It's cheaper than going by plane, and it takes longer it's not "that" much longer given the time it would take to get to the airport and go through Security Theater.

Even more important, my 6ft-tall husband can sit *comfortably*, without tormenting his bad back or worse knee. There are power strips down the sides of the cars, so he could plug in a laptop and even get work done (yes, I use a desktop. I read a book and snooooozed). Not a full, but something -- and you get off feeling exhausted and in need of a chiropractor. Especially if you were snooooooozing.

I've never taken a train south of Washington DC before. I don't think I've ever been down to Atlanta, etc., except by superhighway or air. Because there are no local trains in VA (south of the DC Metro area) or NC, there are only 2 train track "lanes" instead of the 4-5 or more you get in BosWash. So the trains are closer to the landscape and the area about the tracks is less grubby, making for a prettier ride than I'm used to in the NorthEast.

The Distant Future of Fandom and I were very interested to see how different the land use patterns are in in VA and NC compared to NJ & New England. I hadn't realized how *flat* the region is, and how much larger the fields are than the standard for farms further north. I was surprised not to see any tobacco fields (or at least none I recognized -- there's some tobacco farming in the Connecticut River Valley, believe it or not, and the barns for drying the tobacco are quite distinctive).

The house styles, the way the streets are laid out -- broader and straighter than north of the Mason-Dixon line -- reminded D very much of Georgia where he grew up, though the VA/NC area we went through is much flatter and not quite as piney. But to my surprise we went through areas in NC still being cultivated for lumber.

The landscape is beautiful right now -- north of DC the leaves are mostly fallen or past peak, but in VA/NC they're lovely and golden. I was suprised at how low the rivers in VA are -- crossing the James at Richmond, wide stone shoals are visible all across the river. The land doesn't look particularly drought-stricken -- weeds and vines are still green -- but they clearly didn't get as much of a hurricane season as usual.

Do you non-USans take long (more than 300mi/500km) train trips any more? What's train travel like for you?

Down to the sea in ships

I just realized that I have had an experience that is probably quite rare for people under 60, and almost unknown to anyone born after 1970.

I have crossed the Atlantic in a ship. Three times, in fact.

In the fall of 1964, when I was 8, my family travelled to France to live for a year in Aix-en-Provence (Fulbright scholarship). We travelled on the SS United States. I remember it as being quite excitingly rocky -- there was at least one meal where my father and I were just about the only passengers in the madly-tilting dining room, which had all kinds of fascinating fittings to keep the food & place settings from flying off the table.

In the late spring of 1965, we returned to the US on the maiden voyage of the liner Michelangelo.
I don't remember all that much about the trip, though the ship was extremely stylish, especially compared to the metallic United States. Not that style is everything -- my mother remembers the crew sweaping the carpets in the hallways with brooms instead of vacuum cleaners, which was rather ineffective.

In the late summer of 1968, when I was 12, we returned to France for a year in Dijon as part of a faculty-exchange program. We travelled over on SS France. This was a much more leisurely trip than the one on the United States, but frankly all I remember is running along the stairs and gangways with the children we made friends with on the trip.

As I think about it, there's a distinctive smell of these ocean liners: cold, salty, oily, and metallic. It's not a smell we get on the ferry boats I've ridden many times since, it's both brinier and more engine-like, with none of the fish or seaweed smells you get on the ocean nearer shore.

When we returned to the US in June 1969 my father, whose leg was in a cast, travelled on the France and my mother took my brother & me home by air, via Finland (where we shopped for furniture) and Iceland (because Icelandic was the cheapest way to fly across the Atlantic at the time, and our plane was delayed in Reykjavik for an extra day).

And that was pretty much the end of the transatlantic liner era: the United States is anchored immovably in Philadelphia, the Michelangelo was scrapped in 1991, and the France is being scrapped as I write. Plenty of ships cross the Atlantic still, of course, but there are almost no passengers: long sea voyages are for work or for play, but not for *travel*.

I'm curious, for those of you who've been on cruises and other forms of ocean transport: is the movement of those ships enough that when you get to land, the land seems to go up-and-down until you get used to it again? It was very noticeable and amusing for me as a child after the transatlantic crossings -- the United States took about 4 days, the others I guess about 6 days each.