Platform One (Part 010)
Portland – San Francisco
Glen Wilson
The train ride from Portland, Oregon to San Francisco was supposed to be eighteen hours long. A mammoth undertaking on schedule, and as I’d learnt in the USA, train schedules are effectively ‘minimum journey times’. Incredibly though, at Portland, the train arrived on time and already reasonably busy. The train guard allots me a seat next to Sam from Brooklyn who is heading to LA and introduces himself by saying there’s bound to be a decent stop where he can get off and smoke weed. Each to their own.
I pass an hour talking to Sam about various things, from where we’ve been to baseball and beyond. “…you were in Texas and you didn’t fire a gun?! You have to fire a gun in Texas; don’t be so close minded about it.” The train winds up into the Oregon mountains and darkness begins to creep in amongst the fir trees. Sam disappears off to the lounge car and I attempt to get some sleep. An attempt is all it is as thanks to a persistent humming noise which appears to be coming from beneath my seat, but eventually turns out to be the woman behind me. A combination of her and the snoring from the odd middle-aged man across the aisle clad entirely in Oregon University clothing ensures that in trying to nod off I’m fighting a losing battle.
By 3am I’ve given up on getting any sleep and instead gaze out the window at what I first think is a particularly bright full moon and then I realise the train isn’t moving, and I am actually transfixed by a trackside lamp. The only other night-time entertainment comes from a drunk who stumbled onto the train somewhere after dark fell trying to hide his condition with all the subtlety of a clown’s clothing and throughout the night constantly heads downstairs for equally unsubtle cigarettes.
Just after 6am I head to the lounge car for breakfast and over my rice krispies get chatting to a woman who used to live in San Francisco and she lets me in on some sights to see. A large old guy down the car, with the appearance of a cross between Colonel Sanders and Foghorn Leghorn, calls a hotline for up to date information about our journey… we’re five hours late. We’re heading through the mountains and lakes of southern Oregon and the old guy moves to the seat next to me to enjoy the view… only for the train to stop in a ravine and leave us staring at a rock face. “Well…” says the old guy “good ride for a Geologist.”
Six hours later and twenty two hours into the eighteen hour journey I’m downstairs in the lounge car when Amber Rose asks if she can sit with me. She’s heading to Martinez and then on by bus. We talk about differences in British and American culture and the journey. Amber says she wasn’t all that hungry but came to the lounge car to escape the guy sat behind her. It’s an old guy with a really gravelly voice who kept taking constantly about anything and nothing well into the night and beyond. She had turned round at one point to see who he was talking to and found that she was the only person anywhere near him.
After nearly twenty five hours the train finally reaches Emeryville from where it is a bus ride across the Bay Bridge to San Francisco. Here I meet Alexa and Sarah, two students from Nottingham who have been on a placement in New York for six months and are now travelling the country. I can’t help feel I did the wrong degree. As we take our seats on the bus an old guy sitting behind the girls begins talking away in a gravelly voice “I tell you I never went skiing, I don’t tolerate the snow, but then way back in 68 I think it was…” It could be an equally long bus journey.
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