smoochyquemas PeeT PeeT in portland. come with me on the adventure of a lifetime... i took frida to grandma's house on orchard hill. small town Pennsylvania. she is our 2 pound red myrle chihuahua. i noticed she was quiet and perhaps sad. she wouldn't even come out of the crate; but once she realized where she was and who she was with, she shook off her despondency and began to prance about merrily. i'm, of course, worried about her being there for so long. who knows what she will find on the floor? valium? paxel? morphine? we were able to do a lot (actiweken, today we work hard ethics) of preparation work together since i only had a private ski lesson with the autistic dylan. needless to say it came as great relief to my wife, kathy to have me around. yeah, i've been around for 32 years, dude. bon voyage to portland was quiet and reserved. secret even. we tucked ourselves away in the clandestine bar of the restaurant eleven, where our first born daughter is sous chef, and had cocktails with cavatelli, scallops, and lamb tacos. our server recognized us as beth's parents from a previous visit. beth treated us with charcuterie and visited briefly; she is as always busy as her bee. she was beautiful with her chestnut brown hair swept off her face by work sweat. later, we laughed at the older couple nearby. "miniscule," i heard her say, using her pointy fingers to punctuate her opinion to the small arab man who was paying her way. she was in possession of a vendetta. whoever she hated; beware. watch out. we drove in my 150 over to my daughter, hilary's house. she's my middle girl; the one who shares ownership of a raw,vegan cafe, called eden, in the shadyside section of pittsburgh. Shane, her boyfriend was there. He plays bike polo and skateboards. except for a separated shoulder, he gets around the city on a certified. She has an oriental cat, Georgie. He was looking skinnier than ever but playful, and that's good. all's well that ends well. 120314 ... PeeT Hilary drove us and our sizable luggage over to the Pittsburgh Amtrak station. I guess we must have lingered, for the train to Chicago was already boarding. We were seated in business coach, so we had power. i was exhausted and puffy,inebriated. when i sat down i basically melted into my seat. our fellow passengers were quiet, except for an older woman who coughs like she is shooting some kind of gun. "bam bam! bam bam!" As for sleep, i think got some, there are bits and pieces of dream. 120314 ... PeeT accommadating i guess in my blotto state i got into a chocolate bar and a large chunk of it tumbled out of my mouth on to my seat. and so in an endless challenge on how to get to sleep waged, i ended up staining my seat with pressed chocolate. all night i ground it and ended up staining my seat as if i had shat myself. i don't think it's entirely my fault however. Kathy rushed us out of Eleven. i was robbed of my dolce. i so wanted a sweet. i wanted to nibble on chocolate. damn the darkness! 120314 ... PeeT we checked our bags into the metro lounge at chicago's union station and then took a taxi to wicker park. our driver was a local from puerto rico, originally. he was friendly, explaining the gentrification of the area. he was from the southside, so he knows how bad it used to be. not now though. filter cafe was our destination. it is in its new location on milwaukee ave. vintage furniture is spread out under a unique variety of paintings. breakfast food was available along with many choices to get wired. we sat next to the window and looked out on the street scene, early morning life going by in a series of animated drawings, casually revealing their clarity. the people around us defined us with bold black strokes, outlining our purpose. we walked to quimby's thanks to kathy's gps and were treated to a quaint path through the side streets and backyards of bucktown. once inside we were greeted with a lilt of snobby androgony. yet, we found several gifts and played in the photobooth like amelie. getting a taxi back was tough. i had to go after one that was stuck in traffic, hoping he was riderless. he was! trains don't wait. he was a heavy accented man from africa. he got us back in a generous amount of time. 120315 ... PeeT we are in room 15 in the last car of the train, but the first one going backwards out of chicago. it is the largest of the sleepers, but has only one outlet, a problem we did not anticipate. with i phones, i pads, i pods, and a camera, go go juice is a necessity. however, our attendant, w. martin, came to the rescue. after he somehow deemed us trustworthy, he let us use his own personal outlet strip, the kind with the 6 plug-ins. we're set now. we put our dinner reservation in for 5:30. sigh...i set up the window table with my books. i opened a bottle of new zealand sav blanc. we toasted to adventure and looked out to the snow speeding by. bits of life flashing, objects of potential visible for a moment and then gone. here then gone. here, gone. i see you, you don't see me. we stopped in milwaukee for a brief time. i stepped off, drunk. the smokers were all there like prisoners with a chance to suck on their mother's breast. i returned to the confines of our room smelling of smoke and the news that our neighbors had complained that our music was too loud. 120316 ... PeeT come dinnertime, we pushed through the sucking whoosh of the automatic doors, stepping carefully from train car to train car, past the zombified coach passengers as they lay in various states of repose, sprawled out languidly with their electronic devices entertaining them, through the sightseeing car, to the white table-clothed booths of the dining car. one benefit of being amtrak sleeping car royalty is that all three meals are included for the length of the trip, and since seating is at a minimum, one is likely to have a stranger or two as a dining companion. we were seated with trevor, from bismark, north dakota. he was a college kid in business school at mary university, where he played tight end for the marauders. he had been visiting with his parents outside of chicago. his dad is the football coach at southern illinois. he told us he was contemplating a creative way to propose marriage to his girlfriend, so we tried to encourage him. "he has a great smile, don't you think?" kathy said, when i asked her what else there was about him. he was genuinely nice. not phoney. he liked to cook, mostly pulled pork and bbq. he was attending school with the dreams of running a restaurant. he said he was going back to his sleeper to drink some crown royal. 120317 ... unhinged drunk in milwaukee..how local of you :-) when i took that train the tracks in north dakota had just cleared from a serious summer flood 120317 ... PeeT i must admit i made a silent toast to you, nicole, as we stopped in that fair city. 120318 ... PeeT the evening was a swirling blur. i do remember my reciprocal advances and being tangled up in a mess of blankets, elbows, pillows, and legs, but other than that i passed out on the opposite end of what could be called our couch. our lazy attendant, w. martin must have had a respectful sense of our impromtu party because he never intruded to pull down our beds. i can't say i really slept. it was a more of a series of drifting in and out of train-lurching consciousness. the snowy half light of the north dakota plains slipped into my swollen view. kathy had already been to the bathroom. i heard someone outside our door say when she flushed, the sucking sound scared her so bad she hit her head against the tight confines. since we purchased a couple films from itunes and only had 24 hours to view them, we tried to watch "the help" before breakfast but couldn't finish it since the last call went out over the intercom. subsequently, we were seated by ourselves but couldn't help to overhear a conversation going on across from us. in between bites of our rubber eggs, we listened to a bespeckled, goatee-wearing, bed-headed man spewing out his twisted philosophy to a lone woman he had been seated with. something about how there are only five days that constitute the universe and they fit inside each other like, "you know those dolls you find in russia?" i wanted to shout "matryoshka!" but kathy wouldn't let me. "leave him alone," she whispered. "he's just insecure." we saw him later in the day sitting next to another victim in the observation car as we rumbled past the barren winter scape, endlessly babbling, not allowing his new companion to squeak out one word. i told kathy i hoped we didn't get seated with him at lunch, but she wished we did. she said she would totally challenge him. i found a large cartoon in the minot, north dakota newspaper that looked just like him. i cut it out and glued it into the journal i was making. it was perfect. i love to make kathy laugh. 120318 ... PeeT at lunch, we were seated with a father and his 19 year-old daughter from fort wayne, indiana. they were on their way to white fish, montana for a ski trip. i introduced ourselves and discovered the dad worked for military intelligence making radios and then basically let kathy's motherly fascination take over with esther. she immediately reminded us of our youngest daughter. as i munched on a cardboard hamburger and stale potato chips, i listened to their fascinating conversation, adding what i could during the rare pause. not sure if it was her red hair, but this girl was on fire, eager to share several details of what turned out to be quite the involved life. as the snow-covered prairie rolled by the window, she told us she had been home-schooled and was in the process of applying to university to begin studies in criminal science, for her goal was to become a police woman. she shot guns and loved johnny depp but had an out-of-control phobia for spiders. she worked several summers with the renaissance fair as a jouster's horse hand and became known as "the rebel" for her fearlessness. it was easily two hours of chatting and we were the last ones remaining in the dining car. "i could have talked with you all day," she told kathy. there was never a mention of the mother which i thought may have had something to do with this flowing river of open heartedness. but then again, kathy has her magic ways of reaching inside someone. 120319 ... PeeT we returned to our sleeper and settled in to what quickly becomes a routine; kathy on her side, i phone business, wrestling with service availability, me on mine, scratching away at my journal, drawing pictures of people we met. an announcement came over the intercom from the conductor about someone smoking weed at the last smoke break, how it would not be tolerated, even threatening drug dogs at the next stop. i must admit i was a bit jealous. at the shelby stop, we refueled which meant we had about a half hour so i detrained and talked with w. martin. he told me how passengers head into the little town for snacks and even quickly pound down drinks. "welcome amtrak passengers" one sign read over a nearby pub. they hear the whistle and come stumbling out just in time he told me. at sunset we hung out in the observation car to witness the crazy beauty of glacier park, montana. we met a woman who was knitting away at an afghan. she was on her way back to grand fork where she managed a group of artists. we chatted briefly as she gazed out on land familiar to her, but so exotic to us. we were joined by a mother and her four year-old daughter. turns out she was also an artist from white fish on her way to vancouver. she told all three of us that she encouraged her daughter to draw and paint and then turned her work into notecards with the proceeds going to support an orphanage somewhere faraway. check out her work on artfire. the artist is janet mein. synevie in braids, named after her norwegian great-grandmother, was wearing a necklace she made which her mother said she had never taken off since she put it on. i had fun sketching her. 120321 ... PeeT we tried watching "rise of the planet of the apes" on the ipad but i couldn't find anything in it worth keeping me awake. i fell asleep several times sitting up and finally just climbed the ladder to my bunk bed. i guess one could call it a bed. the mattress is 3 inches thick and there is an equal amount of space before my nose touched the ceiling. needless to say, claustrophobia is not tolerated here. we did pack our own pillows and comforters which helped add a sense of home and it really did help considering provisions were threadbare and minimal. the sleep, as we roared through the cascades to make up time was solid, except for the unavoidable lurches of this speeding snake as it gobbled and swallowed track, climbing ferociously. the quiet in spokane, washington was deathly. since we were arriving in portland early, we decided to skip breakfast opting to hang out in the observation car for the final hour. there were two college girls who i had noticed from chicago sitting caddy-corner from us and their conversation drifted into my hearing range as light rain dotted the windows and the columbia river gorge continuously enchanted us. they talked about what they were observing in relation to renewable energy and alternative living, adding an intelligence i found inspiring. sometimes i worry about the future generation. yet when i hear talk like this i know there will always be people who will do all they can to somehow perpetuate success. someone has to. these are the people who will rule their world and teach others how to do it. w. martin told me it would be raining when we arrived in portland. he was right. a light drizzle. fifty degrees. he had also gathered all of our stored luggage and had it set up on the platform. we wheeled it into the train station. its vaulted ceilings, marble columns, and neon signage providing the classic awareness that we were not only in a new place but we had arrived and had a large blank slate in front of us with an entire palette of color. 120322 what's it to you? who go blather from