The day after the wedding I took the Surfliner north. Amtrak. It's been a while.

The San Diego train station:

Not bad as these things go, in America. Many original details from the glory day of humping it cross-country in a rattling box:

And I mean, original details:

I wonder if that was covered up once, for Modern Reasons.

There's a room off the main hall that serves no purpose, except to hold a few vending machines. The ceiling is stained and cracked. It's a big anteroom for the bathroom entrance. An apt summation of the modern American train experience:

It's six hours to my destination north of LA. It would take less time to fly to Boston.

The business class lunch:

That’s a plastic container of cheese spread and another of humnus, which you can apportion between your four flavorless crackers. There is a meat stick, a Slim Jim reject that reforms into an unmasticatable cud after you’ve bitten off a piece. It could be meat; it could be an extremely pliable pencil. A packet of almonds; a packet of dried apple shavings. A packet of something chocolate. It hit the spot, if you’re starving, and I was.

Business class, though.

First, the coast. It is an endless vista of eternal verities. It was always like this, somewhere; it will always be like this, somewhere. What counts about this moment is the fleeting instances of people inhabiting the day and giving this moment a purpose and a point.

Then we nosed inland, and inched towards LA. The smoggy foggy outskirts, the places where the trains go. The industrial districts, the old bridges from the 1920s with original columns and stanchions, the busted globes. The LA River. The fabled LA River, which isn’t that at all. Hey, what’s this?

The view was nice, and of course the train is not as noisy as a plane. That means you can hear the person in the seat ahead of you talk to someone on the phone for THREE HOURS. Nice old lady just chatting away forever and ever about absolutely nothing. As I write this, she’s five minutes into a discussion of how she’s not a big breakfast eater. Before I caught the end of some epic tale of someone’s interminable illness. I think I heard the start of it 34 minute ago and came in at the end, when it seems “After that he drank himself to death.”

I have forgotten about people like this. People who can simply talk and talk and talk for hours without getting tired or antsy. They are also capable of stopping in an instant, saying “by now” and that’s that. But I am certain this one will talk up until the point she gets off the train.

We also had small, helpful, and quietly attentive passenger. Like a small Birch who got a job.

The concluding view of the trip was the area north of Ventura, described as one of the loveliest train vistas in the country. I was living in a New Age album cover.

Got off the train in the dark in downtown Santa Barbara. Quiet, but populated; restaurants, patio warmers. Seemed late. It was six. I checked in, and smiled: this was a fine, fine place to be.

Off to dinner. The first whole day of actual vacation was about to begin. Yes, I've been in Colorado and Arizona and San Diego this year, but those were family events, running on rails.

Next on the agenda?

I walk.

If you're interested: this is six hours in two minutes.

Surfliner.mp4 from James Lileks on Vimeo.

It’s 1896, which really stretches the definition of the 10s, I know.

The Quickonanoff, named after a Russian nobleman known for the brevity of his sexual encounters.

I’ll take a half dozen, but without the hands.

An incoherent ad, by modern standards.

They seem to be short-shifting their beaver advantage, and I don’t say that about everyone.

		And now, a series of “electro-graphs,” offered as an example of advertising you could use in your local paper.
		JOG YOUR FORGETTERY This is worded in an odd fashion, but I suppose it's apt for the parlance of the time.
		That’s not a real company, by the way. What’s your first clue? Say it out loud.
		There are several pages of this doggeral. The subscribers were free to use it in their local papers, I gather, and could appropriate the comical illustrations to amuse the customers.
		OH NO UNDERSEAR CHANGING TIME APPROACHES
		Dashing moderns, even if one has Quasimodo Syndrom and the other is a hybrid monkey-giraffe who escaped from Dr. Moreau's Island.

		That'll do. Off now to the clean-up portion of this year's comic updates.