52 HOURS ABOARD THE CALIFORNIA ZEPHYR
For Ray
In October 2024, I attended a film festival in the Bay Area and decided that, as a result of boredom, penny-wise-pound-foolish frugality, and being generally unemployed, I would spend 3 days taking a train home to Chicago.
The California Zephyr is Amtrak's longest daily passenger train -- clocking in at 52.5 hours -- and cuts across iconic and picturesque Lake Tahoe forests, Utah deserts, the Rockies, the Colorado River, and landscapes of the American West in a sort of reverse pioneer's journey. I knew I had to end up on that train ever since I first heard about it years ago. It was real bucket list item, and as I'm in-between screenings I think -- well, what's waiting for me at home, my horrible "Garden Unit" (read: basement) apartment that gets so little sunlight it makes me want to die? What better time to do this than right here, right now?
I buy a coach ticket for $143.95. A direct plane ticket was about $100 extra, but saves me 48 hours of transit time. (Worth it? Who's to say??) Through the Amtrak site there's also an option to book a roomette, a little private suite with seats that fold out into lie-down beds, though this is about a thousand dollars more and the whole point of the trip is I'm trying to save money here!
In anticipation of there only being limited and expensive food options on the train, captive baseball stadium audience style, I hit up a Trader Joe's the evening before and load my already-bulging film festival tote bag up with pre-mixed salads, trail mix and other snacks. This is a version of a practice I like to call "airport salad", which is when I bring salad to an airport and eat it before security so I don't have to patronize the overpriced in-terminal restaurant options. Accompanying me on this trip is little else other than clothes and toiletries; I download at least 30 hours of Netflix content onto my phone.

DAY 1, HOUR 0
I'm up at inky black 5AM to take a bus from my Mountain View Airbnb to the Emeryville station, the starting terminal for the Zephyr. Bleary-eyed. The sun is rising as I get to the station, the idea that I'm going to be on rails for 3 days does not yet feel real. A weird symmetry: across Emeryville station is a hotel I stayed at with my mom and my brother a year ago when I was helping my brother move into college. I remember seeing through the hotel room window train passengers embarking, now I'm on the other side looking up at the hotel's facade.
There are a LOT of people here for the Zephyr considering it's 8:30am on a Monday. What the hell are they all doing here? They can't possibly have less things to do than me! (Isn't it kinda funny how common that thought pattern is? If you're here, of course other people would be. But that's not very intuitive because it feels so "random" and out of character. It's like conceptualizing traffic as a seperate thing from you while you're driving when in reality, you are traffic, you are traffic to someone else.) The crowd skews elderly and European -- a cursory scan confirms that, outside of kids in families, I'm likely the youngest solo traveler there.
A hulking beast of a train screeches into the terminal. Conductors file out and whip the unruly crowd into shape -- single file line, tickets out, A car here, B car here, C car here, that bag is oversize...! As I am, my bag is tagged accordingly and I'm put into a car near the back.
[Intro to Ray]
[Description of train layout]


Hours of content watched: 0
Money spent on food: $52
# of Amish kids encountered: 6

A couple months after my train ride, I came into possession of a car that used to belong to my dad. To pick it up, I had to go to Virginia and drive it home to Chicago -- a 12 hour odyssey split into two legs that my aunt accompanied me on. Owning a car is kind of like taking care of a five-thousand pound baby. God forbid that check engine light come on! And while I do get around much faster, I do think I've lost something in the process. I don't remember much from the road trip outside the middling hotel I stayed at outside Columbus, OH, only stealing glances at the rolling green hills in-between hypnotic stints of keeping my eyes on the snow falling on the grey tarmac, and trying to find faces in the sneering taillights, staring at headlights in the rear view mirror, two stark eyes in the inky black, like in cartoons.
My greatest fear is of a siloed future
I've been thinking about the cost of convenience lately. Do things slow, dumb, avoid toll roads, look at bugs, -- do the inconvenient thing while you still can