We're Off!

 

Saturday, Feb. 4, 2012 – On the (rail)road at last!

3:50 in the afternoon, and we’re off – ten minutes ahead of schedule, even.  We checked in the car at the Auto Train station at 12:50, boarded at the train at 2:30, and pulled out of Lorton shortly before 4 p.m.  Right now, we’re on the upper level of car 5343 in our cozy roomette..  Roomette 3 provides nearly all the comforts of home are within easy reach:   facing seats, an extension table, room to store our bags and hang our coats, today’s Washington Post.  Two bottles of spring water were waiting for us.  There’s a mirror, coat hook, hangers, curtains at the windows and door, heating and lighting controls, a music system, and an electrical outlet.  Before we got underway, we walked up to the lounge car for free snacks. 

There’s also a woman across the hall with a cackling laugh and her male companion whose booming voice bounces off the walls of the narrow corridor.  They’ve obviously enjoyed the free wine offered in the lounge car during the recent happy hour.  If we want to watch a movie, Moneyball will be showing twice this evening in the lounge car.  Our dinner seating is at 7 p.m. and our steward asked when we’d like him to make up the beds (upper and lower berths).  There’s a bathroom a few steps from our roomette and a beverage station at each end of our car – complimentary coffee, bottled water, and ice.  

Looking out the window, we see a day that seems like it never quite woke up – milky sky, colors subdued – as if a few drops of India ink had been spilled into a saucer of water and a sooty gray veil brushed over the landscape.  With no sun and no shadows, I lose my sense of direction, but I’m sure we’re going south.  We’ve passed Quantico (home of the Marine base) and are approaching Fredericksburg.  At one point, we saw a river, the same winter white as the sky.  Most of the time, however, we’ve been traveling alongside shorn fields, muddy tracks of red clay soil, and forests of forlorn bare trees.  An occasional dilapidated farm building or a murky swamp appears.  In the distance, there’s a sudden blaze of orange where someone is probably burning brush.  The grays outside are darkening as the train slowly wends its way through a neighborhood of Victorian houses in Frederickburg.  We’ll cross the Virginia/North Carolina state line shortly before 8 pm and then enter South Carolina about 90 minutes later.  We’ll reach Charleston shortly before midnight, but I hope to be asleep by then (not that we could see much anyway).  The train goes through Savannah, a city I’d love to visit someday.  If all goes according to schedule, we’ll roll into Florida around 5 in the morning and reach our destination, Sanford, around 9:30 a.m.

And as Elliott and I travel south, Elisa and Christian are traveling north in the rented U-Haul.  Perhaps they’ve already reached New York City and are unloading the van on a rain-slicked street on the Lower East Side.  I remember the excitement of moving away to a new city in my twenties.  In my case, it was Boston, a city where I subsequently lived for eleven years, until I moved to France with Elliott.  I’m very pleased that Elisa is going to have her chance now.  Personally, at this point in my life, I’m quite content to stay exactly where I am.  In fact, Elliott reminded me earlier today that February 4 is the anniversary of our move to Fairfax.  I could hardly believe we’ve lived in our house for 16 years.  That’s longer than I’ve lived in any one place.  It seems like only yesterday that we were stomping through the snow drifts during that blizzard in 1996. 

Dinner in the dining car:  linen tablecloths and napkins, fresh flowers on the table, complimentary wine.  It was certainly a step up from the snack bar on the Washington – New York Amtrak route.  Tournedos cooked to order for Elliott, grilled salmon for me, and two congenial dining companions.  The steward turned our roomette into a sleeping cell at 9:30 p.m.  Shortly thereafter, I climbed into the upper bunk since it was impossible to find a way to sit comfortably.  Lights out at 10.