It was the Rand Paul incident that finally did it. The senator
from Kentucky was going through airport security en route to D.C.
in January when a metal detector went off. Paul said there was a
mistake and wanted to walk through the detector again to clear it
up. TSA wouldn’t allow that. Its agents insisted on an enhanced
pat-down. Paul, a vocal critic of the agency’s intrusiveness,
wasn’t up for being groped that day. He missed his flight in the
ensuing standoff.
Paul is a sitting senator in the United States Congress
and thus enjoys constitutional protections against being detained
on his travels to and from D.C. This isn’t one of those so-called
dormant clauses of the Constitution either. Patrick Kennedy once
invoked congressional privilege to beat a possible DUI charge after
a fender bender on Capitol Hill.
The reason Ron Paul’s son didn’t assert his enhanced
rights is that he is indignant over the government’s enhanced
inspections of ordinary Americans. It’s a noble sentiment that we
can applaud him for. Yet I have a hard time imagining TSA would
have just let him go and not added him to a no-fly list if he were
simply Rand Paul, eye doctor.
For me, that tore it. I had to go to D.C. for the CPAC
conference that starts today, but there was no way I was going to
fly there and I had no desire to personally reenact Forrest Gump.
So I took the train.
When I told people I was going to do this, their first
reaction can be summarized as “Are you nuts?” Their second reaction
was quite different. They asked about the cost and length of the
trip. When they learned that the trip was three-plus leisurely days
of room, board, and travel with at best a spotty wifi connection,
they were envious.
As well they should have been. If they flew while I took
the train, they had to deal with long lines, luggage restrictions,
cramped seating, and a culture of cost-cutting that gouges you for
everything — from checked luggage to stale bagels. First class is
a little better, but not much, and it doesn’t seem worth the
expense for the short duration of the flight.
I walked onto the train with only minutes to spare; gave
them my ticket but didn’t walk through any screening apparatus,
take off my shoes, or show ID; put my own bag in one of the large
storage compartments without anybody fussing over its size; and
kicked back in my own room with facing benches, which made into a
bedroom at night.
All meals are included in the ticket cost. You can have
them either delivered to your room or take them in the dining car,
which has “community seating.” The host plops you down with fellow
train riders, mostly other sleeping passengers, and you hear
stories and accents from all over the country.
The other riders told me how not to hail a taxi cab in
Argentina, how small towns in North Dakota have turned into boom
towns because of oil development, how much real estate prices have
shot up in certain ski spots, and how annoyed Americans all along
the 49th parallel are with Canadians.
Amtrak also came up with other ways to keep the
overnighters engaged. My car’s attendant gave me a bottle of
champagne upon departure. One afternoon, the dining car had a wine
and cheese tasting that I’m not sure I signed up for, but got roped
into anyway.
Nearly every first-time rider told me “This sure beats
flying!” at least once, and many movers of the air traffic industry
agreed. I took several meals seated next to actual pilots. When not
in the cockpit, they told me, train travel is more fun. It gives
you room to stretch and some time to think, uninterrupted by most
of the noises of modern life, and you can step out for actual smoke
breaks without being fined.
And the views! You can see some marvelous things from far
above the earth, but closer is better. I saw the sun peak through
the clouds after a hazy day and set over the waters of the Puget
Sound; Montana’s panorama of stars at night; Glacier National Park
covered with snow; lakes in the process of unfreezing, with chunks
of ice cracking off near the shore and drifting into the watery
center.
There is no rail-driven equivalent of flyover country. We
rode through major metropolises, booming areas, poorer patches
literally on the wrong side of the tracks, and plenty of small and
abandoned towns not along the interstate that I would one day like
to find the time to explore. If I ever get around to it, odds are
I’ll be taking train.
