Yipee! I’m in the club car, heading to Gallup, New Mexico. The sun’s up; you can see out the roof. Margo created my blog and I’m off as a travel writer. This is the trial train trip in prep for the 3 month, around the world writing sabbatical.
Theme of this blog: why travel by train in the US. Reasons: too fat for an airplane seat, you are in a boy scout troupe, you are a family with small kids going to visit grandma the old fashion way, you are just plain weird and annoying and the train gives you people to annoy, you like hours and hours of dessert scenery, you like being trapped in a space and time warp like I do. The majority of adults are using flip phones and the majority of kids have electronics. The Sky Chief leaves LA at 6 pm every day and arrives in Albuquerque at noon the next day.Because I could afford it, I was going in a sleeper car. That means you get meals included, a complementary glass of wine, bag of train snacks: potato chips, shortbread cookies, nut mix, and purple jelly candy with sugar coating, and a mid car coffee set up for around the clock caffeine fixes. You also get a fair amount of rocking motion making this live blog difficult. I’l write more once we stop and I can digest and revise.