Rambling Amtrak tales

I am back from Portland, where I met other people who do what I do, and spent hours in workshops on lively topics like Darfur, shareholder activisim, and immigration policy. Good times. I also got sick, which hasn't happened in a surprisingly long time, because my feeble lungs tend to succumb to the charms of any old bug that comes along. My lungs are easy.

I'm thinking I probably picked up the bug on the Amtrak train down to Portland, because despite the fact that I used half a bottle of hand sanitizer to clean off the seat tray, it was pretty gross. I'm going to suggest that Amtrak institute a fifty-cent surcharge that allows them to clean the seat trays at least once per day. Otherwise, the ride down was lovely, with all the water and mountains and bird life to gaze upon out the window.

On the ride back, I had switched to an earlier train than originally planned, and ended up in a car half-full of young drunk people riding up to Seattle for a Mariners' game. Two groups, who kind of merged together, with many bottles of hard liquor, yelling loudly and profanely in that particular youthful arrogance that assumes everyone around you wants to hear what you're saying, because whatever you're saying is so much more funny and important than anything anyone else might want to discuss with their neighbor, or think to themselves, or read, at that moment. In which any parent who doesn't want their young child exposed to a stream of profanity is just THE MAN, man, an uptight fuddy-duddy.

I feel incredibly old saying that, and I'm also well aware that anyone who knows me might reasonably want to point out right about now that I can out-cuss a drunken sailor any day of the week (a habit that can in no way be blamed on my parents, whose language is always impeccable, so go figure). But for heaven's sake, I know better than to hone my profanitory arts at high volume around grannies and children. THAT is the wisdom that comes with maturity, my friends.

Anyway, people complained, and the train conductor threatened to throw them off the train at the next stop, and they took that threat reasonably seriously. Plus the ringleader was so drunk by then that he passed out, which helped.

Once the noise settled down I was able to have a lovely conversation with my neighbor, a Reuters reporter from India who was doing some travelling while visiting her brother here in the US. I asked her why Bollywood movies are always in Hindi, and she asked me why on earth we re-elected George Bush the second time around. She said a surprising number of the people she'd met, travelling by train from San Jose to Seattle, were in some kind of social activist job, and with so many people here trying to make the world a better place, how was it that we still had such an asshole for a president? Only she didn't say it exactly that way, because she was a very polite Indian woman. I'm reading between the lines a bit.

Anyway, she was arriving in Seattle without pre-arranged lodgings, and I was a little worried about all the drunken out-of-towners who were apparently descending on the city for the Mariners' game, so I gave her my phone number and told her to call me if she had trouble finding a hotel room. I never heard from her so I hope she's having a lovely visit here today, wherever she is.