theo|digital

My train journey is coming to an end. We made it through the heavy snow drifts of the Sierra Nevadas and the first vineyards alight the California landscape. Familiar names to unfamiliar places are slipping by: UC Davis and Mountain View. And as I pack my bag, moving haltingly in the tight space to reach my scattered things, I feel a tinge of jealousy for passengers that arrive on days that are not so wet and grey. The rain has thrown a dim film on the world. The low light mars my pictures from the train-in-motion, and I eventually give up, setting the camera beside my chair and framing pictures with my mind instead. The rain specks remain fixed on the windows.

Pete my official Amtrak Sleeping Car Attendant has been friendly but awkward the entire trip. He pokes his head in occasionally with an offer for bottled water or fresh towels, but he has a little script he says, smiling into the distance. Interrupting him for a question hits a 404 Not Found error—he abruptly stops talking without making eye contact, shakes his head a little and slides your door shut briskly. He’s like an early software model—able to do a few things well, but ready to crash on getting unexpected input (like, “Pete, can you tell me more about the connecting bus service in San Francisco?” = Melt down). Oh well. I’ve decided to have compassion, but I’m a little unsure how much to tip him. I read online that 5 dollars a night is a pretty good tip. I spent two nights, so I decide I’ll go ahead and give him the $10.

Susan, the Dining Car Attendant, walks by my open door and says “bye!” She is carrying a purse and her jacket, and I wonder if she has people in San Francisco she can stay with.

All in all, I’m sad to leave the California Zephyr. Two days is enough time to start to feel at home, and now I know why people take the train. It is the antidote to an information-glut life, running at high-speed. The first goal is to sit and stare out the window; watching the trees and rivers and mesas as they float by. It’s a calming way to travel, nothing to filter or sort or answer or know. And nobody made you take your shoes off to do it.

Goodbye California Zephyr. Let’s do it again some day.

Each time the train pulls out of a station, the initial acceleration so gentle that I barely notice we’ve started moving unless I’m looking carefully.

The Colorado river was frozen over for much of our trip through the mountains—enough so that it was only detectable by being slightly more flat than the surrounding land.  Now that we’ve made it down stream on the other side of the continental divide, we have churning water next to us, silent and wild.  It’s cool.

Ross is the cafe car attendant. I went down there before dinner to see what it was, really. Ross was sitting there alone–nobody apparantly hangs in the cafe car near dinnertime. Turns out he lives in Joliet and he’s reading the Grapes of Wrath and he previously graduated from chef school, but currently microwaves hot dogs for a living. One of those ironies.

The sunset tonight was heartstopping. Jet-red sand cliffs sped past in sheer lines, highlighted with snow and dotted with sage. One couple sat in the viewliner car in the booth next to me and kept trailing off their conversation in favor of the windows.

The dark has fallen again, and my dinner reservation is soon: 7pm. I’m told that once we pass Salt Lake City, the chances of having any kind of signal are null, so my thoughts will probably have to continue in Word instead of WordPress.

20 January 2010
Just west of Denver, CO, in the front range.

Our train is climbing the pine-specked foothills of the front range, swallowing switchbacks and tunnels. The sky is grey but tinged with sun… maybe we’ll see some blue yet. It’s only 9:15am.

“Ladies and Gentlemen: at this time, the Café Car has re-opened.”
That’s the snack shop. It’s different than the dining car, and sells stale coffee and microwaved hot dogs. Since the full-service dining is included in my fare, I’m not likely to spend much time buying snacks.
–

At lunch I’m seated with a couple from Ann Arbor, MI (they are familiar with the campus church in my network, New Life) and an arts entrepreneur who is on her way to host a panel at the Sundance Film Festival. She does this kinda thing all the time. We talk about robotic art (yep) installations and the upcoming popularity of hybrid artists who have engineering training but do artistic works. I think of Vienna Teng, but I don’t bring her up.

We’re about to leave Glenwood Hot Springs, CO. All aboard!

First light was a little confusing.  It came slowly, and I thought I was waking again to a especially hard shake of the train car.  Really, I woke only a few times, and had no trouble returning to sleep.  The bed is made with only a light sheet and blanket, but comfortable regardless.

And then at 7am sharp, the conductor announced that we were 20 minutes from Denver.  It was as good a time as any to wake up, and I was surprised to find there was no wait for the shower down the hall.  Tight quarters (everything is still mini—like an airplane bathroom), but plenty of hot water.

It’s funny to be in Denver… I’m right next to Coors Field.  Oh – here we are pulling out.  Bye Denver!  Hello Rockies!

Princeton, Illinois is our first announced stop, although we stopped in Naperville earlier on the way out of Chicagoland.  It is “not, I repeat, not a smoke stop,” our conductor says.  That will be Galesburg—45 minutes after Princeton.  I have been watching the small towns slip by between the long stretches of dormant fields.  The last one had a pudgy building titled “Feed Store,” a clearly identifiable local bar, and a red church all sitting on main street as if they were waiting at the barber’s for a trim and some local gossip.

A few minutes ago I became aware that I’d been thinking that we had another train near us.  Maybe it was distant, but it had been with us for a while.  The thick dissonance of a train whistle was faint but detectable in echoes and between the clear click and rush of our own noise.  My only question:  how could another train follow us for as long as it had?  Do they let them follow that closely?  There doesn’t seem to be another visible set of tracks.  After about 30 minutes, whistle still with us, the solution occurred to me.  WE’RE a train.  We’ve got our own train whistle.  We don’t have some sorta of train shadow.  We’re the ones making the noise.

Problem solved.

–

Ate dinner with an elderly man named Rich, and a young guy from coach named Nick.  Both were polite in the classic sense.  I guess I was too.  “Pass the pepper, please.”  I thought it would be easier to come up with things to talk about, but the conversation was mostly a bust.  Rich is a regular Amtrak rider, so you had that to talk about for a while.  Nick’s first time on the train too, but he didn’t have a lot to say.  He’s going to Denver to look for work.  He has family there.

I had a steak, which is pretty unusual for me, but among the options (shrimp scampi, buffalo meatloaf, turkey and stuffing) it didn’t seem like there was much of a choice.  Overall, sorta fun doing the dining car thing for the first time, but I hope the experience improves.  I think just having daylight out the windows will make it more fun.  Once it gets fully dark the glass becomes glossy black.

And now I’m laying here in my car made into a bed, wondering if I’m going to be able to sleep with the train rocking back and forth.  They said you could get used to it, but it’s not how I thought it would be—rhythmic and soothing.  More jarring and sudden in unannounced spurts.  We’ll see.

My internet signal has vanished, so this may have to wait until morning.

Car 0531 Room 9 on the California Zephyr.  My first train ride.  1 hour in.

The city has already buzzed past our windows, its glass and industrial center followed by its suburban entourage bricked and tidy and now, just an hour into our ride, we’ve reached the Land.  It is white and quiet and wide.  Rows of cropped wheat remain steady across the landscape, writing contours on the snow like a comb through sand.  Farmhouses and their weathered barns sit like postcards, imaginary and beautiful and far, far away.

The dining car attendant has just made an announcement on the public address system.  She will shortly be by to take dinner reservations.  First class passengers have priority, and can choose a time between 5:30 and 9pm.  I suppose I will ask for 6:30 or 7.

Today I’m doing something I’ve never done before.  The California Zephyr is one of the longest train routes in North America, and I’m about to ride it.  All 2, 438 miles of it—from Chicago’s Union Station to the edge of San Francisco.  The route traces through Chicago, Omaha, Denver, Salt Lake City, and Reno before arriving in California, and it became famous for its views of the Rocky Mountains and the American West.  Apparently for the car attendants too, who at the height of train travel post-WWII played the role of perky young stewardesses, offering smiles and full-service attention, from coffee to babysitting the kids while you were in the lounge.  Today it’s obviously changed a bit, but you can still ride as a first class passenger in a sleeper Superliner, which includes amenities like the morning paper, fresh towels and sheets, and priority all-you-can-eat reservations in the Dining Car.  As an antique experience that I’ve never had, it felt perfect for a short vacation, offering something novel while providing a chance to be by myself and write and pray and think.

The trip officially takes 50 hours–mine leaves on 2pm Tuesday in Chicago, travels for two overnights, and arrives in San Francisco at 4:05pm.  Although nobody really believes that’s when it’ll get in.  Amtrak trains have the distinction of having “on-time” being a bonus.  I think if it’s up to 3 hours late, Amtrak practically considers that on time.  Past that you can start to complain a little, although it’s not like you’re gonna just get out and walk.  A few weeks ago, this very train route made the news for having a train that was stopped by snow and showed up over 18 hours late.  Ouch.

And while coming in the following day might be cause enough for some attention, what’s funny to me is how uneventful the poor timing is normally.  Nobody cares.  Part of this is that they are simply meeting expectation–there’s nothing new here.  But media ecology’s approach to technological progress in society probably has the best explanation.  People don’t think of trains as transportation.  They’re art.

That’s because newer technologies (i.e. I’m leavin’ on a jet plane) have supplanted the train as the primary means of cross-country movement in the U.S.  And newer technologies often don’t replace previous technologies as much as modify their role in our cultural perceptions.  For Marshall McLuhan, this means that some older technologies remain in place as–but as art!  His most famous observation on this:

The machine turned nature into an art form.  For the first time man began to regard Nature as a source of aesthetic and spiritual values.  They began to marvel that earlier ages had been so unaware of the world of Nature as Art.

Think National Parks as vacation destinations.  This is a result of the assembly line.

And that’s why people don’t care if trains are late.  I’m riding the train because it a novelty item, and I learned about it reading blogs that are devoted to people who do just that.  Newer technologies have modified our perceptions.

ps – can’t wait to see what this is like.  More if I can from the train, but chances are pretty low I’ll have good access as I’d be depending on what flashes of Spring 3G I can catch from the train car.

Today I’ll be heading down to the Missional Learning Commons “non-conference” hosted in Ft. Wayne Indiana with friends from my church Life on the Vine.  I’ve seen this informal gathering/discussion pop up over the last few years, but now that I know personally a few people who engage in it (Dave Ftich), I’ve been persuaded to join in.   I was also surprised to see my friend JR Woodward tweeting that he was on his way, so it promises to be a thoughtful (and probably lively) crowd.

This is a good thing for me after about a week of serious downtime in Champaign, IL, visiting friends at my old church I-Life at the University of Illinois.  The downstate time was an oasis between the intensity of GCM IGNITE 2009 in Columbus Ohio (where I served as the asst. director of the conference), and my coming big transitions.

I’m storing up a packload of digital theology kinda thoughts, but they’re gonna have to wait for now.

ps – Happy Epiphany.  Isa 60.

Wow, has this been a trip. 15 days of final drafts, stuffing bags and sorting camping gear, reading reports, downloading audio books, filing paperwork, hurried goodbyes, hands on the steering wheel, catching up with old friends, fast food, endless Interstate, fast food, endless Interstate, fast food, making lists, shaking hands, phone calls, human resources department, project groups, troubleshooting, prayer hours, schedules, orientations, low-ropes courses, arms full, late meetings, raincoats, new people, new people, new people, cabins, Elk, photocopies, Safeway, tourists, Elk, staff cafeteria, losing my Nalgene, finding my Nalgene, coffee filters, quick decisions, new people…

and finally a Day Off.

Today I’m taking a Sabbath that’s been long in coming. And although there are still a few big early things to complete for LT, it seems like we’ve done the first few hurdles, and things are coming together. Which allows me to let my shoulders sink a little, and disconnect the to-do list from my head.

One of my personal fun tasks this summer hopefully is redesigning this blog and maybe even porting it to a new service (WordPress anyone?). We’ll see if this happens.

I will post a few things on LT, and hopefully a number of continues posts on theology and media ecology, since I plan to continue my thesis reading and writing (at a much slower pace, but enough to keep the brain warm for the Fall).

More soon.

Finally had time to post photos.

Presidential Inauguration