The 360.

I am in Union Station in downtown LA waiting to get my seat assignment and I'm noticing the bizarre plethora of humanity arrayed around me in the waiting area and I'm struck by the fact that not a single average seeming person will be taking the train with me out across the desert night. These are some of my travel companions:

Guy in camo overall shorts

Fat version of a rockabilly friend of mine

Samuel L. Jackson's soft spoken younger brother

Infant with an iPhone

Germans

Amish teenagers

Very old woman with arm cast

Obese rednecks talking about their trip to Paris

Dirty hippie with no shoes but two guitars

An aggressively large number of people wearing Hawaiian print clothing.

Man with a gambling problem who claims to live in a condemned lighthouse near 3rd street in Laguna Beach.

Guy who I swear to god is Powers Boothe

Asian Jennifer Lawrence

Man with apparently one tooth

Dude in khaki-colored jeans and straw hat and beard who can only possibly be a paleontologist.

Emma Stone if she dyed her hair that great shade of dark red and wore Hello Kitty sweats and, you know, rode on trains

More Germans

Dude who ... I don't even know how to describe. Looks kind of like a wolf wearing a black Panama hat with a red feather in it, and suspenders, and a gray sweater that can't possibly fit him tied around his waist, and the combat boots his pants are ducked into.

Neck tattoo guy in mesh Dogers jersey.

A lone glossy black electric guitar, apparently left behind but sitting in a chair in the waiting area trying to be as dignified as it can be under the circumstances.

Woman with birthday balloons

Old leathery skinned couple with matching windbreakers

Duck Dynasty lookin' motherfucker

Black British hipster

Amtrak employee announcing that at any moment the power may go out ... that's odd, right?

(Here is the view from inside the waiting area.)

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Long Slow Ride.

Last week I got to take a nice long train trip. I love the train! For some reason I have very much romanticized train travel. I like that it takes a really, really long time to get anywhere. I like that you get to watch unfamiliar landscapes roll by. I like getting to pass through towns I’ve never been to, I like seeing the people on the streets and waiting in their cars. I like waving to strangers at railroad crossings. I like the tight, narrow stairways that make me feel like I’m descending into a submarine. I like that there is something lonely about trail travel. I like - oddly - the feeling of stillness that it creates in me. That is oxymoronic, I know, but I think that it is due to the fact that even though one is in motion the whole time, one is also confined to that very narrow train car; there is nowhere to go, there is very little to do, and as long as you can prevent yourself from wasting that time playing games on your phone, then there is great potential to relax, to look out the window, and to just simply relax, to let your mind unfurl and to wonder at the world.

Those are some of the reasons that I like the train.

I went from Burbank up to San Jose, which was something like a ten hour ride. Here are some of the - admittedly terrible - pictures that I took along the way.

The lower portion of my body, awesome Chucks, and a Kindle.

The train as it makes a long, slow turn.

You have to look really close, but this is a picture of some Amish people who were on my train. I’m not sure if Amish people are supposed to use the train. I would have asked them, but I thought that creepily taking pictures of them would be more fun.

It is always 5 o’clock somewhere (on the train, usually wherever I’m sitting).

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