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It was beloved wife Carol's idea (I dare not say "demand") that we take the Amtrak choo-choo train back from L.A. to Chicago and, as I usually get my way and we are most often doing things that pursue my particular pursuits, pleasures, predilections and peccadilloes (try saying THAT three times fast!), I was more than willing to acquiesce. Well, maybe "more than willing" is an overstatement, as we did this once before, something like a dozen years ago, and I recall that trip was expen$ive, sometimes slightly uncomfortable and a strange, lumpy mix of excellence and excrement in that we went through what I think SHOULD have been the most scenic parts of the trip (the hills & mountains east of L.A.) at night (the train leaves LA at 5-ish PM), so's ya didn't get t'see NUTHIN'! The same is true today. But Carol doesn't much enjoy airports or flying in general (what keeps those oversized & oft-overloaded cigar tubes up there anyway?) even though we've taken many, many plane trips together. She thought Amtrak's Southwest Chief would be a great alternative way to relax, unwind, decompress following our two weeks with the kids in LA (not that we did much besides decompressing our whole time there) and enjoy the grandeur, majestic vistas and humbling expanse of this Great American Landscape that we too often take for granted but rarely take the time to behold, be amazed by and enjoy. We didn't do it on the cheap, either, as we booked our own private bedroom (roughly $1700 even with Amtrak's doddering-senior discount), and said room comes with its own, convrtible, fold-out lower bed and its own, built-in bathroom and shower, all of it put neatly together in a space the size of your average clothes closet. It's actually quite cleverly engineered, but I believe the person who designed it was of, shall we say, petite proportions or munchkin stature, as offensive or defensive linemen from either the worrisome LA Rams or my beloved Chicago Bears (who will meet Sunday evening in a truly crucial playoff game...GO BEARS!) would find it a near-impossible fit. Suffice to say that the potty/shower space is somewhat minimalist and reminiscent in size and shape, if not aesthetics, of the standing, carved wooden sarchophagi the ancient Egyptians used to house their Important Dead Folks...at least until some nosy, "the world is our oyster" Brits came around many centuries later to "find them" (even though they were never truly lost) and spirit them off to The British Museum. But I digress. The bottom line is that the toilet itself is fully serviceable and even comfortable (translation: "better than leaning back against a tree") but your larger types will have to damn near straddle the darn thing to take a shower. And the overall soundproofing is of such quality that you can not only hear when the person in the next compartment has paused to relieve themselves, but can even guess with reasonable certainty whether they are of the male or female persuasion... Then there's that sumptuous, convertible "lower" bed, which we learned to fold out with only a small bit of groaning, clanking and cursing and bringing the mattress/bedding down from the bunk above (which we essentially used a a storage shelf, as there isn't much place to put anything but your butt and a wee carry-on in the rest of the compartment). Speaking of the bed, I imagine it had the general fit, feel and comfort level of the jail-house cot that loveable rummy Otis occupied while sleeping his latest bender off on in Mayberry RFD. That said, we slept well once we got to sleep--think about that one--and the only irritants of any consequence were the sometimes rough roadbed under the train cars' steel wheels (it varied considerably depending on how much use and attendant maintenance a particular section might get) and the way the engineer gleefully had to blow that damn horn every time we approached a crossroad. This hardly happened at all though our great American Southwest, but there was a stretch through Kansas or Iowa or wherever the second night where I figured he was just trying to piss me off. Did a good job of it, too. But then it all melted away and I slept the sleep of the just and righteous. Or passed out like alley drunk Otis...take yer pick. But you WILL be chummy, as the bed is quite narrow for two, although I have always thought of that as a plus rather than a minus for the past half-century and change, and I both hope and believe that Carol feels the same... Now that I've picked all my nits, let's get to the Good and even Great aspects of Amtrak travel. Starting with the scenery though heart-hollowing stretches of the American landscape. When flying--particularly heading west--I am continually and pleasantly amazed by the expanse of impressive, empty and undeveloped space that's still out there. You lose sight of that on the street pavements of New York or Boston or Philly or Chicago and all the way west to Hollywood and Vine. But it's even bigger and grander and slower moving from the comfy, landscape-facing/picture-window conversation circles of the Southwest Chief's Observation Car. At one point, in the middle of truly breathtaking American nowhere, the conductor came crackling over the P.A. system thusly: "There's a big herd of Elk off to our right if you'd care to take a look..." You don't get that kind of thing on a 737 at 30,000 feet! I also need to mention the staff, who were wonderfully pleasant and accomodating. You can tell that they truly enjoy and are enthusiasts for what they do. Bedroom and "Roomette" passage includes meals--served in a dining car with white linen tablecloths--and the food was generally good (the steak I had the first night was tasty and chewable by older folks & Carol enjoyed her chicken, while the salmon we both ordered the second night was--how can I put this?--okay, but hardly exceptional. Breakfasts were good (it's hard to screw up an egg if you just don't mess with it too much) but the best part of the whole Amtrak meal deal is you get to sit with different fellow-passengers each time. We met some nice people--some of whom were habitual train travelers--and enjoyed some interesting conversations. It turned out that one chap named Jodee was kind of a semi-retired left-brain scientist, but also rode motorcycles long distances and even raced them a bit in his younger years. He was a true gem (and I'm not just saying that because he subsequently ordered a book and one of our audiobooks...) Things change a bit through the train windows as you advance out of the Southwest and into the great, grassy flatlands and proud, weary, well-worn cities of our American midwest. You pass through small, rural towns and see all the little clapboard houses--some neat with trimmed lawns and flower beds and window boxes and others, in the poorer ends of town, with low, grubby piles of discards and junk, derelict cars up on cinder blocks and the hopeless, gritty gloom of scraping-to-get-by American poverty... This, too, is our landscape. And our heritage...
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