Riding the Rails

 

There is something about taking the train.  It is part romantic and nostalgic.  I imagine that riding the rails takes us back to the years when trains freed us to travel overland between cities comfortably and efficiently.  There is the rumble, the vibration, of the rails.  It is calming and relaxing to the point where dozing off is very easy to do, almost irresistible.  You can gaze out the windows at the countryside or city scapes passing by.  You can visit with family or, if traveling alone, meet new people.  Of course, one can get lost reading a book or listening to music.  With trains having Wifi these days, we can open our laptops or pads and work or use our phones. 

It is not just me, Agatha Christie, whose most famous book takes place on a train, said:  

Trains are wonderful.... To travel by train is to see nature and human beings, towns and churches, and rivers, in fact, to see life.

A few weeks ago, I drove to Detroit for a musical engagement.  My daughter and family from California were visiting my mother and the rest of our Detroit family.  It was the first time any of them met her son Sasoun.  The plan was for them to drive to Chicago and visit with all of us here.  So, I was going to leave my car for them and venture back home by plane.  The problem was that the airfare was a bit pricey, so I investigated Amtrak.  They were much more reasonable, so I bought a ticket. 

“The simplicity of a train's success strategy is admirable: Move forward and reach your destination!” ― Mehmet Murat ildan.

This was the first time I was taking a train, other than commuter trains, since the earlier this century when I took a train from Manhattan to DC.  That was probably twenty years ago now that I think of it.  

The train left Ann Arbor at 10:26 on a fall Sunday morning.  My daughter dropped me off around 10 and there was already 30-40 people waiting.  There was an announcement that due to the train only having one conductor we had to queue up and board the train through one door.  Clearly Amtrak was struggling for workers like many other companies.  Shortly, there were 30-40 people behind me in the line.  A fellow behind me said, “I take this train all of the time and I never seen so many people on the platform.”  The man in front of me explained, “I was booked on the later train but got a call from Amtrak yesterday saying they were cancelling that train and booked me on this.”  So, we were dealing with a labor shortage and a fully booked, potentially standing room only, train.

A. A. Milne quipped, “Nowhere can I think so happily as in a train.”

I was worried about nothing.  The train boarding was surprisingly quick, and I easily found a seat.  Being a train from Ann Arbor to Chicago, there were a lot of students from Chicago visiting friends in Ann Arbor and a lot of young Michigan alums back in Ann Arbor for the football game.  I ended up sitting next to a junior from the University of Chicago who was visiting her freshman sister at Michigan.  She was from New Jersey and remarkably, as she was not Armenian, was taking a class in Armenian Art… because “it sounded interesting.”  I went through and answered my emails, I read, I slept, and I just enjoyed the ride, the views, and the ambiance.    

I might have been the oldest person on the train.  This thought amused me for some reason.  I didn’t feel like the oldest person on the train, but I am sure I looked it.  Perhaps not as much as the author of Winnie-the-Pooh, but I was thinking happily on the train.

I shall have to do this again.