Up In Smoke

 

Bakersfield, California Amtrak Station

Our scheduled plans for travel today, literally, went up in smoke. Wild fires in the Santa Barbara area closed down all Amtrak trains running on the coastal route including the Coast Starlight which we were booked on for the overnight run to Portland, Oregon. That means the scenes of the spectacular Pacific coastline we had been looking forward to are not to be.

Personally, I think running a fast train, composed of flame-resistant, stainless steel passenger cars, through a gauntlet of towering flames would be kind of exciting and a great photo op, but cooler heads have prevailed.

We found out in an email from Amtrak when we got back from yesterday’s shore excursion. After an hour on hold with customer service I was finally able to talk to a representative who explained our travel life was about to get a bit more complicated.

Option one was that we could stay another day in La La Land, at our expense, and merely take the next Coast Starlight on Thursday. But that would mean cutting our visit with my brother Dale short by a full day and that is non-negotiable.

Option two, which we are currently in the middle of, is the one we choose.

It meant getting over to Union Station this morning and boarding a special Amtrak bus for a three-hour ride north to Bakersfield. After an hour wait there we boarded a commuter train (coach only, no sleepers) for a five-hour ride north to where we sit now.

Instead of the coast we experienced some of the least expressive landscape ever produced by nature, California’s Central valley. It’s some 40 to 60 miles wide, nearly 400 miles long and dead flat in every direction. Mostly it’s just wall-to-wall almond trees. If it wasn’t for the occasional walnut grove, or construction sites related to the building of California’s “Bullet Train,” it would have been a boring trip indeed.

That lack of scenic inspiration leaves plenty of time for thought and where today’s topic seems to be smoke related, I can’t help but share how prevalent marijuana use seems to be all across the Amtrak system. It started in Boston with plenty of people in the station waltzing past, leaving the distinctive odor of burning rope in their wake. On the Lake Shore Limited, old Mary Jane wafted through the sleeping car on several occasions. When we stopped for a midnight break in Kansas City on the Southwest Chief, people can get off to smoke. You guessed it, dubes and pipes were as common as cigarettes and vaping pens.

That pattern repeated both on and off the train in Albuquerque and especially everyplace, indoors and out, we went in Los Angeles.

It was so common that at first I thought I was smelling things. Then I worried I might have a rare strain of COVID where instead of losing your sense of smell, you just think everything stinks like ganja.

Apparently the increasing pace of legalization across the country has emboldened folks to toke up everywhere and anywhere. I also wonder if because train passengers don’t have to pass through heightened airport security, those who prefer reefer as their recreational drug of choice are gravitating towards riding the rails. Plus long distance trains all have snack bars.

On the run up from Bakersfield, it seemed like at every stop, whomever got on and walked through the car, reeked of pot smoke. One woman, obviously confused about which seat to pick, walked past us three times, tripling down on the rank olfactory assault. I wanted to ask out loud who’s been smoking skunk weed, but I didn’t because Roxie would have kill me.

I’m hoping in the future Amtrak will warn passengers that there may be random checks for marijuana, (still a federal offense). That would at least add an element of paranoia to it and may help keep a “lid” on it.

One postscript: Everyone who reeked of marijuana seemed to be wearing their COVID masks below the nose. Maybe even they just wanted to get some fresh air.

Martinez, California Amtrak Station

So it’s almost 9 p.m. and we’ve been sitting in the station in Martinez, CA, for an hour and half waiting for an 11 p.m. connection. Two more hours to go. We’re not alone. We’ve been traveling all day with others in the same boat. It’s nice to make new friends through shared adversity in sort of an Amtrak version of the Stockholm Syndrome..

Along with being the birthplace of Joe DiMaggio, Martinez can claim to have been the home of John Muir who helped lead the fight to preserve a little valley east of here called Yosemite. The irony is that we tried to work in some time at Yosemite into this trip but the connections and timing issues were just too complicated. The hoops we had to jump through just to get this far today are certain proof of that.

 

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