All Aboard the California Zephyr

I left Denver on Wednesday morning at Union Station, where I nervously said goodbye to my parents for a year and hopped aboard a fairly empty train, spending a full minute attempting to stuff my enormous pack into the overhead compartment which served as entertainment for the other passengers. "That's a big pack!" they said, stating the obvious as they watched me struggle.

I was exhausted from my 4th of July exploits the night before, in addition to the all-nighter I pulled trying to prepare for the trip, but I was determined to stay awake until we made it to Winter Park so I could see my city and state from another perspective. I made it all the way to the 20th street bridge — a full three blocks from Union Station — before passing out.

The train was packed with all sorts of odd people. There was an enormous family of Amish, who were — according to someone who talked to them — on their way to Tijuana to get low-cost (and in my opinion, super-sketchy) cancer treatment for one of the members of the family. Another guy on the train seemed to be autistic, and carefully took a photograph of each mile of the trip and scribbled our current mileage on a piece of paper. He also laughed and made "toot! toot!" noises as we passed cars along the road.

Somewhere during my first day of being on the train, I started meeting other people, who quickly became my train-friends. We got into patterns of meeting up at random in the lounge car, which we all but took over from the other passengers by the end of the trip. Here's a rundown of who I hung out with: Patrick lives in Brooklyn and works for the New Yorker organizing a big festival they have each year. Faith is a 20 year old from Florida and is traveling on a solo trip by train in a huge circle around USA and Canada. Lailye is from Massachusetts and is into avant-garde dance and decided to give away most of her stuff and move to North Oakland. Blossom is an expert gardener, and has lived in San Francisco for 13 years. There were other people peppered in there here and there, but that was the main group.

Riding on Amtrak is a weird deal, and doesn't seem to have its you-know-what together quite as much as, say, any other form of transportation. Lailye said it felt like riding on a luxury train in Eastern Europe, which seemed about right. There was something insanely awkward about the whole thing. The on-board announcements were always quirky and strange and didn't have the air of a big corporate entity like you would expect. You'd hear things over the loudspeaker like, "Hey Phil? Katie? It's the dining car. You've both got lunch reservations at 12:45, but it's already 12:50 and you're not here. If you could stop by the dining car and let us know what's going on, that would be great." It was very odd.

Amtrak's scheduling system is pretty hilarious because it has all of these magically precise arrival/departure times like 8:07, 9:42, and 11:54, when in reality the good people at Amtrak have no idea when the hell the train will get anywhere. I found out that Amtrak doesn't own any of the track on which we were traveling, so we were always having to stop and wait for freight trains to pass because we were riding on borrowed track. It was always easy to tell when we were running late because the smokers would start grumbling. We haven't gotten fresh air in a while. Shouldn't we be in Reno by now? Let me see that schedule, honey.

We arrived in Emeryville (between Oakland and Berkeley) exactly five and a half hours behind schedule, making my train ride right around 40 hours long. As we arrived, I said goodbye to my new friends and said hello to my Dad's cousin Kris and her husband Will, who live in Berkeley where I am staying.

This morning, I ventured out into the city to meet Faith and Blossom, two friends from the train, to see areas of the city that might otherwise be overlooked by tourists. We met at the Coit Tower and took the elevator to the top for spectacular city views,then ventured down the fantastic Filbert Steps, which are full of stunning gardens and are home to the famous parrots of telegraph hill. Then the three of us took the bus across to the foot of the Golden Gate Bridge, where we shot some photos before heading down to a very secluded beach that Blossom knew about. The beach was full of naked tan gay men, which was a little bit awkward for me since I was clothed, straight and pale. We hung out for a while, enjoyed the views (of the bridge and the ocean, not the man-ass). We caught a bus away from the bridge and back to the middle of the financial district where I took the Bart to meet Gretchen (my dad's other cousin) and my Great Aunt Dofie.

The two of them had picked up a flier for a Peruvian foundation fundraiser, so we went off to experience a night of Peruvian food, a live band, and dancing afterward. The food was delicious, the band was really enjoyable, and the dancing was brief (for me at least) so it was a great night.

I've got loose plans for tomorrow, so I'll update you soon to let you know what I'm up to. Thanks for reading!

--Ryan!

Photos updated: California Zephyr