Link (Archive)
This, to me, is the spiritual appeal of riding Amtrak in the 2020s: Instead of using clichés about “times like these” and “rising uncertainty,” I’ll try to be as direct as a Siemens Charger ALC-42 barrelling straight through the Rockies: The world is at war. Fascists are using their bully pulpits to punish the minorities they scapegoated to gain power. The exorbitant cost of living is a punishment for not being part of the tech baron class strip-mining our economy to inflate an AI bubble that will one day pop and drain our retirement accounts — if you even have a retirement account. This is not normal, and if your nervous system is having trouble operating as though it is, you are not alone. It’s hard to make decisions about the future, let alone the next day, under these conditions. Hell, I can’t decide what kind of cheap deli sandwich to eat at home most nights, but when I’m riding the Amtrak, my options are winnowed: ham, turkey, or chicken. A hot dog if I’m feeling particularly nihilistic, and I often am.
In the words of Rolling Ray: I love the train. It is mechanically complex but emotionally simple. There are not many choices to make inside a moving passenger car. You can sit in your chair. You can look out the window. You can read. You can write a romantic comedyabout a nonbinary person. You can play Celeste on your Nintendo Switch and fantasize about your console being crushed like a penny on the tracks when you die for the 10,000th time. This is not a personal essay in the conventional sense — I would hate to draw focus away from our glorious national railroad system— but I have had a complicated life. I am a transgender ex-Mormon open-heart surgery survivor. It hasn’t been easy. But riding the rails is easy. I don’t have to think about anything; I just have to be on board, and be moved.
The Amtrak has plenty of other selling points as well: Trains don’t destroy the planet nearly as quickly as commercial airplanes do. It’s also much easier to begin your journey: Getting to an airport two hours early feels almost intolerable after you’ve tasted the sweet luxury of stepping aboard a long-distance train a mere 10 minutes before departure. Road trips have their pleasures but I cannot simultaneously drive a car and die for the 10,001st time in Celeste without also dying in real life. And that would be bad. I want to eat more hot dogs.
If you are also a transgender person — but hopefully not also a religiously traumatized one with a zipper scar down your chest — the train may hold special appeal. The bureaucracy,security theater, and passport drama involved in air travel make it imposing and often inaccessible. On Amtrak, you are technically required to carry an ID matching your ticket, but otherwise you can rest easy. The train doesn’t care what gender you are. The train does not care where you come from or where you are going. The train does not care who sleeps in your bunk. The train only cares about one thing: The next stop.
The only complaint I will allow you to make about the train is that it can be expensive. But discounted airplane tickets — much like those polyester tops that arrive on your porch within 24 hours and disintegrate in the rain — are not a sign of a healthy world. Airlines are so focused on scale and volume that they could care less about making winter hot and summer even hotter. We could be down to the last square meter of polar ice and you could still score a cheap flight to Vegas. I cannot and will not command you to abandon Ryanair. I certainly cannot afford to travel exclusively by Amtrak. But a ride on the California Zephyr really does beat a Jet2 holiday. And if you’re strapped for cash, like so many of us are, a ten (!)-segment USA Rail Pass will only run you $500, and often goes on sale for half that.
I served six months of a Mormon mission in 2007 right before I found out I needed my aortic valve to be replaced. (It’s a long story. We can’t get into it now, I have a subway to catch, which is kind of like the Amtrak with fewer, harder seats.) The point is I know how to proselytize. I know that concrete comforts appeal to vulnerable people. But what if we really are all feeling desperate and what if the train really is great? I’m not going to tell you you’ll become a god and get your own planet if you book a ride on the Acela, though you might feel like one at those speeds. But I can testify that amid some of the worst moments of my life, I have experienced beautiful things out there on the tracks. I have eaten French toast in bed while watching the sun rise over Glacier National Park. I have been rocked to sleep in parts of North Dakota where there are more tumbleweeds than people. I have tasted the only nectar sweeter than a Diet Coke while motionless: a Diet Coke while traveling at 150 miles per hour through Massachusetts. I have told multiple Baby Boomer retirees at communal dining tables about a publication called Them that ranks fictional mice based on how transgender they seem — a miraculous little media outlet that has given young queer people the chance to share our take on a world that falsely accuses us of causing its ills while using our creativity as its fuel. Life just makes sense on the train, even when it is strange.
I don’t know what comes next for me. I don’t know what comes next for you. But if we ride the train together sometime, we’ll both know exactly where we’re headed.
The Train Doesn’t Care What Gender You Are
If the narrator of Robert Frost’s most famous poem had just taken the train instead, he wouldn’t have had to worry about picking between two roads in that stupid wood. When you’re riding the rails, you surrender to an engine that is not your own. Head empty, no thoughts, just a 4,200-horsepower diesel locomotive carrying you to a preordained destination. Don’t want to stop in Williston, North Dakota? Too bad, you’re going there. Take a smoke break if you have to.This, to me, is the spiritual appeal of riding Amtrak in the 2020s: Instead of using clichés about “times like these” and “rising uncertainty,” I’ll try to be as direct as a Siemens Charger ALC-42 barrelling straight through the Rockies: The world is at war. Fascists are using their bully pulpits to punish the minorities they scapegoated to gain power. The exorbitant cost of living is a punishment for not being part of the tech baron class strip-mining our economy to inflate an AI bubble that will one day pop and drain our retirement accounts — if you even have a retirement account. This is not normal, and if your nervous system is having trouble operating as though it is, you are not alone. It’s hard to make decisions about the future, let alone the next day, under these conditions. Hell, I can’t decide what kind of cheap deli sandwich to eat at home most nights, but when I’m riding the Amtrak, my options are winnowed: ham, turkey, or chicken. A hot dog if I’m feeling particularly nihilistic, and I often am.
In the words of Rolling Ray: I love the train. It is mechanically complex but emotionally simple. There are not many choices to make inside a moving passenger car. You can sit in your chair. You can look out the window. You can read. You can write a romantic comedyabout a nonbinary person. You can play Celeste on your Nintendo Switch and fantasize about your console being crushed like a penny on the tracks when you die for the 10,000th time. This is not a personal essay in the conventional sense — I would hate to draw focus away from our glorious national railroad system— but I have had a complicated life. I am a transgender ex-Mormon open-heart surgery survivor. It hasn’t been easy. But riding the rails is easy. I don’t have to think about anything; I just have to be on board, and be moved.
The Amtrak has plenty of other selling points as well: Trains don’t destroy the planet nearly as quickly as commercial airplanes do. It’s also much easier to begin your journey: Getting to an airport two hours early feels almost intolerable after you’ve tasted the sweet luxury of stepping aboard a long-distance train a mere 10 minutes before departure. Road trips have their pleasures but I cannot simultaneously drive a car and die for the 10,001st time in Celeste without also dying in real life. And that would be bad. I want to eat more hot dogs.
If you are also a transgender person — but hopefully not also a religiously traumatized one with a zipper scar down your chest — the train may hold special appeal. The bureaucracy,security theater, and passport drama involved in air travel make it imposing and often inaccessible. On Amtrak, you are technically required to carry an ID matching your ticket, but otherwise you can rest easy. The train doesn’t care what gender you are. The train does not care where you come from or where you are going. The train does not care who sleeps in your bunk. The train only cares about one thing: The next stop.
The only complaint I will allow you to make about the train is that it can be expensive. But discounted airplane tickets — much like those polyester tops that arrive on your porch within 24 hours and disintegrate in the rain — are not a sign of a healthy world. Airlines are so focused on scale and volume that they could care less about making winter hot and summer even hotter. We could be down to the last square meter of polar ice and you could still score a cheap flight to Vegas. I cannot and will not command you to abandon Ryanair. I certainly cannot afford to travel exclusively by Amtrak. But a ride on the California Zephyr really does beat a Jet2 holiday. And if you’re strapped for cash, like so many of us are, a ten (!)-segment USA Rail Pass will only run you $500, and often goes on sale for half that.
I served six months of a Mormon mission in 2007 right before I found out I needed my aortic valve to be replaced. (It’s a long story. We can’t get into it now, I have a subway to catch, which is kind of like the Amtrak with fewer, harder seats.) The point is I know how to proselytize. I know that concrete comforts appeal to vulnerable people. But what if we really are all feeling desperate and what if the train really is great? I’m not going to tell you you’ll become a god and get your own planet if you book a ride on the Acela, though you might feel like one at those speeds. But I can testify that amid some of the worst moments of my life, I have experienced beautiful things out there on the tracks. I have eaten French toast in bed while watching the sun rise over Glacier National Park. I have been rocked to sleep in parts of North Dakota where there are more tumbleweeds than people. I have tasted the only nectar sweeter than a Diet Coke while motionless: a Diet Coke while traveling at 150 miles per hour through Massachusetts. I have told multiple Baby Boomer retirees at communal dining tables about a publication called Them that ranks fictional mice based on how transgender they seem — a miraculous little media outlet that has given young queer people the chance to share our take on a world that falsely accuses us of causing its ills while using our creativity as its fuel. Life just makes sense on the train, even when it is strange.
I don’t know what comes next for me. I don’t know what comes next for you. But if we ride the train together sometime, we’ll both know exactly where we’re headed.
