Home Contents ************************** The generic white bus at Jack London Square. A Union Pacific freight train passes through. Oakland/Jack London Square Amtrak Station. The Capitols prepares to depart for Sacramento. The California Zephyr enters the Sacramento depot. The California Zephyr crosses the Sierras. Go to June 10th

Day 1 June 9th, 2007 A Night on a Bus and Over the Sierras Work at Andiamo Telecom ended for me permanently at around 5pm on Friday, the eight of June, with eleven days before starting my new job. At midnight, I was at the San Luis Obispo Amtrak station waiting for a bus. I selected the 12:15am bus out of San Luis Obispo instead of leaving on the Coast Starlight because I wanted to take the California Zephyr over the Sierra Nevadas and the Rocky Mountains. If I'd have taken the Coast Starlight I would have ended up going south and taking the Southwest Chief both to and from Chicago. I always perfer to make a trip on as many different trains as practical. My original itenerary was to take the bus to Oakland and a commuter train to Sacramento. From there I'd pick up the California Zephyr to Chicago, the Capitols to Pittsburgh, the Pennsylvanian to New York, the Lakeshore Limited back to Chicago, then the Southwest Chief to Los Angeles, and the Coast Starlight home. That changed a little once the journey began, as you'll read on the following pages. The generic white bus picked me up at 12:15 for the drive up the 101 to meet the first of the trains that would eventually get me to New York City. I always like a good view, even at midnight, so I sat down in the first seat on the bus, right behind the windshield. From San Luis Obispo to San Jose was an uneventful ride of half-sleep with a brief consciousness when we stopped in Paso Robles, King City, Salinas, and San Jose. I watched the bus roll onto the 880 in San Jose for the remainder of the trip to Oakland and lost consciousness again. It was a little disorienting going to sleep on a bus heading out from San Jose onto the 880 and waking up getting on the Oakland Bay Bridge heading towards San Francisco. As we headed onto the bridge I looked around sleepily, wondering what toll bridge was between San Jose & Oakland. Then as we hit the tunnel through Treasure Island I realized exactly where I was and started wondering why we were leaving Oakland. I just sat there watching the port of San Francisco pass way down below as we came into San Francisco high up on the Bay Bridge, almost as if we were in an airplane. We looped down the offramp and eventually made our way to the bus stop on the waterfront. I was really getting worried. If Oakland is on the other side of that bridge, shouldn't I be off this bus by now? All I had to go by was the sign at the bus stop at the San Luis Obispo station which said that Oakland should be the last stop. Could I be sure the sign was correct? I've been to the bay area often enough to know where Oakland is, and we just crossed the bridge from the east and stopped in San Francisco! I felt much better when nobody got off the bus and the driver announced that the next stop would be our last, Oakland. I'm not sure why San Francisco comes before Oakland when heading up the east side of the bay, but at least I didn't sleep through my stop. The bus ride ended at Jack London Square in Oakland, California, where I'd wait an hour for train 720 to Sacramento. I'm not sure why the train didn't leave me off at the next stop in Emeryville to pick up the California Zephyr at it's origin point, but starting on the Zephyr in Sacramento ended up working out for the best. The ride to Sacramento was on the Capitols, a commuter train joining the Bay Area and the state capitol. So far the trip had been on a bus and a commuter train - not too exciting a beginning, but there was a lot to look forward to knowing I'd be picking up the California Zephyr to head over the Sierra Nevada mountains and the Rockies. The California Zephyr was full when I picked it up at the old Southern Pacific station at 10:15am. I was directed to the car for the passengers heading for Chicago and went upstairs. I went up and down the car looking for an empty seat, but they were all either taken or reserved for groups. I looked for seat tags indicating that someone would be getting off in Reno or some other place before midnight so I could get both seats for myself overnight, but every seat had a piece of paper with "CHI" on it. The whole car was going to Chicago. I finally just decided to grab one of the seats with an empty seat next to it and a tag that read "CHI-1" – One to Chicago. The "one" was probably off in the lounge and unloaded my backpack. Like last year's trip from LA to Chicago, I figured I'd disappear into the lounge for three days anyway. When you board the train you're expected to stay in your seat until the conductor comes around to collect your ticket, so I took my seat and waited for the time I'd get to head to the lounge car to watch the Sierras go by through the giant windows. Just after ticket collection the owner of the seat returned. We briefly said hello. Her name was Lisa Marie. She seemed like a fun seatmate to have, traveling by herself all the way to Orlando, Florida. Now that's a long trip! I was a little concerned when I looked at the schedule I had picked up in Sacramento. It had a notice that in May and June for four days a week the California Zephyr would be bypassing the Rocky Mountains due to trackwork and be detoured through Wyoming. I didn't know if this would be one of those trains or not. I almost wanted it to be. Although the trip through the Rockies to Denver is awesome, the Zephyr always goes over the Rocky Mountains to Denver. I've done the ride once each way already, and since I knew I'd be riding the Zephyr to Chicago again someday I figured that seeing Wyoming, something not usually seen by train, would be something new to me. Something new is always good, especially if it's not on a regularly scheduled trip. I didn't take too many photos or videos over the Sierras this trip. I have so many from my 2006 trip that I decided to chat instead of worrying about shooting video. I spent the longest time with a man named John and his four-and-a-half year old daughter Sarah. They were heading with their family from Santa Cruz to Chicago, then south on the City of New Orleans to Memphis, Tennessee. He told me that he's in construction and gave me one of his business cards. It's funny how the conversation always seems to turn to "what do you do for a living." I told a few people that I was between my job as a customer service rep/tech support rep and my new job as a customer service rep at a company that did shopping carts for the web, but for most people I just pretended I was still at Andiamo because it was easier to explain than a job I've never done before. So many people seem to define themselves by their job. I personally don't even think about what someone does for a job when I meet them. It seams the least important thing in the world to me in the middle of the Sierras. I want to know something interesting, like "where are you going?", "Why did you decide to ride the train?", "Tell me a little about your home town." It's not that I'm not interested in everyone's story (I am, really), but why is it so important if you're a plumber, a cab driver, or a millionaire that dresses up in a bat costume at night and throws bad-guys off of buildings. (Ok, I guess the last one would count as a story I'd really want to know.) The end of the first day on the train was one of those "Classic Train Nights". Maybe not as wacky as the girls on the Coast Starlight in "Scenes From a Train Ride", but certainly one of those fun nights where you meet the right person at the right time and your trip is that much better because of it. I went downstairs in the lounge at around 7pm. My seatmate (provided I would spend any time in my seat) Lisa Marie was there talking to a lady named Ebony, and she invited me to sit down with them. We ended up talking until 2:30am (minus an hour for my 8:45 dinner which I'll get into in a minute). Ebony was traveling from California all the way to Baltimore with her four-year old daughter Iana. She and Lisa Marie met on the train before I got on in Sacramento and had been hanging out together since. But I'll talk about Lisa Marie. There are some people you meet on the train that latch onto you who you were glad to have met, but don't really want them tagging along for two and a half days. This wasn't the case with Lisa Marie. She was, without even a close second, the best travel companion I've run into in my train travels. In the real world she's a bit of a partier, not someone who I'd spend a night on the town with (me being a much more reserved geek) but someone who is a whole lot of fun. We hung out downstairs with Sid the Lounge Attendant providing her and Ebony with white zinfandel until there was no more. Dinner is always one of the best parts of the trip. If you've been reading my other tales you know by now that they take you and put you at a table of four so you get to chat with three people you've never met. Dinner that night was lamb shank for me. Joining me were a couple of kids just out of high school that traveled to Santa Rosa, California on vacation. Ironically, the third person was a community college teacher from Santa Rosa. There was the usual small-talk around the table. The kids were coming home from their vacation in Santa Rosa to somewhere in Illinois. The teacher was on her way to Glenwood Springs, Colorado. The conversation ran from college to gun collecting, and somehow made its way to the book written by the hiker who had to saw his arm off when trapped under a rock in the wilderness a few years ago. You never know where the conversation will go when you sit with three random people. Every once in a while, the people themselves become a mini-story in themselves. I'll talk a little more about that when the time for their story comes in Omaha. We were joined late that night by a man named Jules. Jules was one of the classic characters you meet on a train trip. He was absolutely hillarious. The conversation got steered somehow in the direction of alien abduction, and it was a riot as we talked about the aliens coming down and tearing the top off of the train and abducting us all, Jules to return with a leg sticking out of his forehead. There are some conversations that just shouldn't be written too much about...they're beyond description and should really be recorded. Once Jules went off to sleep, Lisa Marie and I sat upstairs for the longest time. We watched as the full moon seemed to move around the sky as the train turned this way and that, and flashing on and off like a light bulb as it went behind invisible mountains in the darkness, and laughing about the aliens. That night I ended up sleeping on the seats when Lisa Marie volunteered to sleep on the floor behind the last seats on the front half of the coach, just before the stairs. She thought it would be better on her back to sleep on the floor than the seats. I tucked my head behind the curtain to get out of the light inside the car. The morning light would wake me. It was an excellent first day. Go to June 10th