Well, it's been a great trip, but once I go to sleep for the evening, that'll basically be it for my trip on the Southwest Chief - I'll wake up to an early breakfast at 5:30 PDT and ride to the end of the line by 9AM PDT.
I just don't have the upstream out here to post pictures now, but once I am in LA, I will have two hours and hopefully a strong EvDO signal. If I'm lucky I will find a place to sit, chill, and upload some photos. I'm back on CDMA already after we departed from Flagstaff, AZ.
I observe that despite my trepidation about air pressure at heights, I have hardly noticed the changes as we've gone cross-country through the mountains of Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona. We were at 7500 ft. at one point in Raton, NM and I was fine. Hmm...
I've been eating well. I tried a garden burger and liked it. Unfortunately the meals are the same every day for each meal (they correctly assume that you won't be on the train for enough days to get completely sick of them), but I've enjoyed fruit, cereal, milk, a garden burger, and stir fry - breakfast, lunch and dinner, respectively.
This has been a great trip. I'm about 75% done now. The Coast Starlight should be a quickie relative to the SW Chief and even the Capitol Ltd. Hope I sleep soundly...
Monday, May 21, 2007
Sunday, May 20, 2007
Grandma & Grandpa
Grandpa, happy 87th birthday!!! Feel better soon, grandma!
I'll be sending you some photos of my trip soon.
I'll be sending you some photos of my trip soon.
The Capitol Ltd
Here are some notes I jotted down on my way to Chicago on the Capitol Ltd:
Until almost dusk we were still in Maryland. We basically took the MARC Brunswick Line out of the area, then transitioned onto CSX track. We passed MARC stations Point of Rocks, New Brunswick, and Perryville, and stopped at Amtrak station Rockville.
We made it to Pennsylvania by midnight. Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana show slick pavements in the light, indicating rain. By 3am, we were in Toledo, Ohio. We made up a lot of time powering ahead at 70 mph. At some point after that, the local timezone became CST. By 6am CST, we stopped in Southbend, Indiana. It's hazy. We hit a little bit of freight traffic. Then we passed through a LOT of farmland with haze sitting on it, with a maximum speed of 40 mph.
I finally got 1x CDMA internet access and an electrical outlet at about 6 CST. As we approach Chicago from the east, even in rural areas, download speeds have been increasing from 2 KB/s to 15 KB/s. The connection is finally stable. Once we left Maryland, I couldn't connect because another carrier owned the cell towers and Verizon didn't have pass-through service.
I'm not going to risk uploading pictures until we get to Chicago Union Station. Hopefully there, they have EvDO with over 5 times my current DL/UL bandwidth. At that time I will start to upload a few pictures to photobucket.
Until almost dusk we were still in Maryland. We basically took the MARC Brunswick Line out of the area, then transitioned onto CSX track. We passed MARC stations Point of Rocks, New Brunswick, and Perryville, and stopped at Amtrak station Rockville.
We made it to Pennsylvania by midnight. Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana show slick pavements in the light, indicating rain. By 3am, we were in Toledo, Ohio. We made up a lot of time powering ahead at 70 mph. At some point after that, the local timezone became CST. By 6am CST, we stopped in Southbend, Indiana. It's hazy. We hit a little bit of freight traffic. Then we passed through a LOT of farmland with haze sitting on it, with a maximum speed of 40 mph.
I finally got 1x CDMA internet access and an electrical outlet at about 6 CST. As we approach Chicago from the east, even in rural areas, download speeds have been increasing from 2 KB/s to 15 KB/s. The connection is finally stable. Once we left Maryland, I couldn't connect because another carrier owned the cell towers and Verizon didn't have pass-through service.
I'm not going to risk uploading pictures until we get to Chicago Union Station. Hopefully there, they have EvDO with over 5 times my current DL/UL bandwidth. At that time I will start to upload a few pictures to photobucket.
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