Unedited Notes from the Lake Shore Limited Adventure

I write to you from a hard seat at the Concord Coach Lines bus station. Uber driver was named Jimmy, and his taste in music is Christian rock. For a while I thought I might have to pay $40 bucks for that ride but fortunately I only paid $7. Uber is a racket. But Jimmy was very pleasant, despite his music.

 

On the bus to South Station, watching guys cram luggage into the very crowded Logan Airport bus in the next dock. Such a nice feeling not to be going to the airport. Ahead of me an old husband is picking his ear in exactly the same way my dad does.

 

Sat for an hour at South Station which is a mess of construction and very confusing. Suddenly realized how sad it is not to have those rattly arrival and departure boards. Electronic screens are no improvement though at least we can hear the public announcements now: they don’t sound like they’re emerging from a soup can wadded with wool.

 

Too bad my window is so dirty. I’ve noticed that there is also a dog passenger

 

Things not recommended: seatmate who FaceTimes noisily with friends. Fortunately she is getting off at the next stop.

 

Best view so far: central Massachusetts bog with heron. Leaves are further out than they are in Maine, but not by a lot. I haven’t yet done any writing but I might once my seatmate leaves. I just need to hope she isn’t replaced.

 

The Berkshires rising up so suddenly, like big lumps in a big carpet.

 

Now a scene: young woman somehow manages to miss her stop in Pittsfield and is marching up and down the aisles screeching into her phone I HAVE TO GO TO FUCKING ALBANY YOU HAVE TO PICK ME UP THERE NOELLE DO YOU WANT ME TO SLEEP ON A FUCKING PARK BENCH? Everyone else stays quiet, but we are all thinking the same thing. It is easy to tell what we’re all thinking: This is your own fault, girl. Also you’re making it very hard for us to feel sorry for you.

 

Coming into Albany: trailer parks and fields and strange massive barns not at all like New England barns. Lilacs are fully out; hardly peeking in Maine.

 

Really enjoying the fun of creating a 24-hour nest. I do hope I can keep this pair of seats to myself for overnight. But if not, I’ll manage. For some reason I am hearing the dim few notes of a harmonica. Somebody’s phone presumably. But it adds ambience.

 

Now here we sit in Albany for an hour waiting for the NYC train to meet up with us. That’s where all the sleeping cars are apparently, and the old people ahead of us are very excited to get into theirs. I am a little bit jealous but also this is fine. The dog passenger is disembarking. He was a very good boy but did make a lot of extra luggage for his person. I had enough to carry without carrying a dog too.

 

Now the woman in the seat across from me is spraying disinfectant all over the seat of the nice young person who’d been next to her. I really do not think that nice young person was squishing disease into the vinyl seat. However, we all have our private worries.

 

I think this stop in Albany will be boring. The view is quite dull—lots of concrete, a parking lot and parking garage, some red-faced Amtrak guys milling around pointlessly. I am glad I got my beer before Albany as now the café car is closed, and the pleasant effects of beer will help make the boringness of Albany more supportable.

 

Too much phone talking on this train. People are so dumb.

 

Schenectady: giant building that says NY Lottery. Can the lottery require so many rooms?

 

The sky on the way to Utica is flat white flocked with funnels of gray cloud, like wallpaper decorated with elegant tornadoes. The train is rocketing fast. A happy old couple in front of me are drinking beer and eating pretzels and looking forward to Cleveland. The woman behind me has been talking on her phone for an hour and shows no sign of stopping. And there goes the train whistle. We whistle a lot on this train. Every once in a while we pass a stately sort of Rip Van Winkle house—stony and square and obstinate. Soon it will be dark and I will have nothing to report on except for passengers. But I am drinking hot tea, which is enjoyable in itself.

 

The night was not at all bad—uncomfortable, like camping is, but I had two seats to myself all night which helped. I woke and slept between station stops, and moved around in my cramped nest. The rocking and rattle of the train was marvelously soothing.

 

At Buffalo I sat up and gazed out into the city without my glasses on, and the lights were like Christmas lights, hanging fatly in the darkness, and a fragile sleep lay over the train, the breathing and snoring somehow delicate and beautiful and rare, as our train rushed us into deep-night Ohio.

 

Woke up in Cleveland to blink at an Amish family fussing around in their new seats: grandparents and a little girl, maybe 8 years old, and they all seem excited and happy to be heading toward Chicago.

 

I sat up for good at daybreak and watched thin horizontal clouds float over the flat countryside. The hedgerows were nothing like the New England thickets, but broad coronas of trees with gaps among them so that light shown through.

 

And then we crossed a long bridge over a river, what river?, with a suspension bridge silhouetted against the sky and water rippling like pen scribbles. And then we were in Toledo.