Amtrak's Coast Starlight
| My time in LA ended the morning. I had to wake up at 5am to drive my Kia economy rental car back to LAX to return it to the only company that charged an extra $5 instead of the usual $10 per day as a penalty for being under 25. I can die for my country in a war, I can elect our leaders, as of only two days ago I was allowed to drink and rent a car at all (thank God for my parents' timing here), but it will be another four years before I am an adult in Avis's eyes. The only significant legal mile stone after that is the seniors' meal at Denny's. |
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| I had an hour and a half to get to the bus station, and was planning on catching the airport shuttle there, which would have cost around $22. The guys at the off-airport rental car place told me, "Catch the bus at the main hub and it'll take you right there and only cost $1. Let me get Mario to drive you to the hub. He's a nice old man, so tip him well." Mario drove me for 15 minutes to the bus hub and was indeed a very nice old man. |
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| We got there just in time for me to catch the bus, but I realized I used all my small bills at the stupid Caltech coffee house, and only had a single for the bus and a 20 for Mario's tip. I figured I'd still come out a dollar ahead on the deal, so I gave him the 20 and scampered onto the bus with my suitcase and bookbag. |
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| What they failed to mention was that the LA public bus I was riding on with my suitcase and bookbag would take me straight to the train station only after touring the neighborhoods and downtown of sunny Los Angeles. At no other point on the trip did I feel my life and possessions were in as much danger as during that hour, if for no other reason than I was taking up a seat and a half on a standing-room-only city bus. |
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| Needless to say, I made it to the train station just in time, found my car, and hopped on just before the train started moving. (I hadn't even found my seat yet.) Beginning as soon as I sat down and continuing through most of the trip, I was sitting in a car that was mostly empty except for two old ladies behind me who spent the entire 12 hours having the same five conversations over and over again. |
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| As its name implies, Amtrak's Coast Starlight does run right up against the beautiful Pacific coast for much of the way. |
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| I believe this is taken just before reaching Santa Barbara - a beautiful city I had the pleasure of visiting my sophomore year during a job interview at Green Hills, an excellent company which seems to make excellent embedded compilers. I really wanted to talk to physics professors at UC Santa Barbara, but I didn't know anyone and didn't plan time for it, so it will have to wait. |
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| The beautiful Salinas Valley in the afternoon -- the birthplace of John Steinbeck and setting for many his famous works. This was the last scenery before my destination of San Jose, and the location I finally finished reading the excellent book Gödel, Escher, Bach after an entire summer of creeping along. As the second half of its name implies, the Coast Starlight would continue to Seattle all night without me. Perhaps some day I'll take the other half of the scenic journey. |
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