Eccentric Flower talk:201008/Absent Friends
From Eccentric Flower
Comments on Eccentric Flower:201008/Absent Friends
We don't have many train stations down here, but I feel the same way about movie marquees. Old-style marquees are difficult and even dangerous to change, but I loathe the LED ones, even the ones that are fairly static and don't go crazy with flashing and fonts (like Arbor does, grrr). Even Alamo Drafthouse, staffed by people who love 35mm film prints and have tattoos proclaiming their love for VHS, is starting to move to LED marquees and it is just sad.
I was hoping to get the chance to see you later this month but we had to cancel the trip, damn it.
-- 18:31, 16 August 2010 (BST)
"I don't understand how normal people can go to a job every day and work eight hours every day, more or less without fail, and not go insane.
Does anybody? Maybe nurses or pilots, but for the most part, I think most people in offices get in about 4 hours of work and the other 4 hours are spent doing things that are distracting enough that they can concentrate on work without wanting to hit someone.
-- 18:37, 16 August 2010 (BST)
Iain:
I don't mind that the people who have reduced travel to those two questions get exactly what they deserve; my gripe, as ever, is how much the tyranny of the majority penalizes the few of us who would rather have, say, a pleasant ride on the train.
Oh, I do so want to see you take a ride on the train from Boston to, say, Los Angeles. You can even have a sleeper car if you want. (If they have them any more.)
EDIT: Hey, the front page date for this entry is wrong. I mean, REALLY wrong. It says "24 July", even though the link to the entry says that MediaWiki is perfectly aware that it's an August entry.
-- 19:02, 16 August 2010 (BST)
Fixed. Did I mention I haven't slept well for three days? Did I mention I may be blowing off the rest of this afternoon to go take a walk?
I'm sort of unhappy that I will likely never get to take a train trip of a length that necessitates a sleeping car.
-- 19:16, 16 August 2010 (BST)
Just so you know, last I heard, L. was working at iRobot and doing very well.
-- 19:52, 16 August 2010 (BST)
I loved that sign in South Station. When was it replaced?
My friend took the Seattle to Chicago route once when he was coming back from Canada. He said there were still sleeper cars, although he just rode in the regular coach. I took a sleeper car in Europe, between Paris and Prague, although that wasn't really glamorous so much as it was terrifying.
~
Is that last little vignette your way of telling us that you're finally going to get a Facebook account?
-- 20:07, 16 August 2010 (BST)
I am sure this is picking at a tiny part of this entry that you probably didn't want picked at, but here is more anecdotal evidence for you to ignore:
When we had breakfast with you and nonelvis and Jessie several years ago, we left saying, "DAMN why don't we live closer to these people so we could do this more often?" and I have often thought it since. I find you quite charming in person.
I do take your point about online friendships. Or maybe it is just friendness. I think we need a new word to describe whatever you call the state of being "friends" with someone that you have not actually befriended.
-- 20:33, 16 August 2010 (BST)
Iain:
I'm sort of unhappy that I will likely never get to take a train trip of a length that necessitates a sleeping car.
So just take one. Bank up the time and you and the missus can go rail touristing! Save up this year and go next summer. USA Rail Passes are surprisingly inexpensive, for what they are. (Though I don't think that includes sleeping cars; that's probably extra. But still. Save more.)
However, if you wind up feeling stir crazy and vaguely homicidal after the first 30 hours in the train, don't blame me. You wuz warnd. (Why, yes, I have done that, only without the sleeping car. More than once. Strangely enough, the lack of sleeping car wasn't the problem. 30 hours in the company of many people I didn't know, on the other hand...)
Also, I suspect that just before harvest time is perhaps the only good time to see rural Kansas and Nebraska. In winter and early to mid spring, all you get are field after field of not-exactly-amber-waves of ... mud. Sometimes snow-covered mud. Very rich looking mud. But, you know, mud.
-- 21:55, 16 August 2010 (BST)
You know, even if I believe you are right when you say regarding the "Economist" links "the part that I most want you to go to is the part you don't go to, and the part you seem to be interested in is the part that I was planning to leave out", I still think it pity that you have no plans for following up the formula of the short version either.
And I do believe knowing why you would like someone to read the article could also bring about some unexpected bonuses (or not? As it may be that you have no interest in learning what do the readers not in your target audience think of the articles you have linked to).
-- 06:36, 17 August 2010 (BST)
Well, as long as we're on that, here's an article from this week's that I had mentally earmarked for you: http://www.economist.com/node/16793591?story_id=16793591
-- 20:11, 17 August 2010 (BST)
1. I think there's a difference between your saying, "I find this article interesting," and saying, "I think, you, Robert, would find this article interesting." The former I might or might not follow, but I would on the latter. With the former, I know that although we have many common interests, they are not identical. With the latter, though, as you've known me for more than a decade, I would take seriously your opinion that I, specifically, would find it interesting. So send me the link.
2. You can have a much more leisurely and comfortable travel experience. It's called "Business Class." There's a lounge, free booze, snacks, big-ass seat on the plane, etc. You just have to be able and willing to pay for it.
(Iain, I think the problem with sleeper cars is that the beds are about six feet long. I've done sleepers in the U.S., Europe, Australia and, God help me, India, and they're a bit cramped for me at 6' 1/2"; C would be a pretzel.)
3. I want cheap and fast, usually, though, particularly with a 22-month-old who is big enough to require his own seat. The faster we get there, the less likely it will be that I'll have to contend with a meltdown. (He was a real trooper on our two recent flights to and from England, BTW.)
-- 20:21, 17 August 2010 (BST)
Hey, I see you made it back in one piece!
There's still a fundamental difference even between first class on airplanes and travelling on trains. On trains, you are not considered a prisoner in your seat; on planes, any amount of movement you do is implicitly discouraged. Trains have scenery and decent-sized windows. (Sometimes it's not fabulous scenery, I admit, but it does CHANGE.) Trains have outlets. Trains have food service which is occasionally actually edible.
Oh yes, and trains don't have the sort of fuel and logistics limitations that lead even honest non-gouging airlines (if indeed there are any) to charge ridiculous amounts of money for long trips.
I've just come to believe that air travel in the modern era might as well have been engineered for maximum unpleasantness in every way possible.
-- 20:39, 17 August 2010 (BST)
Is it so ridiculous? My r/t ticket NY-Manchester worked out to about 15 cents a mile.
By contrast, the cheapest r/t ticket on Amtrak between NY and Boston works out to about 32 cents a mile. And renting a car in Boston from Friday to Monday morning for a weekend in NYC, plus gas, is about 50 cents a mile.
So I think your recoiling at the cost of air travel is really about the cost of traveling the distances involved, rather than about the per mile rate.
How come I didn't get an Economist link like Thomas did?
-- 21:03, 17 August 2010 (BST)
I hated the Solari board at South Station. I never understood the attraction people felt to the flapping noise. I thought that the board, and its signature noise, signified everything that was wrong with rail travel in the US (much as the TWA terminal does for you with air travel): outdated, inefficient, unable to keep up.
Then South Station went and got a new system, which still sucks, but at least it's a bit more flexible than the flappies. And the worst part? They tried to keep (or re-create) the damn noise. No nice, pleasing attention-getting *bing*. An 8-bit recording of FLAPFLAPFLAPFLAPFLAPFLAPFLAPFLAPFLAP. And if you look up at the board to see what's been posted? Well, I hope you studied the board well, because there's no indication of which listing just changed. At least with the flappies you had a chance of seeing something in motion to help you locate.
The rest of the announcement system "upgrades" were, as with most things rail-related in the US, one step forward with one step back. They installed much better monitors near the platforms (new crisp hi-res LCD monitors instead of the old, beaten CRTs), but lowered them by about 4 feet - so that the head of the person standing in front of you, no matter where you are, completely blocks the screen. They standardized the voice announcements - but used a computerized speech system that doesn't pronounce all the station stop names quite right, and has a cadence that must leave foreigners completely befuddled. (When reading off the list of Amtrak stations, for example, the pauses between city and state nameare much longer than between state and next city name: Providence, Rhode Island New London, Connecticut New Haven, Connecticut, ...)
I agree with Robert that you'd hate sleeper cars - they're quite small (and the ones in the US are the biggest ones I've been in). And I think your concept of today's "pleasant ride on a train" is tainted by the fact that the Northeast Corridor is as close to European rail as the US has. There are no 3am station stops in the BOS-NY-DC corridor (unless they've reinstated the overnighter again). We got lucky with our trip from Seattle to San Francisco, because that was a daytime departure and a daytime arrival. The NEC is also welded single rail, so you don't get the clack-clack-clack that you get riding the freight rails everywhere else.
Rail can good for a day-long trip, if you can find a way to get from place A to place B (which, barring select city pairs, is virtually impossible). Even to get from my house to Saco, ME (the Downeaster stop closest to my mother's house) takes almost 4 hours, requires coordinating schedules between the commuter rail and Amtrak to avoid a long wait at North Station, and of course a manual transfer between BOS and BON. Too bad the state couldn't find a way to dig a giant tunnel underneath Boston to connect the South Station area with the North Station area. Dukakis would love it.
-- 21:07, 17 August 2010 (BST)
Josh: I agree that the SoleriSolari board was in some ways retrogressive, a relic. That's sort of my point: I do not hold that all progress is good.
I'm with you on the voice announcements, though. I noticed the same things you did. I also noticed that the electronic click noise fails to cue you exactly WHAT item on the sign changed. They should at least blink it for a few seconds.
I've always felt that the unfortunate split between North and South stations reflects the split in the personality and culture of Boston (to its detriment) - the part that traffics with the north, and the part that traffics with the south, and the fact that, historically, the two parts have hated each others' guts.
Robert: I've discarded last week's issue now, so I don't have sufficient keywords to try to dredge the link from the Economist's archives. They will allow you to see an article if you search for it successfully, but will not show it to you if you come in the front door, since they insist the online Print Edition articles are for subscribers only.
(You didn't miss much. It was a nice little dissection of Vaughn Walker's ruling on Prop 8, is all.)
[Edited. Soleri dreams of building arcologies while dying in the desert. Solari makes beautiful things.] -- 22:27, 17 August 2010 (BST)
BTW - the NEC Infrastructure Master Plan I had mentioned a couple of weeks ago is here.
Interesting reading on the current state and future of the NEC, both passenger and freight. Details of local stuff starts on pg. 74.
-- 02:34, 18 August 2010 (BST)
Iain:
(Iain, I think the problem with sleeper cars is that the beds are about six feet long. I've done sleepers in the U.S., Europe, Australia and, God help me, India, and they're a bit cramped for me at 6' 1/2"; C would be a pretzel.)
That was what I started to say, but then I did a bit of poking around on the Amtrak site and the "roomette" seems like it would actually be tolerable. (Why the lower cost roomette has longer berths than the higher cost bedroom and bedroom suite I leave as an exercise for the Amtrak experts.) It would not be tolerable for me; as I've mentioned, after about 30 hours, I was ready to go insane. (Although, that said, I'd never have seen the scenery in the eastern Colorado/New Mexico area otherwise, and it is breatakingly beautiful. And ... high. Very very high up. Very.) And according to Wikipedia -- so take it for what it's worth -- a trip that was allegedly supposed to be 23 hours and that actually took 30 hours is now scheduled to take 40 hours, so probably takes 50. Definitely Not For Me.
-- 18:39, 18 August 2010 (BST)
Just for kicks, I decided to see how long and how much a train ticket from Ft. Lauderdale (technically Deerfield Beach) FL to Seattle, WA (I just got hired by a company headquartered there) would be.
$500 for 100 hours.
A first class round-trip ticket was $1400 (these days, the *only* way I'll fly anymore).
-- 22:34, 18 August 2010 (BST)
My first honeymoon, back in the day, was on the train, from Chicago to San Francisco, via Los Angeles. It*Was*Wonderful. We had a food allowance, and the meals were outstanding. We also had a little suite kind of thing, so we didn't have to deal with lots of strangers, even at meal times. And the clickety-clack? Relaxing, musical, almost. The scenery was not always inspiring, but we saw parts of the country we'd never have experienced on the highways. I've no idea how it is nowadays, but judging by the comfort of the Amtrak cars, I'd think rail would be a great way to travel. If you have the time...
Amen on Facebook, although I'm not sure my objections are philosophical as much as just plain ambivalence. I can't think of anyone from my past with whom I'd care to reunite. If I were interested, I'd have kept up with them already. Not into games or all that other stuff they offer. So what's the point? You caved on Twitter. I haven't even done that, so far. What is it they call us? Luddites? So be it.
-- 00:32, 19 August 2010 (BST)
"We are a nation of short-sighted, impatient, unbeautiful people who judge a travel experience not by how pleasant or interesting or beautiful or comfortable it is, but by how fast we can rush to where we're trying to go, and how little we can get away with paying for it."
No, we are just a nation of people who only have two weeks' vacation time and we already used one of those weeks cleaning out the basement after it flooded.
"I don't understand how normal people can go to a job every day and work eight hours every day, more or less without fail, and not go insane."
I'm with Patrick, hardly anybody does this. For thirteen years I worked about 50 hours a week at a nonprofit firm, and when I was handling cases, I took about six cases a month. For the past three years I worked during naptime, or about 3-4 hours a day, and I took about four or five cases a month ... but did a better job on them, with fewer extension requests than I had in my old job. Now I work about 30 hours a week and I take about five cases a month. Excise chitchat with coworkers and #$*&(*&$# staff meetings, and the actual work is the same. And now that I have more work time I just screw around more.
-- 14:42, 21 August 2010 (BST)
Thomas:
But where is the clicking sound to remind us: "hey, go look at the sign again, something is different now"?
-- 16:54, 16 August 2010 (BST)