Strangers on a Train

If husband is here when it comes time to head south to Eugene, we get in the car and make a road trip out of it. We stop in Wilsonville for coffee and go shopping at Fry’s. With two of us, it’s the most efficient way to travel. But for solo travel, I take the train. The Amtrak Cascades line takes a little bit longer and costs only slightly more than driving.

I like taking the train because you get a chance to talk to strangers while you’re traveling. You can chat with the conductor in the bistro car when you go for coffee. And you can meet your fellow passengers. People are relaxed, after all, they’re not in a hurry — they’re on the train. Train travel is so much less stressful than flying, so people are open. They’re not bogged down in airport security, they’re not pinned to a narrow seat, and they’re easy going. This makes for much nicer travel companions.

On the way down, I met Terri. I started the conversation because she was so, well, costumed, in a beaded blue velvet hat and a huge furry black boa. She looked spectacular. “What’s that made out of?” I asked. I had to know. It was llama pelt. “Can I touch it?!?!”

So we got to chatting. Not about anything in particular, just stuff. She asked me what I did; we talked a little about Eugene, where she was also going, and about Seattle where we both live.

Terri told me about her friend who made the llama boa. He also makes corsets out of leather and PVC and one year, she was a model in a fashion show. The corset maker works for the Seattle Opera in costuming and also, is quite well known in the leather and fetish community. Then she told me about her partner who’s a serious vegan and has made all his own bondage and fetish gear out of hemp.

Up at the front of the car, there was a young couple with two very small children. The woman was thrilled about how her Child Protective Services hearing had been dismissed. This family unit had been staying at a mission shelter, panhandling for train fare to Eugene, until some beneficent stranger gave them the money they needed to get out of town. They were fleeing the woman’s grandmother, who may or may not have threatened to kill the young woman; I was unclear on this point. The babies had been in grandma’s care, but they’d been released to the mother after the hearing was dismissed. Now they were getting the hell out of Washington but were sad because all of their belongings were still at the grandmother’s place.

They didn’t tell me this story directly. I heard it because they told it, over and over and over again, loudly, on their cell phone. They also told it to a fellow passenger, a heavily inked 18ish gal, after they’d finished talking about tattoos. “You ever heard of obscure band name? Well they’re this death metal love band and she’s got this drawing she did and she’s gonna get it tattooed on her shoulder.”

My trip home was fairly uninteresting. A man got on in Vancouver, Washington, sat in the seat next to me, and dozed off until his phone rang. He talked a little about why being transferred to El Paso was better than going to Iraq. My eavesdropping was thwarted by his good manners. A few minutes in to the conversation, he politely wandered off to talk elsewhere.

I fell asleep while he was gone and woke up shortly before Tacoma. The rest of the trip to Seattle was quiet. The Korean student in the seat in front of me talked on the phone to his girlfriend “Hey, don’t cry, just focus on your exams, okay?“ and made plans to meet his friends in Seattle. I stared out the window in a blurry haze, dozing and listening to Rickie Lee Jones on my headphones for the rest of the ride home.

There are a few pics from my trip here.