Amtrak and Me

Hello, people who aren't too turned off by the idea of someone's personal travel blog to have left after reading the header above. How's it going.

In a few days, Amtrak and I are about to have a brief, torrid affair. It will begin, I hope, quite passionately, and progress toward comfort and complacency within four or five days. At that point we'll start to have some fights about who left the dishes in the sink or why I fell asleep immediately after sex - without even a HINT of cuddling - and we'll take a couple of days to ourselves, just to think things through. But we'll miss each other terribly, in the F. Scott Fitzgerald, swoony alcoholic sort of way, and we'll commence another three days of blissful companionship. It will be the kind of period where you go on walks and picnics and sigh in the general direction of sunsets.

Then, Texas.

Finally, we will spend a day or two discussing the future, and how our plans really do differ fairly drastically (culinary school? Honestly, Amtrak, be realistic), and it would probably be best for both of us if we go our separate ways. By the end, I expect to think back on my days with Amtrak as a tumultuous but happy growth experience. My future relationships with private-but-government-subsidized-yet-still-constantly-on-the-verge-of-utter-financial-collapse travel entities will be fuller, more mature as a result. I'll drink a glass of scotch in 15 years and wonder what ever happened to Amtrak, until my wife of six years at that point, Southwest Airlines, asks me sleepily what I'm thinking about as I stare into the fire. I'll smile, check my second piece of luggage for free, and kiss her goodnight.

So if you're not bored yet, I'll be jumping aboard the first train from Philly on the morning of January 2.