The Sunset Limited left Los Angeles Union Station at 10:00
on a Wednesday evening in June, taking me on a journey that would roughly
follow the Easy Rider route-- paralleling
I-10 east through hundreds of miles of desert, crossing the vast expanse of
Texas, and continuing on to New Orleans.
On the whole, the train ride would prove to be a better trip.
A year or two ago, as I contemplated retirement from my
civil service job, I began to think about trips I wanted to take and places I
wanted to go. At some point, the
thought occurred to me of combining two of my loves, baseball and trains. Why not take a train trip across the
country, visiting ballparks along the way? As my nephew Mark Trumbo established himself as a rising
star with the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, the idea became more
concrete. I would follow the
Angels on a road trip, and do it entirely by rail.
In the summer of 2011, I often traveled by Amtrak or
Metrolink from Union Station to Anaheim to watch Mark in his outstanding rookie
year. On some of these trips, I
read Paul Theroux’s wonderful books about rail journeys across Asia, The Great Railway Bazaar and Ghost Train to the Eastern Star. My journey would be less adventurous,
but Theroux’s writing helped keep the idea at the front of my mind.
By year’s end, retirement became a reality, and I began
researching the trip. I quickly
discovered that it was more complicated than I had anticipated. The fundamental problem was integrating
baseball and railroad schedules.
Baseball road trips typically involve series in two or three cities over
a period of a week to ten days. Although
most of the cities are on Amtrak routes, the schedule is not designed with train
travel in mind. At no time this
year, for example, do the Angels play consecutive series in Baltimore, New York
and Boston (or even two of the three), all American League cities served by
frequent trains on Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor route. More typical is the Angels’ schedule for July 30-August 8,
which has four games in Texas, three in Chicago and three in Oakland--ten games
in ten days in cities many hundreds of miles apart. Such a “road trip” requires air travel.
The best possibility was the Angels’ last road trip before
the All-Star break: two games in
Baltimore, four in Toronto, and three in Cleveland. The first part of the trip was straightforward: I would take the Sunset Limited from
Los Angeles to New Orleans, and then the Crescent from New Orleans to
Baltimore. The next part was
problematic. To get to Toronto by
train, I would have to leave Baltimore in the wee hours of the morning, change
trains in New York, and arrive in Toronto too late for the Friday game. Then I would have to leave Toronto on
Sunday morning, and miss the final game there, in order to get to Cleveland in
time for Monday’s game.
Much as I would have liked to see Toronto, getting there on
this trip simply was not practical.
I decided instead to take the short train trip from Baltimore to
Philadephia, see a Phillies game, and rejoin the Angels in Cleveland. Then I would go to Pittsburgh to catch
a couple of games with the Giants, before returning home via Chicago.
Amtrak offers 15-, 30- and 45-day passes that allow travel to
multiple cities for substantially less than regular coach fare. That gets you a seat with a little more
legroom than a coach seat on a plane.
For an additional sum, you can get a room in the sleeping car, but the
additional sum amounts to several hundred dollars a night. I bought a 30-day pass, figuring I
would save money by traveling coach, and compensate by getting a couple of
extra days of rest at stops along the way.
On the evening of June 20, the idea at last was becoming
reality. As we rolled east through
the San Gabriel Valley, I made my way to the observation car. As I sipped a Sierra Nevada, I
began reading the final chapters of Mark Haskell Smith’s witty, informative and
slightly subversive book, Heart of
Dankness: Underground Botanists,
Outlaw Farmers, and the race for the Cannabis Cup.
It seemed that we were making slow progress, and sure
enough, we arrived a few minutes late at the first stop, Pomona. We were even later getting to Palm
Springs. The sad truth is that
Amtrak runs on borrowed track, and the owners of the track have priority. So the Sunset Limited, like most Amtrak
trains, must wait for freight trains to pass.
After midnight, I headed back to my window seat next to a
student bound for Tucson. Here I
discovered a fundamental miscalculation that was to haunt me the rest of the
trip. Coach seats on trains do
offer more legroom than on planes, but not enough. There is a legrest that extends out from your seat to align
with the footrest that folds out from the seat in front of you. It might work if you’re no more than
five feet tall, but I found that there wasn’t enough room to fully extend my
legs. Also, the seats only recline
about 20 degrees, although this appears to be more a design limitation than a
space limitation. In short, if I
was going to get any sleep, it wouldn’t be in anything close to a horizontal
position. It would be slouching in
a decidedly un-ergonomic position somewhere between sitting and lying.
It didn’t work for me that night, or any subsequent night on
a train. I would get reasonably
comfortable, close my eyes … and then, after a few minutes, the position would
become uncomfortable and I would shift to another. After more position changes than Willard Mitt Romney on
crack, I would finally doze off for a few minutes … and then wake up with a
pain that could be assuaged only by another position change. I slept maybe two or three hours that
night, and wouldn’t do much better in the nights to come.
We were supposed to arrive in Tucson at 7:30 in the morning
for a 45-minute stop, enough time to get off the train, and maybe get a cup of
coffee and a bagel. But by
then we were running more than an hour late, so I had breakfast on the train,
after duly photographing it. It
appears that I had what was to become for me an Amtrak “usual”: vegetable omelet, Yukon potatoes (in
lieu of grits) and croissant (in lieu of biscuit or raisin bread). This was served on what I came to think of as Amtrak china—a
white plastic plate with Amtrak blue border that might look like china in a
photo.
When we finally arrived in Tucson, we were advised not to
venture far from the station if we got off the train. I got off and surveyed the terrain. The station was in such an
out-of-the-way location that there wasn’t even a Starbucks in sight. I had to settle for a cup of coffee
from the vending machine in the station.
It further developed that the train had an unspecified mechanical
problem that had to be dealt with before we could leave. The stop stretched to more than two
hours, and it was late morning before we pulled out of Tucson.
The Arizona desert is beautiful in a minimalist sort of
way. We lumbered eastward, past
saguaro cactus and distant mountain ranges, through the small towns of Benson,
Arizona and Deming and Lordsburg, New Mexico. The mountains became closer, and the train slowed as
it rounded hilly bends, crossed the Rio Grande, and arrived in El Paso four
hours late.
El Paso appeared to be a more interesting city than I was
expecting, but there wasn’t enough time there to make getting off the train
worthwhile. After that, it was a
seemingly endless slog across Texas.
We slowed down, but didn’t stop for Marfa, perhaps best known as a movie
location. A short distance later was
a stop at Alpine, adjacent to Big Bend National Park. Two hours later was Sanderson. Another three hours to Del Rio, the border town best known
to me for being across the Rio Grande from the 500,000-watt transmitters that
broadcast to much of the United States strangely exotic radio programs I
remember listening to in high school.
From a thousand miles away, I could tune in the static-laden sounds of
blue singers and crazy preachers howling in the night.
No such entertainment on the train, though. Between the stops was a seemingly
endless stretch of nothing. This
was West Texas, land of the Rugged Individual, epicenter of the American Dream
to some. And it was too barren and
desolate a place even for Ron Paul, who represents a more hospitable district
near Galveston. This patch of West
Texas was just a place to escape from at maximum velocity, which is seldom
achieved on Amtrak.
Nothing happened until we reached San Antonio. Not much happened there either. I had spent a happy three days in
San Antonio in 1990, attending a hearing officers conference, seeing the Alamo,
and discovering the charms of the River Walk. We were scheduled for a 95-minute stop at 4:50 Friday morning,
but we were now running several hours late. So the stop was truncated, and we were again instructed to
stay close.
By now, the brown desert terrain had given way to green
farmlands. We passed a watermelon festival in one small town. After a stop in Houston, on through the
night, across industrial East Texas and Louisiana. We were scheduled to arrive in New Orleans at 9:40 Friday
evening, but we were still running four hours behind, and I phoned my hotel
with a projected 2:00 a.m. arrival.
But then I had my first pleasant encounter with the Amtrak fudge factor,
as I discovered that the schedule built an extra hour into the journey between
the penultimate stop in Schreiver and the final one in New Orleans. By now I was tracking our progress on
my phone’s maps app, and I was thrilled when we crossed the Huey P. Long Bridge
into New Orleans. We arrived at
the station about 12:30, with the Big Easy wide-awake and going strong.
I, on the other hand, was sleep-deprived and exhausted. I checked in at the St. Christopher
Hotel, just across Canal Street from the French Quarter. The St. Christopher occupies a
renovated brick structure that was the tallest building in town when erected in
the late 1800s. My room was small,
with quirky angles that made furniture arrangement problematic, the original
brick walls and a window looking out on the street. It was quite pleasant.
I slept until mid-morning, getting up just in time for the
continental breakfast downstairs.
I was left with half a day to see what I could of New Orleans. It was hot and humid when I ventured
into the Vieux Carré, but the Quarter was jumping by mid-day.
I walked several blocks to Bourbon Street,
where Café Beignet at Musical Legends Park offered free live jazz. I entered the pocket park, walking past
life-sized statues of Fats Domino, Al Hirt and Pete Fountain. Sure enough, a quartet with a vocalist
were performing standards as I found a stool in the shade at Café Beignet’s
outdoor bar. They offered mango
daiquiris, which seemed like a good way to beat the heat. Eight dollars and a coupon from a
tourist publication bought me two of them, dispensed from a Slurpy-type machine
and served in large plastic tumblers.
If you’re at a place called Café Beignet, how
can you not try the beignets? For
less than $4.00, I got an order of three, served fresh from the oven and too
hot to eat immediately. They were
something like large doughnuts without holes, and were delicious but filling. I saved the last one for breakfast the
next morning. When the band went
on break, I decided it was time to go.
I asked the bartender if it was OK to take my drink out on the street,
and she said it was fine as long as it wasn’t in a glass container. My kind of town, I said.
That evening, I ventured back to the Quarter
without a particular destination in mind, but seeking music and Cajun
food. I passed a number of inviting
restaurants, but after the beignets I wasn’t very hungry. I ventured down a quiet side street,
and soon was surprised by what seemed like a Mardi Gras parade, complete with
marching band. I followed it to
Bourbon Street, where the sidewalks were lined with watching crowds.
When the parade was over, I found myself half a
block from the park and Café Beignet.
Music was happening. According
to their website, it was apparently Steamboat Willie and His New Orleans Jazz
Band. His voice and choice of
material reminded me a lot of Leon Redbone. I settled in and had a bowl of gumbo. It was tasty, and all the dinner I
needed.
There was much more to see and do in one of the
most fascinating and original cities in the United States, but it would have to
wait for my next visit. My train was
to leave at 7:00 a.m., and I didn’t expect much sleep on the overnight trip to
Baltimore. The hour was early, but
the time had come to call it a night.
