MAY 20, FRIDAY

WINGING IT ON AMTRAK

A year ago I signed up for an Amtrak credit card that gave me 50,000 points if I would charge a certain amount within several months, which I did. I haven‘t used them yet. And then in March before going to Paris Amtrak offered me a ten segment ticket for $100 off their usual price of $500. I bought it. I can get a refund if I don‘t use it, but right now I am still planning to use it. If I do use it I need to start on my one month, ten segment trip, by June 20th or so, a month from now. And if I use up my ten segments within a month or travel for more than a month I can use some of my 50,000 points to finish the trip. And then if I like Amtrak travel I will have plenty of points left for other trips later.

When I was 21, just out of college I persuaded my mother to drop me off at the New York Thruway and hitchhiked once around the United States. I hitchhiked across the Great Plains to San Francisco where I helped my friend and fellow classmate at Woodstock School in India, Ray Smith, work on putting together a Sears kit house in San Rafael outside of San Francisco and then hitch hiked up the coast, part of the way on a huge lumber truck carrying redwood logs, to Seattle and then back along the northern border to New Hampshire where my college roommate was in Our Town narrated by Thornton Wilder. Along the way girls in the front seat on the way to an orgy, they said, tossed apples after one bite onto the thruway and then dropped me off before the orgy, I wasn‘t invited. I had a ride with a rancher who owned 150,000 acres but never saw a cow in cow country. An older man who took his mother in a brace for a ride once a week picked me up and told me their story. A young man in a hurry had just missed a turn at close to 100 miles an hour, he said, and cut through the corner of a corn field and back onto the road without stopping. In upper Michigan the car I was in was stopped at a road block by police with rifles and the driver was asked, “Seen any hitch-hikers?” with “no” as an answer. I heard story after story after story and had a great adventure.

So 60 years later I am going to make the trip again, but this time by Amtrak and in the reverse circle, along the northern border and then down to San Francisco and maybe Los Angeles and then back to Utah and Denver and then home. If I weary of train travel at any point I can book a flight and fly home.

What attracts me is the train trip. I want to see America going by and not fly over it. I want to slow down and see something. And I think that since I spend much of each day sitting at a table here in my house or an apartment in Paris or Greece, I can sit just as comfortably in a train with a little table and watch the world go by. I can eat in the dining car and walk around and even sit in an upper glassed in lounge and enjoy the view. I even think I’ll be comfortable sleeping in a reclining chair, maybe.

But I also want to stop along the way briefly and see people who I haven’t seen in years or stop in a place like Glacier National Park or Monterrey or San Francisco in the equivalent to an Airbnb and get the feel of a place.

So my quandary now is who would like to see me for a day or two, or put up with me or suggest a place near them where I could stay. I am an uninvited guest and often I haven’t seen people for 20, 40, 60 years and we will both have changed pretty much completely. When I visited Margit and Dorothee in Aschaffenburg, Germany, after not spending time with them since they were 8 and 10, sixty years ago, we had a wonderful three days. But that might not be the case with some of the people I remember fondly who might not want to put up with a stuffy old man. If they are stuffy themselves I don’t mind since I am on an adventure and will happily take what comes. But there is probably some risk in accepting my visit, including the threat of Covid, so I want to be sure I am at least tolerated before I show up. And then, of course, at 85 things can go wrong along the way and I might never make it to the end of the trip and miss some people entirely.

So this is what I am feeling my way to. Who that I know would be willing or able to put up with me for a day or two and who would actually like me to stay a little longer. That is what this post is about. If anyone likes the idea you can see what kind of traveler I am by looking through these posts. I am still up to walking five or six miles a day and have no particular agenda. I like sitting still and can entertain myself with my digital devices. I just want to have a feel of how friends are living and to reconnect with people who have touched me and stimulated me at various times in my life. But I don’t want to be a nuisance or a bore so I honestly want to know if I am invited or not, and if not, as has already happened in my travels I am quite happy not to bother you. Also you might not even be around and if you are my need for flexibility might not get me to you when I plan to come (nothing set yet). As you can see, I am winging it, much as I did when hitch hiking with no idea who might pick me up or where I might be the next night.

So if anyone who reads this has any suggestions of how I make this trip or where I go or how long I stay let me know. My current plan, to get the most out of my ten segments is to possibly go north first to Washington and New York, then across to Minneapolis for a day or two, then on the way to Bellingham, Washington to visit Todd’s sister, to stop, maybe, at Glacier National Park, then to see my friend Bob Fleming from Woodstock, whose doctor mother brought me into the world two months before he was born, in Eugene, Oregon. Then I will head down the coast to San Francisco where I will stay for a week in an Airbnb with a brief visit with Ruth Kesselring Royal whose books I admire, also a Woodstock friend, and then down to Los Angeles to see a former student who has been reading these posts. On the way back I hope to visit a former student in Utah and then Marianna, another Woodstock friend in Denver, and then either fly or ride the rails home sometime in late July or early August. That’s the plan, but as I’ve already learned in my travels this year, is probably only a loose approximation of what will happen. If invited I can stop at other places along the way and if not invited skip some of these places. Anyone interested?