If all goes as it should

This time tomorrow I will be on a train bound for my parents' town. I have a sleeping compartment, which I have concluded is the BEST way to travel, especially if you are traveling alone.

For me, driving is out of the question - it is too far (it would be a two-day drive for me as I'd be doing it all myself). Part of the logical route would be through a major city that I would rather not drive in. And one of my friends who has taken a similar route has told me a few hair-raising stories of things other drivers have done, including try to run her off the road.

And flying...in my experience, flying alone is a misery. It's not so bad if you've got someone traveling with you, if there's someone else to hold your bag while you surrender your various forms of ID. Or to be another pair of eyes as you go through security or to watch your bags when you go to the washroom (not that I carry anything very valuable when I travel, anyway. My brother is scandalized that I don't travel with my laptop but meh. If I have a paper I want to work on I save it to a flashdrive and borrow my dad's. And I'm a Luddite who doesn't own an iPod or a portable dvd player. I tend to carry books to amuse me. And knitting on the train - that's another issue; whether or not you're permitted your needles in a carry on on the plane is apparently up to the whims of the specific TSA screener, and it would be frustrating to get someone with issues who would confiscate all your needles and leave you with an unraveling project stuffed in your bag).

And airports are, I think, after hospitals and car-repair-place waiting rooms, one of the most depressing places on earth. Even when I've been going on vacation with people I love I find the airport depressing.

At least with the train, there are minimal security checks. I suppose someday that may come back to bite us, but I do think the train in the US is much lower profile than other means of transport, and therefore (I think, or perhaps I hope) much less likely to be attacked. I can carry my knitting needles and even my little scissors on. I can carry on water in a bottle without being asked to "prove" it's not some kind of dangerous substance.

And with the compartments, you are blessedly alone. No need to talk to anyone. No need to smile and put up with the sad-sack sort of conversations I seem to attract, where some woman feels the need to reveal to me that the child her husband thinks is his is actually his brother's. Or I hear great detail of all the medical procedures someone's had in the past year. And perhaps I'm excessively polite, but I do not know a non-churlish way of saying, "This is making me sad and twitchy; can we please talk about something else, or better yet, not talk?" I have, at times, used the ruse of carrying on a book that was at least marginally related to my field and to make noises like I "needed" to read it for work, but sometimes that doesn't even help.

(Yes, I'm sure that many people have wonderful experiences with lovely people on the train; perhaps romances have even blossomed. But I seem to wind up with the embittered 75 year old woman or the multiply-divorced, multiply-fired-from-job 40 year old who can't understand why nothing goes well for him)

At any rate. In the compartment, I can sit down and close the door. No one but the car attendant will speak to me. I can pull out my book and read, or pull out my knitting. Or I can sit and look out the window. And I have this cushion of peace all around me - it's quiet, I'm safe, I don't have to paste on a smile and make vague neutral noises about someone's sad life story.

And I have a reservation in the dining car for dinner. And then, after dinner, the car attendant makes up the little hard bed in the compartment (I won't lie to you; the beds are not very comfortable but they are better than the coach seats for sleeping). I brush my teeth and braid my hair (I have long, long hair and I braid it at night so it doesn't tangle) and wash my face. And then in the compartment I pull all the drapes and get out my pajamas and make sure they're all turned right-side out before turning out the light and quickly changing in the dark.

But I don't try to sleep right away. Because, for me, the best part of the trip is propping myself up in that little hard bed on the pillows, and pulling back the window curtain a little so I can see out - and with the lights still out in the compartment, looking out at the dark world. For long stretches there may be nothing but darker tree branches against a dark sky (perhaps with a few stars if it is not cloudy). But there are also numerous small towns. And there's something kind of fascinating to me about traveling through those small towns at night - passing the "main drag" and seeing the McDonald's or the Sonic or the dollar store, still lit up for the night. Or traveling past houses and seeing that there are lights on behind the drawn curtains, and thinking about all those lives - the hundreds of independent lives out there, none of them people I know, none of them that know me.

In a strange way, I find that kind of comforting - thinking of all those people out there on the dark plains, going about their lives - putting their children to bed, or listening to the news on the television, or doing the last of the dinner dishes in the kitchen. Thinking about the next day at work. Wondering if they should call their parents. Talking things over with their spouse.

And few of them give much thought, I think, to the Amtrak train sliding past their town in the dark (at least, I know, I don't think much about the freights that pass through my town; I hear them and think, oh, yes, that's the 4:15, but I don't really consider the men driving them or what they are carrying or where they are going).

And eventually, I start to feel tired and bored of watching the world slide by outside my window, and I try to sleep. I find I am getting better at it - the first few trips I made, I did not sleep at all; I could not get used to the rocking and the occasional noise. (I do carry earplugs and an eyeshade but they do not block things out perfectly.)

I wake up a few times during the night - check my watch, maybe peer out the window into the darkness. Eventually it is close enough to 6:30 am (the time they start serving breakfast) to consider getting up. And again, I repeat the dress-in-the-dark ritual of the night before, just in reverse. And I go to the washroom and brush out my hair and put on a little makeup, and head down to get something to eat.

And if all goes well, it's not too long after breakfast that I get off the train, in my parents' town.

Oh, you do have to be able to deal with lateness - it is not at all unusual for the train to be an hour or two late, on some occasions it has been considerably more than that. But I have no connections to make, I am on vacation, I have a stack of books and some small project I can work on, so I am usually content until I arrive at my destination.

Yes, it takes longer than flying does. But I prefer it so much to flying that the extra time does not really matter.