Traveling Outside of Time
This trip is supposed to take 34 hours but, because of a prolonged delay earlier in the day – typical for this train, which has earned the nickname the Coast Starlate — we have already been on the train close to 34 hours and are still many miles and several hours from our destination.
About an hour south of SEATAC airport, Joseph starts laughing.
“You know,” he says, “someone could take off from LAX right now and still beat us to Seattle.” We are both quiet for a moment thinking about that and munching our peanuts. I smile and shake my head. He looks over at me. “Yeah, I know what you mean,” he says, although I have not said anything. “I feel sorry for them, too.”
In an era when every other form of long-distance transportation—air, car or bus–is fraught with tension and aggravation, Joseph’s remark speaks to a secret Amtrak re-discovered with the Coast Starlight: It’s not about when you arrive. It’s about how you get there. It’s not about the destination; it’s about the journey..
And what was true in the 1990s, when an Amtrak genius named Brian Rosenwald reinvented the Coast Starlight, is even truer now as security crackdowns are transforming air travel into a tedious, time-consuming and unpleasant experience. But for passengers on the Coast Starlight, there were no long lines and cramped seats, no crowded highways and bad road food.