It is 1:30PM PST, Thursday January 18th. Despite talking about it for about a year, I bought an Amtrak railpass about two days ago and have boarded the California Zephyr. I’m expected to arrive in Chicago at around 2pm on Saturday.

The sleeper car I’m in feels like its designed in the 70s, not unlike the classic airplanes with wide seats. There are two beds, with the one above stowed away, and the one below split into two reclining seats. The chairs are covered in a blue and purple textile not unlike the ones you’d find in a dilapidated tour bus or BART circa 2010, while the floor and shelves and even the walls are covered by a carpet reminiscent of classrooms from elementary schools across America, designed to be durable and to hide stains. Every ten or so minutes, the air smells vaguely like lightly spoiled milk.

I suppose i haven’t made a proper justification for this trip, or a full one at least. But if you’d like to skip to the end, here it is - i don’t know why I’m doing this. I have a reasonable amount of justifications and goals that I would like to pursue through this, but I suppose you wouldn’t be wrong in suggesting that this is more of a bucket list item thats gotten terrifically out of hand.

I’m not a particularly big fan of traveling. I travelled a lot. Is New Zealand part of the Australian Continent? Because then I’ve been to every continent save for Antarctica. As an avid collector of intangible feelings, I believe a trip down south is in order at some point… but nonetheless, I’ve never properly had the sense of wanderlust. There are reasons for this of course, but we don’t need to get into psychoanalyzing my need for peer relationships and the limited and unequal nature of parent-child dynamics. Needless to say, if traveling anywhere, i suppose 2 weeks is the max enjoyment I’ll get out of it before i grow weary.

I’m also a big fan of not being alone. I’m not sure what more I can really say on that front. Stop bothering me.

So I’m still doing a very poor job at explaining why I decided to buy a 6-week rail pass and run around the American wilds by myself.

There is maybe a small part of self-discovery here. There’s no particular destination, no distraction from the boredom, no sense of having truly been alone of my own volition. Do I dislike loneliness because in principle i could be not alone? So maybe my first reason for this trip is, something existential.

I definitely think there’s a sense of sabbatical. Having worked for a year and a half in a job where I progressed very poorly by my own standards, and with the lack of any sort of proper, passive environment outside of work to maintain relationships, to take a breather and focus on my personal and professional development to some degree feels exciting? To not be able to turn towards the common (and generally positive) addictions of camaraderie, and instead develop my interests. To write essays and build something fully. So i think my second reason for this trip is, something successful.

Youth, as they say, is wasted on the young. I remember very clearly being existentially upset at age 12 when the loss of the children’s menu struck at chords in my heart. Youth hostels I think close their doors to people above the age of 25 - I’ve never bothered to check. But there is a sense of a door closing in some regard, and with the lack of social and financial responsibilities together with the lack of a job to be quite frank, it seems that it would be worth taking a peek. Death, as always, is the liveliest motive.

I imagine I might not succeed at one or any of my motivating factors here. But that’s okay. In any case, none of them are truly particularly motivating on their own. And although these reasons are crystallized in this text, they are nowhere near as corporeal in my own head. Yet there is one reason that successfully managed to get the hype train going:

Trains are dope.

Sure, it’s slower than a plane, and probably a car, and you know what, probably slower than most trains to be quite honest. But I’ve got 45 days of travel with craaaazy amounts of leg room and occasionally a bed across the entire United States. Maybe Canada. It’s a quiet and well-lighted place. And it’s so, so, so pretty.

It just smells vaguely like milk sometimes. I can handle that.