In the mountains
I'm writing on the night of St. Patrick's Day, on the train in the dark. We're sleeping in seats for this leg of the trip, right behind a family with a young child who's uninterested in sleeping just now.
The vibes in sleeper class and coach are quite different; our travelling mates in sleeper seemed like fellow summer campers - lots of interaction, kicking around the club car and talking, and stuff in common - VIA employees on retirement or vacation and teachers were way overrepresented back there, and our companions were on average gayer and greyer than the general population. Up here in the front, people seem to tend to have their own built-in groups: families and travelling companions, including the group of barely-eighteen Swiss kids who, on boarding in Edmonton, proceeded to jam barely-eighteen porn magazines in the window shades somehow, which the staff and older passengers studiously looked away from until one of the crew encouraged the youths to take their porn down from public display.
Sleeper class food is excellent and plentiful. I think K. at work warned me that we might put on weight on a trip like this one, and she may be right.
The views out the windows have been very pretty - most of the time the weather out here has been clear and bright (and not too bitterly cold when we've gotten out of the train to stretch our legs). Most of our time in Saskatchewan's famed flatness was in the dark, but we did see those rocking oil pumps in fields in Alberta, and a lot of countryside that looks kind of like Ormstown, with a different mix of trees - or not. Today, however, was my first time ever in the presence of mountains with pointy tops capped in snow, as opposed to the rounded, smaller mountains we have back home.
Tomorrow (most likely today by the time I touch the Internet and post this), we're going to spend our first significant amount of time on solid ground in Vancouver, but then get back on a wobbly surface for the ferry trip to Victoria and aeon_of_maat.
The vibes in sleeper class and coach are quite different; our travelling mates in sleeper seemed like fellow summer campers - lots of interaction, kicking around the club car and talking, and stuff in common - VIA employees on retirement or vacation and teachers were way overrepresented back there, and our companions were on average gayer and greyer than the general population. Up here in the front, people seem to tend to have their own built-in groups: families and travelling companions, including the group of barely-eighteen Swiss kids who, on boarding in Edmonton, proceeded to jam barely-eighteen porn magazines in the window shades somehow, which the staff and older passengers studiously looked away from until one of the crew encouraged the youths to take their porn down from public display.
Sleeper class food is excellent and plentiful. I think K. at work warned me that we might put on weight on a trip like this one, and she may be right.
The views out the windows have been very pretty - most of the time the weather out here has been clear and bright (and not too bitterly cold when we've gotten out of the train to stretch our legs). Most of our time in Saskatchewan's famed flatness was in the dark, but we did see those rocking oil pumps in fields in Alberta, and a lot of countryside that looks kind of like Ormstown, with a different mix of trees - or not. Today, however, was my first time ever in the presence of mountains with pointy tops capped in snow, as opposed to the rounded, smaller mountains we have back home.
Tomorrow (most likely today by the time I touch the Internet and post this), we're going to spend our first significant amount of time on solid ground in Vancouver, but then get back on a wobbly surface for the ferry trip to Victoria and aeon_of_maat.