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glauconamtrak east - part one of three
seattle to montana
a kite circling like yeats's falcon, lots of kids on the beach waving and shouting goodbyes as we pass. the train runs along the shore about 15 feet from the water. when it gets choppy or the tide runs high, it must fuck the tracks up like nobody's business. what were they thinking when they made that design decision?
just passed a long empty set of coal cars, then some nice houses on the now-widened patch between the tracks and beach, then an abandoned, rotted-out red rowboat beached way up next to the houses. it can't be intended as ornamental; it's hideous. then oil tanks, now clean beautiful beach with real sand. quite a contrast between those two.
there is so much more driftwood in Washington than anywhere else I've ever been. I guess there are a lot more trees too. funny that.
and here we are in Edmonds. "if you are leaving us here in Edmonds". who the fuck takes Amtrak from Seattle to Edmonds?
train parked right across from the South County Senior Center.
just out of Edmonds, passed the Beach of Many Sea Gulls. one of them every foot or so, laid out like a checkerboard and almost as geometrical.
dull patch of scenery. pause to play solitaire on the cell phone.
Everett now. passed a heavily-laden cargo ship. the train station in Everett is not as attractive as Edmonds: lots of industrial looking crap and grain(?) elevators. wow, that's neat though - passed a big old brick warehouse with huge union slogans painted on the side. "register and vote" "support the union card" "look for the union label". funny that those should come right after the heavily-laden cargo ship.
I asked a train staff person and she said we'll be following highway 2 most of the way, right along the canadian border for a while. maybe I should hop off in North Dakota, sneak across the border, and live out my days under an assumed name in rural Manitoba. probably wouldn't work out so well.
series of cargo train cars that all said "Herzog" on the side. I hate those fuckers Kinski.
rating the train stations:
seattle gets a 6 - urban and kinda gritty, but functional
edmonds gets a 7 - picturesque but nothing really remarkable
everett gets a 4 - would be lower except for those posters
I have high hopes for Wenatchee. but then, didn't everyone?
farmland up here - every yard has a decrepit, non-functional vehicle in it. just passed three in a row: 1. a school bus with all the windows smashed and the frame rusted 2. a pick-up and a VW rabbit with 4 flat tires apiece 3. a rusty camper top
moo cows! grazing right next to a soccer field with about 14 goals set up in random places. weird.
just passed a weird livestock auction or fairgrounds complex, long disused. gas is $1.21/gal. we seem to have reached highway 2. and to my left, we have the Evergreen state fairgrounds. "#607 - sheep" "#609 - goats". I'm glad someone came along to separate the sheep from the goats. I hope they also handled that whole wheat/chaff problem while they were at it.
auto swap meet. what is a swap meet anyway?
wow. a combination antique store, used RV lot, espresso bar.
wonder if I'll be seeing any fruited plains on this trip or if those are a little further south.
"horses 4 sale" - they didn't seem to have any. just one ridiculously furry brown and white pony.
miniature (like 4x4x4) church, with a parking lot big enough for two cars. sign on the front said "pause, rest, worship". it's a church port-o-potty. Port-o-Goddy. Holy Bucket. yipes.
two llamas.
those post-apocalypse stories and movies like Damnation Alley where someone is surprised and delighted to find a broken down shell of a car are bullshit. we haven't gone more than a mile or two on the inland track without passing at least one broken-down, rusted shell. usually more than one. sometimes a dozen or more.
"reptile zoo". I wonder if it's really a whorehouse.
big red mountain on the left. in the right light, it could pass for purple and majestic. "30 miles to skykomish"?
I wonder if this train has a cow catcher.
I think altitude must be increasing. ear pressure.
scenery getting dull. long pause to do crosswords.
wenatchee scored a 7 - a grim, empty platform at the end of a dead-end street in the dark. yes, the wenatchee train station is US foreign policy.
ephrata - 8. the very visage and substance of lonely isolation. "it takes a lot to laugh, it takes a train to cry."
montana now after an iffy night's sleep. got a cup of coffee and a cinnamon roll for $3.50. they were out of just about everything else in the snack bar car, and the dining car wanted $7.50 for breakfast. dinner last night was $20-something. who does amtrak think it/they is/are?
now sitting in the "sight seeing car" with a choice of trees or rock. whoops...passed the mountain now. make that trees or trees. nice aspens or are they birches? I remember stopping for two days in montana to visit gooley on the way out to seattle with becca in 1996. he drank karo syrup right out of the bottle and gave me a jug of brake fluid and three yellow funnels. he also ate a 72 ounce steak and won a lot of money playing video poker.
whitefish scores a 9. quiet, picturesque, well-designed.
lost track of stations now. got off the train somewhere for a 30 minute break. tried to make it to the grocery store to pick up supplies, but the town's only street was too long and I couldn't get there and back in time. thought about stopping into the bar next to the station to play video poker, but I'm too short on cash to risk it. got back on the train and there was a nice lady and her daughter eating hot dogs across the aisle from me. "hey, where'd you get those?" she said she'd stopped at the station there so often that she knew the town pretty well by now and had walked down to the only bar in town (the town seemed to consist of the grocery store, the train station, the shell station, and 11 bars) that sold food to go. they were huge. she and her daughter each ate one and she gave me the third. what a nice lady!
it's dark again and we're still in fucking montana. what a big place.
I was in such a hurry leaving seattle that I didn't have time to pick very carefully among the many books I could bring with me. I just grabbed the first three paperbacks I saw, which turned out to be One Hundred Years of Solitude, GS Kirk's The Nature of the Greek Myths, and The Baseball Reader. think I'll start with the Marquez. the Marquez and a good night's sleep.
seattle to montana
a kite circling like yeats's falcon, lots of kids on the beach waving and shouting goodbyes as we pass. the train runs along the shore about 15 feet from the water. when it gets choppy or the tide runs high, it must fuck the tracks up like nobody's business. what were they thinking when they made that design decision?
just passed a long empty set of coal cars, then some nice houses on the now-widened patch between the tracks and beach, then an abandoned, rotted-out red rowboat beached way up next to the houses. it can't be intended as ornamental; it's hideous. then oil tanks, now clean beautiful beach with real sand. quite a contrast between those two.
there is so much more driftwood in Washington than anywhere else I've ever been. I guess there are a lot more trees too. funny that.
and here we are in Edmonds. "if you are leaving us here in Edmonds". who the fuck takes Amtrak from Seattle to Edmonds?
train parked right across from the South County Senior Center.
just out of Edmonds, passed the Beach of Many Sea Gulls. one of them every foot or so, laid out like a checkerboard and almost as geometrical.
dull patch of scenery. pause to play solitaire on the cell phone.
Everett now. passed a heavily-laden cargo ship. the train station in Everett is not as attractive as Edmonds: lots of industrial looking crap and grain(?) elevators. wow, that's neat though - passed a big old brick warehouse with huge union slogans painted on the side. "register and vote" "support the union card" "look for the union label". funny that those should come right after the heavily-laden cargo ship.
I asked a train staff person and she said we'll be following highway 2 most of the way, right along the canadian border for a while. maybe I should hop off in North Dakota, sneak across the border, and live out my days under an assumed name in rural Manitoba. probably wouldn't work out so well.
series of cargo train cars that all said "Herzog" on the side. I hate those fuckers Kinski.
rating the train stations:
seattle gets a 6 - urban and kinda gritty, but functional
edmonds gets a 7 - picturesque but nothing really remarkable
everett gets a 4 - would be lower except for those posters
I have high hopes for Wenatchee. but then, didn't everyone?
farmland up here - every yard has a decrepit, non-functional vehicle in it. just passed three in a row: 1. a school bus with all the windows smashed and the frame rusted 2. a pick-up and a VW rabbit with 4 flat tires apiece 3. a rusty camper top
moo cows! grazing right next to a soccer field with about 14 goals set up in random places. weird.
just passed a weird livestock auction or fairgrounds complex, long disused. gas is $1.21/gal. we seem to have reached highway 2. and to my left, we have the Evergreen state fairgrounds. "#607 - sheep" "#609 - goats". I'm glad someone came along to separate the sheep from the goats. I hope they also handled that whole wheat/chaff problem while they were at it.
auto swap meet. what is a swap meet anyway?
wow. a combination antique store, used RV lot, espresso bar.
wonder if I'll be seeing any fruited plains on this trip or if those are a little further south.
"horses 4 sale" - they didn't seem to have any. just one ridiculously furry brown and white pony.
miniature (like 4x4x4) church, with a parking lot big enough for two cars. sign on the front said "pause, rest, worship". it's a church port-o-potty. Port-o-Goddy. Holy Bucket. yipes.
two llamas.
those post-apocalypse stories and movies like Damnation Alley where someone is surprised and delighted to find a broken down shell of a car are bullshit. we haven't gone more than a mile or two on the inland track without passing at least one broken-down, rusted shell. usually more than one. sometimes a dozen or more.
"reptile zoo". I wonder if it's really a whorehouse.
big red mountain on the left. in the right light, it could pass for purple and majestic. "30 miles to skykomish"?
I wonder if this train has a cow catcher.
I think altitude must be increasing. ear pressure.
scenery getting dull. long pause to do crosswords.
wenatchee scored a 7 - a grim, empty platform at the end of a dead-end street in the dark. yes, the wenatchee train station is US foreign policy.
ephrata - 8. the very visage and substance of lonely isolation. "it takes a lot to laugh, it takes a train to cry."
montana now after an iffy night's sleep. got a cup of coffee and a cinnamon roll for $3.50. they were out of just about everything else in the snack bar car, and the dining car wanted $7.50 for breakfast. dinner last night was $20-something. who does amtrak think it/they is/are?
now sitting in the "sight seeing car" with a choice of trees or rock. whoops...passed the mountain now. make that trees or trees. nice aspens or are they birches? I remember stopping for two days in montana to visit gooley on the way out to seattle with becca in 1996. he drank karo syrup right out of the bottle and gave me a jug of brake fluid and three yellow funnels. he also ate a 72 ounce steak and won a lot of money playing video poker.
whitefish scores a 9. quiet, picturesque, well-designed.
lost track of stations now. got off the train somewhere for a 30 minute break. tried to make it to the grocery store to pick up supplies, but the town's only street was too long and I couldn't get there and back in time. thought about stopping into the bar next to the station to play video poker, but I'm too short on cash to risk it. got back on the train and there was a nice lady and her daughter eating hot dogs across the aisle from me. "hey, where'd you get those?" she said she'd stopped at the station there so often that she knew the town pretty well by now and had walked down to the only bar in town (the town seemed to consist of the grocery store, the train station, the shell station, and 11 bars) that sold food to go. they were huge. she and her daughter each ate one and she gave me the third. what a nice lady!
it's dark again and we're still in fucking montana. what a big place.
I was in such a hurry leaving seattle that I didn't have time to pick very carefully among the many books I could bring with me. I just grabbed the first three paperbacks I saw, which turned out to be One Hundred Years of Solitude, GS Kirk's The Nature of the Greek Myths, and The Baseball Reader. think I'll start with the Marquez. the Marquez and a good night's sleep.
