Testing the rails

My daughter and I will be trying a weekend experiment where we catch the Amtrak Cardinal in Prince West Virginia on a Friday night and ride to Chicago. There, we’ll simply waste a few hours hunting White Castle hamburgers, seeing the Sears (Willis) tower “lose your lunch perch” and finally hop back on board for a return trip with some deep dish pizza. Why? To get to the other side, of course.

I originally had an idea to walk out of our house in Blacksburg, Virginia and see how far we could get over a long weekend. In the dead of winter. It seemed like a simple plan, or not even a plan, just a gesture from a seed planted by authors like Edward Abbey, Muir, even Henry Miller. Go. Wander about. Open one’s eyes. See what one sees and maybe tell others one’s experiences. Well, not to be overly romantic about it, but it is a simple romantic idea. Maybe just because it isn’t done. We drive places to do things, you see. We are Americans.

But that idea is going to have to wait for another weekend. We’re going to do it and I relate it here just because it lead to the idea of hopping a train to Chicago and coming back for kicks and no other reason. We can’t do our simple walk out just because we lost our 4 day weekend in March when it was feasible. So we’ll drive to Prince, West Virginia (we are Americans, you see, we drive) and catch a train. Not a bad compromise given that when I talked to Aran (daughter) about a walk out it went: around the corner, down Airport Rd. to the Blacksburg Transit stop, to my office where we catch the regular commuter bus to Roanoke, to a Greyhound bus there, to Charlottesville, to the train and on to Chicago, or however far we thought we could make it. Deep breath.

Would it be cheating to walk out the same way and then catch a plane in Roanoke? “Next plane leaving for…?” Or does that land you in jail these days? I might just have to find that out. How far can you get from your front door in two days with no car and no plan?

Another time.

For now, Chicago and the rails. I have had one out of five good experiences on Amtrak, as an adult. I had a wonderful trip as a child, but from my Mother’s memories, I’m not sure that was actually a good trip. We want desperately for Amtrak to be better this time- I feel almost like I can wish them into being more like European train service. Just to be somewhat on time, instead of 4 hours late with my last trip. For meal service to be more than a $6 micro waved stale cheeseburger. For more atmosphere than clunking over freight tracks at half speed.

So we’re going to test the rails, for now.