In which veins throb... Train recognition heuristics... The kind of people you see on Amtrak... A power outage...
Berkeley 1998 Jul 29 Wednesday
It was a long day at work. I was going to the train station after work, and had brought along my luggage, which had nearly pulled my arms from their sockets. In my cubicle, I patched together perl scripts, tried to replace myself with automata. I wrote plans, disseminated priorities, dispensed advice. I was in the middle of too many projects. I looked down at my arms. Veins visibly throbbed as I typed. A co-worker dropped by my desk, fresh back from Canada. He'd nearly been eaten alive by mosquitoes. I was not encouraged. A group of people wanted to spin off from the company; I was one of them; we met about that. My manager wanted to talk about her plans; she wanted to switch to another department. Too much, too much. I was working so hard. There was no end in sight. My train was leaving at 9:30 and I was sure I'd have to work right up until the end.
Chuck, the intern, was walking outside to grab a burrito for dinner; I followed him down in the elevator to talk about his upcoming tasks; I couldn't wait for him to get back from the taqueria; there was no time.
When I stepped out of the elevator into the lobby with the intern, Paul Du Bois was there. He asked me if I wanted to head up to Dave Loftesness' and Veronica Boutelle's house for dinner. I snorted: I didn't have time. Chuck assured me that he understood his tasks. I thought about my remaining tasks. I thought about my exhausted state. I was pretty tired. If I kept working in this state, I was more likely to break things than to fix them. A dinner up at Dave Loftesness' seemed like a good idea.
Up at the house there were dogs; I pet them. There was a garden; Veronica and I picked lettuce for a salad. There was a phone; I called up Amtrak and find out that the train was running a half hour late. There were friends; I talked to them in that extra half hour; the dogs, the garden, the house had restored my powers of speech. Maybe I wasn't quite calm anymore, but I was no longer a danger to myself and those around me.
Paul drove me to the Amtrak station. The train wasn't running a half-hour late: it was running an hour late. And so I walked into the station waiting room with time to spare.
Emeryville Station
The waiting room was huge, with a curved roof like a hangar. There was art: cloth and wire constructions dangling from the ceiling. There were rows of seats bolted to the floor, full of discouraged looking people. They hadn't called ahead; they hadn't known the train was running late.
I didn't know how I was supposed to get on the train when it arrived. I just had a ticket. I figured I'd ask. I walked towards a ticket desk with a clerk behind it. At my approach, the clerk took a step back, then walked off to the side and through a door for Employees Only. I looked around. There were no other clerks. I stood and looked bewildered. No-one came to rescue me. In fact, now another traveller was walking up behind me. There was a line. If I couldn't get the clerk to come back, I would be holding up the line! The pressure was on. I looked around. There was a bell on the desk labelled "Ring for service". I rang it.
After a couple of minutes had passed with no sign of a clerk, the traveller behind me in the now-growing line said, "Maybe you rang the bell too quietly for her to hear you. Maybe you should ring it again, louder." I rang the bell again, louder. The clerk burst from the Employees Only area, yelling at a repairman out in the lobby to get his act together. She glared at me. I explained that I had a ticket and was wondering if there was some kind of check-in procedure. Nope. When the train arrived, I would just show the ticket to someone. That was the extent of the check-in. "Okay, thanks!" I chirped. Her look told me that she was in no mood for cheery people.
I wandered into the seating area, sat myself down, and started reading. I looked up at each clatter, hoping for the train. A rumbling outside--it was a truck, not a train. A swinging headlight--of a baggage train, not a proper train. And then there was a deeper rumble, a clackity-clack, a bright, steady light. A train was pulling into the station. Some of my fellow travellers got up, hoisted bags. I looked out the window at the tracks. This looked like a freight train. Did Amtrak carry freight? Did Amtrak carry freight and passengers on the same trains? If this were the proper train, would the clerk announce it? That surly clerk? Car after car of the train trundled past--all appeared to be freight cars. Still, this train was stopping. Why would a freight train stop here? I started thinking hard. This train was going South. The train I wanted would be going North. Was this station on a spur?
I got up, left my bags by my seat, and walked to the waiting room door, and looked out at the train. Other tourists blinked at it uncertainly. Screw it. This probably wasn't my train. If I was wrong--well, I would catch a plane tomorrow.
I walked back to my seat, noticed a nearby woman watching me. Woman is too kind a term--this was obviously a spritzhead. I sat down, and read for a couple of minutes. "Excuse me," she addressed me. I looked at her. She continued, "Do you know how to tell when the right train arrives?" I thought, It will be a passenger train. I thought, It will be heading North. I thought, It will be announced over an intercom. I thought, I don't want to talk to you at all. I said, "I. Have. No. Idea," slowly, loudly. Then I went back to reading my book (What Men Don't Tell Women by Roy Blount, Jr.).
When the correct train arrived (an hour late), it was a passenger train heading North, announced over the intercom. I walked out of the station doors into the night. With my fellow travellers, I started walking alongside the train, looking for the car that contained my room. As it happened, this involved walking most of the length of the train. I was reminded of the fact that my luggage was far too heavy. This was a long walk. Hemmed in by the train on one side and a chain-link fence on the other, I was unable to get past some of my slow-moving fellow passengers. I wanted to walk fast so that I could get where I was going and put down my bags. This was not to be. I trudged behind the old, the infirm, the unrelentingly white, the unceasingly banal.
Finally, I was at the proper car, the proper door. Just outside the door was a uniformed lady checking some tickets. She motioned an old, white couple onto the train. She looked up at me, clucked, "Oh, let's see what car you're supposed to be on." She looked at my ticket and seemed surprised that I was to be on her car. "Your room," she said, "is upstairs and on the right." I thanked her. Soon I would be able to put down my bags. I looked at the door of the car. The old white couple was standing there, talking with a middle-aged white couple outside, blocking the doorway. I moved towards them. They didn't move aside, kept talking, oblivious. My shoulders screamed. The nice uniformed lady waved at them, pointed at me, said, "This nice young man would like to get past." I squeezed past, and got to hear what the middle-aged white man said to the uniformed lady: this was the old couple's 50th anniversary--make the trip nice for them. No money changed hands. These obnoxious people wanted special consideration, and they wouldn't even tip for it? I hoped they were going to hell. It occurred to me that I might be tired, maybe just a little grumpy.
I arrived at my room, pulled down the top bunk, dumped my luggage onto it, lay down on the bottom bunk, and started taking notes while I waited for the train to start. I wrote:
I am in room 4 of car 1432. Across from me, an old man grunts and wheezes as he removes his shoes. It's taking a lot out of him.
Then the lights went out. All power was off on the train. There were whispers in the hall: passengers muttered that technicians were working on some mechanical problem that had been plaguing the train on its journey from the South. It was dark. I was tired. I was in Emeryville. I wanted to leave. My friend and co-worker Penny was going to stop being my co-worker and was going to start working at some startup in Emeryville. I hated Emeryville. Why was the train still here? Why was it still dark?
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