sunshine_comes_quietly_ crOwl sunshine_comes_quietly sunshine__comes__quietly when we made the reservations for the trip back home, the only sleeper rooms available were ones down from each other instead of across from each other like on the trip out, so the first thing i had to do after securing the luggage was approach the solitary occupant of the room across from kathy and beth and see if i could switch. he turned out to be friendly and since i was feeling the beer, i must have came across somewhat diplomatic because he was very willing to change rooms. no, it was the shoes. his name was bob and was traveling alone to grand forks, north dakota. he started out in alaska, where he lives, and then proceeded to bellingham, washington. he told me he used to manage resorts until he was put on disability for what he calls, "cartoon motion disorder." it's a degenerative disease that makes him stutter and display an occassional facial tick. we found him immediately engaging. kathy's friends, the boat people from alaska, were staying in the sleeper car as well and stopped by to say hello as we were preparing to depart seattle. as we moved past the sound, she pointed to the shimmering surface of the water to show us some killer whales. we were like, "whoa!" she began explaining about their presence and fed us some interesting info and then like a bee who had its fill of nectar, buzzed away. "thank you for sharing the orca pod with me," she said. she was a tiny little cool, eco-grandma lady. short gray hair, trendy glasses, coumbia clothes, and a vivacious love for people and life. 060425 ... crOwl THE STINKY CHEESE MAN the answer to the previous question about how our cowgirl creamery brie would fare without refrgeration for five hours is... it would fail miserably. there are smells that are pungently offensive and this was definately one of them. kathy wanted to throw it away immediately, but not me. i wasn't about to waste the ten bucks we spent so i grabbed the crackers and the cheese, its noxious cartoon cloud filling the narrow hallway with an odorous assault and shut fast the door to my room and grubbed down ravenously on it. moments later, kathy came in to check on me, (probably to see if i was still breathing) and nearly choked on the hazardous fumes. she said even bob, our new friend, shut his door to escape the nasty stink. as if i was a fire she had to put out, she started dousing me with a spray she concocted in the lab of her sleeper car room of essential oils and neutralizer. hey, it may have stunk to high heaven but it was tasty. later, as i washed my fromage soiled hands in the little hallway bathroom, it was weird to realize i broke some delicate social protocol by allowing that stinky cheese to embarrassingly permeate the train, but then again, it wasn't the first time i broke a rule on this trip. so, now i wasn't only the man with the goofy orange shoes, and the man who almost missed the train. you can call me the stinky cheese man as well. 060426 ... crOwl on my way back to my room, i noticed bob's door slowly opening. he stuck only his head out into the stinky cheese air, like the lone survivor of a nuclear bomb, checking to see if it was safe to enter the world again. he slyly asked me if i wanted to use his desenex. "even stevie wonder would be able to find you," he chuckled. we met him later for dinner and like most older men that encounter beth, fell for her with grandfatherly affection, immediately sharing an affinity for all things food, trading chef terms rather easily and letting her in on his secrets. he told us that he spent a few years with the creole down in louisiana, doing it up cajun style. when he served in the vietnam war, he also lived in germany for a while and learned to cook. bob is one of those people who is so saturated by experience that no matter what you talk about, he has some snippet of his vast life that adequately fits in the conversation. i liked him for his child-like wonder and his natural ability to treasure the present moment. even walking through the swooshing, sliding doors from car to car was an adventure for him. he would cheer when they opened. when we were reading the menu, i told him i liked his glasses, and so he reached into his pocket and pulled out another rectangular pair even cooler. he put them on and gave me this swanky tilt of the head. "right on," i said, nodding. our waitstaff was all different on this trip. i didn't miss ulysses. he was replaced by a quiet, non descript man who did his job well and unassuming. i never knew his name and he never got my order wrong. after dinner, kathy and beth went to sleep early. kathy was frustrated by the man who took gul's place. his name was isaac, a tall african-american who was all talk and little work. she even had to put her own bed down. she was missing her gul. i tried to watch "first descent," a snowboarder documentary about shaun white's trek to wild alaska, but fell asleep with the g4 teetering on my lap. 060427 ... crOwl march o9 i woke to kathy sliding my door open and coming into my room announcing we had arrived in glacier park, montana. the views and the deep snow was amazing she said, but i just couldn't pull myself from sleep until she came back in and said beth and she were going to breakfast without me since there was only a half hour left until they stopped serving. i climbed out, pulled on the same clothes, flattened my wild hair with water and stumbled to the dining car, bumping back and forth with the sway of the train into walls. they were seated with a twenty something dude named andy from portland. he was with a large group of friends going to whitefish, montana for a snowboarding trip. kathy had already been singing my praises when i shook his hand, having told him about my years of surfing in southern california since he had just returned from a few months of doing the same in costa rica. he was a smooth balance of hipness and intellectualism, freely talking in between bites of his omelette about his reality tv-like life in portland living with several roomates and his entrepreneurial attempts at buying up properties and fixing them up to rent. he's also going to chiropractic school, funding it with a nextel cellphone accessory business. nothing can wake you up more than inspiration and andy, with his cool cap and soul patch was one of those people you wish was your friend, someone who knows what they want to do and lives in its constant pursuit. we spent the rest of the morning in the sightseeing car with our jaws dropped, gazing out at the panoramic, spectacular views of glacier park, witnessing things that we previously were limited to seeing in films and magazines. later, we had lunch with bob, who spoke mostly about his current life in alaska. he was such an encyclopedia of the northwest, generously informing us and answering all of our questions with completeness. we discovered that the portland train was two and a half hours late joining up with us during the night which is going to put a huge strain on us meeting our connection train in chicago. a serious worry buzz amongst our fellow passengers was created. although, amtrak has its ways of shaving time, a little here, a little there. 060429 ... crOwl the afternoon was highlighted by another wine tasting, this time hosted by the captain of the service department, a 6'5" well-spoken man who commanded the proceedings with utmost honor and knowledge compared to jena's greenhorn performance on the trip out. the wines and the cheeses were all the same, but what was different was the generous time he afforded between wines to share lively conversation. bob, our grandfather/father/friend, of course, was seated with us, yet rediscovering the couple who i had talked with at the whitefish, montana station last time, got back at the same location and were heading home to wisconsin. it was cool seeing them again and hearing about their ski trip to big mountain. surprise reunions are rare pleasures, especially with a few glasses of wine. we talked like old friends, exchanging lip-splitting smiles over the heads of other passengers. there were moments we were so involved and captivated with the abundant flow of the jovial talkfest that when another glass of wine was poured we were unexpectedly treated. at the end, there was another contest for the wine that remained and the game was to guess the height of the sommelier. we were close at 6'4" but the winner was a young man i had noticed at one of the smoke stops taking photographs of the undercarriage, wheels and brakeworks of the train. when we had returned to our sleeper car, i noticed his wife and he walking past, so i called out to him and congratulated him on his winnings, mentioning my past remembrance of his photo shoot and asking if he had any of his work he could show me. moments later, photojournal in hand, beth and i welcomed him into my "studio." his name was sean, sloe-eyed, wearing a tight winter hat and a fleece. his wife, ellie, accompanied him. her long hair was piled on top of her head and she wore trendy rectangular glasses and a tracksuit. beth and i had cracked open a bottle of syrah we had bought at pike market and sean eagerly accepted an amtrak plastic cupful. ellie politely declined, joining kathy for a discussion about their new life moving from seattle to montana and a book she was reading, called, "left to tell," about a young rwandan girl who survived the atrocity of her homeland. sean runs a home maintenance business back in seattle and takes crash reconstruction photos for insurance companies, but his artistic endeavour is rural landscape stills, mostly taken in montana which he was excited to show beth and me. we filled him with questions and sat back in our warm inebriation as he filled our little space with his vociferous discourse on a variety of topics. PARTY TIME! 060430 ... crOwl after dinner with bob, kathy was really missing gul's amiable personal attention and took out her frustration heavily on isaac, our attendant who rarely does anything. she was fuming and said when we arrived in chicago, which we still didn't know if we'd make the connecting train on time, she was going to give him a dollar tip with a note condemning his miserably inadequate service. march 1o minnesota we slept hard and straight through the several calls for breakfast, happy to dream. once we woke, we basically hung out, reading, writing, and listening to music until lunchtime. when xiu xiu's girl song came on while i was stretching at the winona station stop, kathy had beth turn off my ipod, deeming it stinky music in relation to the stinky cheese incident. lacrosse, wisconsin we were seated with an 11th grade history teacher from dearborn, michigan, wearing a red hoodie and butchy hair who had been to the mayo clinic in wisconsin and was on her way back home. she said she had good news about her appointment but didn't go into any details. she was quite the traveler having backpacked and camped in rainy oregon and washington. she loved mt. rainier and therefore was eager to hear our treehouse story. she had been to pennsylvania, with a visit to hershey and falling water, but it was her gettysburg trip she loved the most because of the personal tour guides, who were college students with masters degrees in the civil war. still...the question remained.... WILL WE MAKE IT TO CHICAGO ON TIME? 060501 ... crOwl milwaukee, wisconsin i noticed kathy had been crying and discovered she was missing our special aquaintance bob, who had departed during the wee hours of the night. in the time that we knew him, he basically adopted us as his family, sharing all his meals with us, as if the four of us were traveling together. he was completely generous with his information, funny, goofy, and friendly. we always tried to include him in whatever we were doing, even during the party with sean i made sure he received a glass of wine. i think kathy really felt bad about his disease and wanted to do something to help him. when the train pulled into chicago's union station, we had only minutes to spare and very little information to make our connection to pittsburgh, except for the train number and gate. finding it was a different story. our alaskan boat friends were heading to ohio so we were both desperately looking for our train, snaking through the crowd as if we were in cbs's great race. sometimes they would be following us, other times we'd follow them, dragging our cumbersome luggage in and out of people, parting them like the red sea. we finally managed to score and boarded the train with about ten minutes before departure. we no longer had the sleeper car and had to sit in coach, which was nearly packed. all three of us were forced to sit with other people. my fellow passenger was a 67 year-old retired electrician from indiana who was taking the train back from spokane, washington. he told me his supplemental form of income is driving winnebagos from indiana to dealerships all over the country. he does two a month, makes about $4oo.oo, and it takes him nearly a week. he looked like anybody's grandfather and spoke warmly and easily, telling me story after story about his road travels, featuring near accidents, getting pulled over by state police, and the difficulty of driving in heavy winds. kathy sat with an amish family from lancaster, pennsylvania who had been on a trek to mexico for medication. i watched her once in a while and saw her chatting it up with them and laughing. beth was with a girl her age with chopsticks in her hair who attended college in chicago. she was from japan, although she wasn't asian. she was spending spring break with family in indiana. toledo, ohio i saw our alaskan boat friends reunite with the people who they came to visit, which meant we were all by ourselves again with only a few hours until we arrived back home. 060502 ... crOwl cr0wl's_back_from_the_train pittsburgh has long had the reputation as the armpit of the country and justifiably so, that is if you are considering the years during steel production when the pollution was so thick the day appeared as night. however, now that most steel is foreign made and the factories have long been torn down to make water parks and trendy shopping malls, pittsburgh has undergone a complete renaissance which has made it america's best kept secret... entering the city, which has recently been voted in the top five of best views, made me extremely proud to call my home city. well, that's all folks...thanks for coming along to seattle and back. there's already talk about a trip next year to santa fe, new mexico. until then, we'll be going to nyc soon. stay tuned. much appreciation for your kind words concerning: sunshine_comes_quietly sunshine__comes__quietly... much love to all. 060503 what's it to you? who go blather from