Travel Tales S3, Ep2: A Father, A Daughter, A 35-Hour Train Ride

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AFAR Contributor, Chris Collins, on "A Father, A Daughter, A 35-Hour Train Ride"  Read more: https://rebrand.ly/vxu76r6  Find more episodes of Travel Tales at https://www.afar.com/traveltales  Learn more about our advertising partner, Marriot Bonvoy at https://www.marriottbonvoy.com/chasecards.  CONNECT WITH AFAR Afar.com is a digital and print magazine that publishes travel tips, guides, news, and stories: https://www.afar.com  Get updates on the latest articles, travel news, and more from AFAR by signing up for the AFAR newsletter: https://afar.com/newsletters  Follow AFAR on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AfarMedia Follow AFAR on Twitter: https://twitter.com/afarmedia Follow AFAR on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/afarmedia Follow AFAR on Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/afarmedia

Transcript

00:00 It's the passengers. They're just fun. I meet all kinds of people. Nice people, crazy people.

00:08 I'm Aislinn Green. This is Travel Tales by afar. And today we're going to meet some nice people

00:21 who had a mildly crazy adventure. Those people, they are Chris Collin, an author and a far

00:28 contributing writer, and his 13-year-old daughter Cora. In every episode, we hear from a traveler

00:34 about a trip that really meant something to them. And in this season, we're actually sending people,

00:39 writers, comedians, playwrights, out into the world to explore life's big questions.

00:44 So we sent Chris and Cora on Amtrak's Coast Starlight train, which runs between Seattle and

00:51 LA. Now Chris has actually written several stories for afar about his family adventures. But this is

00:57 the first time he's focused on a father-daughter adventure. Their big question? How probable is a

01:04 good train heist? I'm kidding, kind of. Their quest was actually more poetic than that.

01:10 But I think they can probably tell their story better than I can. All aboard.

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02:06 [Music]

02:24 My ties to the headway champs of the world don't care who you are. If I'm crazy, I'll kill you all. If I'm anybody, I don't care. My ties to the headway champs of the world.

02:34 That's Oklahoma. That's the dude's name, Oklahoma. I didn't know that was even an option, having your

02:40 name be Oklahoma. But here we are, and like the state, this improbably named Mike Tyson impersonator

02:46 is huge and fairly indifferent to my existence. You've probably pieced this together already,

02:52 but we're on a train. Oklahoma, me, my daughter, Cora, and a couple hundred other humans, all chugging

02:59 our way down the left side of North America for the next 35 hours. Streams and pines and meadows

03:05 blur past. From his dated space-age swivel chair in the glassy lounge car, Oklahoma stares out

03:12 with a kind of regal dullness. Judging by the empties at his feet, he's on Corona number three.

03:18 Midway through Corona number four, he finally swivels in my direction.

03:25 Did I know that a few years ago he happened to have written and recorded a song called Mandy Sue?

03:30 I did not know this. Well, I did, he says, and it can be found on YouTube. Very cool, I say.

03:37 You can search it up on your phone, he adds. Awesome, I say. You have YouTube, right? He asks.

03:45 At last, I take the hint and dig out my phone. Only two rules on a journey like this. One,

03:51 watch the shimmering lakes streak past and the quilts of wildflower and the muffler shops

03:56 and the tent camps and the Christmas tree farms and the yard sales and the tweens on trampolines

04:01 and the dads inflating pools and everything else that adds up to a country. One that often feels

04:07 more like a concept than an actual 3D place. The second rule, if a man named Oklahoma tells

04:14 you to play his song on your phone, play his song on your phone. Sunset color of your eyes

04:23 remains a beautiful night. All right, thank you so much. Appreciate the ride.

04:33 You can't talk about train travel without backing up and talking first about train stations.

04:42 They're physically and emotionally integral to the whole operation. So it is that hours before

04:48 meeting Oklahoma or anyone else, Cora and I and our little rolly suitcases make our way wide-eyed

04:55 into Seattle's cavernous, hushed old King Street station. With its solemn slabs of polished marble

05:01 and heavy wood benches and ornate old lamps, it's a cathedral to old-fashioned waiting,

05:07 an unrushed space where you take out a book or gaze up at the coffered ceilings and reflect on

05:12 your upcoming, also very unrushed voyage. 1,100 miles. Seattle, Portland, Eugene, Salinas, Santa

05:20 Barbara, and a couple dozen other stops. Even among non-train fanatics, the Coast Starlight

05:26 route is legendary, the best tour of the West Coast out there. Cora, give us that old Amtrak

05:32 trip description in your most saccharine advertising voice, please. Okay, um, along the route,

05:40 we traverse steep mountain ranges, explore rolling, gentle valleys, and skirt along the dynamically

05:47 beautiful sandy shores of the Pacific Ocean. The scenery is breathtaking, the cities are unique,

05:54 and the history is fascinating. LA Union Station? Yep. And room 8? And there's two.

06:08 So come on in. Okay. You'll find the staircase on the right. When you get to the top of the

06:13 staircase and another right, you're going to be the second to last door on the right. So come on

06:19 in. And there's a luggage rack here on the left, but most of those two should fit in the room.

06:23 All right. Thank you so much. You can play it by ear. And I'll be up there once we, uh,

06:26 once I'm able to close up. Awesome. Thank you. All right.

06:33 Skinnier hallway. Okay. Turn right, she said. Yeah. Okay. So we're looking for eight.

06:44 Oh, that is a very skinny hallway.

06:53 Wow. Oh my gosh. Wow. Oh my God. It's really tiny. Have you guys done this before? No. Have you?

07:04 Oh yeah. This is my second time. Really? And the first time I didn't have any AC,

07:08 so we're already up to a really good start. I'm happy about the AC. How far are you going?

07:12 Oxford. Okay. How about you guys? Uh, LA. That's Jenna, our neighbor across the hall from our

07:20 little roomette. Three and a half feet by six and a half feet. Soon Eddie the porter drops by.

07:25 So everything for you guys will be to the right when you come out your door.

07:30 So the second car back is the diner. The fourth car back is the site's your lounge car. So with

07:36 all the seats facing out in the windows and the views, okay. The dining steward, John,

07:42 he'll come through and he'll make an announcement for reservations for lunch. And then afterwards

07:48 for dinner setting out on this trip, I'd asked Cora what her best case scenario would be.

07:54 I think the best thing, something mysterious happens. Like maybe there's a very mysterious

08:04 passenger on board and maybe like smokes a cigar and tears over his newspaper, something like that.

08:13 And I can take notes and solve it at the end and then like I'll win money. That would be ideal.

08:20 I don't have the heart to tell her that Agatha Christie style on board intrigue just isn't a

08:26 thing. Frankly, you're lucky if you stumble across a measly diamond heist. Anyway, telling her this

08:33 might've raised difficult questions about what I want from this trip. Over the years, I've taken

08:39 Cora and her brother on various excursions to stretch their little pea brains. When the girl

08:44 child turned six, I took her to the Mojave desert to show her nothingness. She was an old soul with

08:50 a dark curiosity about what lay beyond the cutesy Pixar inflected edges of childhood. At seven,

08:56 I took the boy child to the grand Canyon with a bunch of rugged, but sweet men to show him what

09:01 fun non-toxic masculinity looked like. And now Cora's 13. She's a serious drawer and painter.

09:09 A budding soccer player, a wry observer, a skeptic about all things except animals.

09:15 I'm pretty fond of her. And before the tractor beam of high school finds her,

09:20 I wanted us to do something memorable and eyeopening. I don't know, soul adjacent together.

09:25 I feel strongly that a train trip is one of those things. When you see a train in the distance,

09:31 rounding a bend or blowing its mournful whistle over a dark trestle, you feel something right?

09:36 Some kind of poignant, lonesome, romantic longing. But what is it exactly? What is it I want to

09:44 happen over these 35 hours? For now there's exploring to do. So off we go. And yeah,

09:50 we do get sort of carried away just over how nice the rest of the train is.

09:54 Here's business class. Let's check it out.

10:04 Cora, these are your finer people. Show respect.

10:07 Oh, a couch car. Oh my god, this is beautiful. Can you just come here anytime? This is where it's at.

10:20 This is amazing. They're single chairs facing the window. Oh, and they turn a little bit.

10:31 Oh my god, and the windows go up and then bend overhead like little skylights. Oh man, this is

10:40 nice. As the train shutters south, we set up shop in the glassy lounge car. Cora promptly takes out

10:48 her sketch pad and gets to work. Me, I just stare like a cow. The scroll of sights is stupendous

10:55 and never-ending. Snow-capped peaks in the distance, a dude sleeping in a minivan,

11:00 an inflatable unicorn snagged on a log in a creek, a clabbered house with a gerbils for sale sign out

11:06 front, $10 a piece. I have a perfectly good novel in my lap and I don't pick it up once.

11:11 At this point, you're probably thinking I've never left the house before. Not true. In fact,

11:17 there's something about a train trip that automatically draws comparisons to past road

11:21 trips you've done. As we sit there, I find myself reflecting on all the divine

11:26 Karawackian adventures I've set out on over the years, only to find just different arrangements

11:31 of McDonald's and Exxons and IHOPs. Nobody admits this, but unless you're really deliberate about

11:37 avoiding the highway, which is the main way you do a road trip, road trips often suck.

11:41 The train, though, it's another animal entirely. The tracks cut right through people's lives,

11:49 right through backyards and farms and small towns and lush valleys. You run close enough to peer

11:55 into bedrooms, into pizza shops, onto back porches, into kale patches. Also, you're higher up than a

12:01 car and you're going just a little slower than a car. I realize these sound like tiny and technical

12:06 details, a slightly different route, height, speed, but often it's precisely these tiny details that

12:13 make all the difference, that tip us into grace. How many couples would never have fallen in love

12:19 if the amount of vermouth in the martini had been ever so slightly off that night,

12:24 or the typeface of Paris's subway system just one percent less romantic, or the vermilion in

12:30 Vermeer's The Music Lesson merely a plain old red. So it is that I'm suddenly seeing the west coast

12:36 for the very first time, despite living here 20 years. Oh, Cora, we are rolling into Tacoma,

12:44 Washington now. Do you have any Tacoma trivia for us? I do. I learned about the Tacoma Narrows Bridge,

12:52 which was a suspension bridge that collapsed in 1940, just a few months after it was finished

12:57 being built. Oh my gosh, did anyone die in the bridge collapse? Well, there are no human casualties,

13:05 but there was a three-legged dog that was left in the car when its owner had to run away. Oh,

13:11 sad. Yeah, well, I don't want to sound like I'm victim-blaming, but there were two people who

13:19 ran into the car to try to save the dog, but the dog bit them both, and eventually they had to

13:24 save themselves and get off the bridge. Oh, but the dog miraculously survived and is living happily

13:33 on a farm to this day, is that right? Yeah, of course. Oh, good. Thank you for that Tacoma trivia, Cora.

13:38 You're welcome. At 12 30, we're summoned to the dining car. Unless you eat in your room, meals are

13:46 social. We're seated with a friendly bicyclist named Richard. Over veggie burgers, he tells us

13:51 about growing up with a dad in the FBI and about getting a history degree in college, but then

13:56 stumbling into anti-submarine training. But mostly we talk about his years riding this very train

14:02 and the people he met over other meals, which gives lunch a fun, recursive air, like people

14:07 are just going to keep meeting in these same booths on these same tracks until the end of time.

14:13 I've been doing it since I was in high school. When would that have been? What year roughly? 1955.

14:19 I've never taken the train until I met him.

14:23 What do you all like about it? We like the scenery. We like the people we meet. It's restful.

14:33 It's not stressful like it might be to catch a plane. You don't have to go through all the TSA

14:40 restrictions. I'm taking the train down to see my dad in San Francisco area and this is a really

14:47 nice affordable way for somebody to get down there but without having to drive the whole way. And I

14:52 love being able to sit here and sketch when I'm on the train. It's really pretty. What are you sketching?

14:56 Oh I can show you I guess. This is what I did earlier. I really like the windows and the

15:03 observation car. You get all kinds of different views from the train. Sometimes junkyard

15:09 yards or like lumber yards or something but sometimes it's like there was like an eagle

15:14 sitting on a log right by a river today. Oh my gosh. Sometimes you see these little snippets you

15:19 wouldn't normally be able to see. Maybe it's the hypnotic thunkety-thunk of the tracks that breaks

15:26 down barriers. Even Cora hits it off with our neighbor Jenna. I'm reading A Good Girl's Guide

15:32 to Murder. I'm on the third book. It's so good. Oh my gosh. It's awesome. I love it. Yeah. Afternoon gives way to

15:41 dinner and then a magnificent sunset somewhere in southern Oregon. Back in our room Cora reads

15:47 and I try to learn the little banjo-lely I'd stuffed into my bag.

15:57 We're trained people at this point. The novelty having given way to a kind of timeless fondness

16:03 like we've been thunking along for days or weeks. We're not really sure.

16:06 Finally it's time to sleep. We reflect on our fellow passengers. Oklahoma will be getting off

16:13 in Oakland tomorrow morning. Will we ever record another song? And then I kiss Cora good night

16:18 and just stare out the dark window for a long time. We're just leaving Klamath Falls. It's 11 30.

16:26 I don't know what we're going past. Various little industrial operations in the midst of big fields.

16:36 Lights here and there but mostly it's dark. Oh a few little houses tucked into some trees.

16:42 This is cozy. This is like when you're a kid lying in the back seat of the family car.

16:52 As the streetlights pass overhead. You're up too late and you just feel the road through the car

17:01 and sort of hypnotic and bumpy. You fall into a kind of cozy trance. That's what it feels like.

17:11 I haven't been in a cozy trance like this in a while.

17:17 All right good night tape recorder.

17:22 Has this episode of afar travel tales already got you planning your next adventure?

17:39 We hope that hearing these firsthand stories of life-changing trips will make you think about

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17:53 or the opportunity to immerse yourself in a different culture. Let the Marriott Bonvoy

17:58 boundless card take you to a place where you can look deeper, listen closer and care more.

18:03 Because when we explore with passion and purpose we create a deeper connection between ourselves

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18:37 Okay Court we're rolling into Oakland. What do you have to tell me? Okay there are hundreds of

18:46 painted gnomes throughout the city that are painted by an anonymous artist and they are

18:51 attached to utility poles or they sit on windowsills. They're just all over the city

18:55 but PG&E does not like them and will be dispatching a crew to remove them.

19:03 Thank you. You've given me a lot to ponder. When trains first appeared these gleaming

19:09 creations embodied the future. Now they represent the past. A simpler smokier era of ritzy club cars

19:17 and parlor trysts and on-board barbers and beauticians. For me personally they've also

19:22 always represented Leslie Turner. After breakfast I tell Cora about the day this tall skinny young

19:29 man walked out to the sweltering train yards at the Dallas train station, looked left and then right

19:35 and hoisted himself onto the baggage car idling in front of him. The year was 1921 and tucked into

19:42 his shoe were his life savings, 40 bucks. This I tell Cora was her great-great-grandfather.

19:48 Leslie had gotten in the habit of riding the blinds, i.e. sneaking into the front platform

19:55 of the baggage car and catching a free ride behind the piles of suitcases. Other times he

20:00 just rode on top of the cars out under the wide sky. That's where he was on this trip about a

20:06 thousand miles from Dallas now when he started getting sleepy. He laced his fingers behind his

20:11 head, spread his legs for maximum stability and closed his eyes. My great-grandfather didn't just

20:19 ride the rails because he was broke. Something singular happens when you move over the planet

20:24 by train. It's not complicated or poetic or allegorical. What it is is you're watching

20:30 this incredible movie scroll past and it's not like any other movie in your life. Or so it was

20:35 for my great-grandfather until he woke up on top of that baggage car to find a Pennsylvania police

20:41 officer poking at him. A few days later he was in prison. Not long into his incarceration he learned

20:49 that prisoners doing manual labor could ask the guard for permission to go buy smokes at a nearby

20:54 store. My great-grandfather did just that. As the guard looked on he jogged over, made his purchase,

21:01 exited the store and hopped into a delivery man's truck, never to be seen there again.

21:06 One of those rare self-pardons. I find myself picturing this event as just another little

21:13 vignette someone might see from inside their own train. That, after all, is what this whole

21:18 scrolling movie thing is about. The plot is the caprice of history. The sporadically engineered,

21:25 mostly random unfolding of events piling on top of each other to amount to the world we know,

21:30 or aspire to know. The plot is how the ice age ran a glacier over what's now a scrapyard.

21:36 It's how lumber transformed the whole state of California. And how someone's bouncing a baby

21:41 outside this old apartment complex. And someone else is taking their 15-minute break outside a KFC.

21:47 The plot is this woman in a floral print shirt north of Soledad, who every single day for the

21:52 last 50 years has stood in the doorway of her farmhouse and waved to this very train. This is

21:58 what I wanted from this trip. I didn't need Cora and me to have deep conversations the whole time,

22:03 like in road trip mythology. I just wanted us to watch this weird movie together for a while.

22:08 We're north of San Luis Obispo when everything goes dark. We've slipped into a pitch black

22:14 stone tunnel on a shrubby hillside. And when we emerge on the other side, we're perched dramatically

22:20 along the western edge of a vast valley. Tawny, parched hills spill down to the valley floor,

22:26 with its soft golden knuckles of faintly waving grass. And in the distance, you can see the poor

22:31 chumps driving in the same direction along Highway 101. I've been one of those chumps,

22:36 but I've never really absorbed this valley. Because the angle's wrong, and because your

22:41 eyes are on the road. And even if you could see it, you wouldn't really care that much,

22:45 because you're not in train mode. We keep winding along that edge, and soon we're skirting an

22:51 adjoining valley, some live oak and manzanita lining a creek bed, and some thick cows milling

22:57 around near a barbed wire fence. But otherwise, just soft hills, far as you can see. The train

23:04 rolls into another tunnel, blackness all around, a few more minutes of chugging along, and then the

23:09 track executes a rather tight turn, thus affording riders a view of ourselves, the front of the train

23:15 having curved into sight of the rear of the train. Okay Cora, we're pulling up to Simi Valley. What

23:21 can you tell me about Simi Valley? Well, Ronald Reagan was buried in Simi Valley, and before he

23:28 was president, he was a lifeguard, and he saved around 77 lives. And that led me to lifeguard

23:35 world records, and the one for saving the most lives was met by Leroy Colombo,

23:42 who saved 907 lives in 40 years. Thank you, that's a great Simi Valley fact. Yep.

23:50 35 hours is the right number of hours. Lush Washington becomes hot, dusty Oregon, and you

24:01 wake in golden California, which is misty and gray, and then hot and dry. You run right along the edge

24:07 of the Pacific, vaguely perilous. Cora and I spot two dolphins arcing slowly out of the water,

24:14 and then it's nighttime, and then we're packing up our things and approaching Los Angeles.

24:18 In the days ahead, Cora and I will of course talk a lot about this trip, the odd and oddly lovable

24:25 cast of characters, the awesomeness of the sights, the adventure of it all. I also confess to worrying

24:31 briefly that this wasn't one of those transformative, epiphany kinds of trips. Did I fail my child as

24:37 her existential travel agent? But then one night we're driving home from a late dinner, and I catch

24:43 sight of those streetlights passing on the highway, and the rolling shadows on my kids' faces as they

24:48 sleepily stare out at the night. You know what I mean, that deep, almost reptilian sensation of

24:55 watching highway lights pass by, the cool of the window on your forehead, the edge of the old seat

25:00 belt against your collarbone, the rhythmic thunk of the pavement underneath. A train is that. I mean,

25:06 it's the train version of that, but that's what it is, all deep, wordless sensation, the kind that

25:12 burrows not in your brain, but your cells. For those 35 hours, sure, we talked and played cards

25:19 and ate Amtrak veggie burgers, but at some level we were in that trance. A train is a trance,

25:26 a 60-ton trance. Whatever it's doing to you, it's doing beneath the surface. So there's your vague,

25:33 squishy answer, my daughter. I have no idea what this trip was about, but I have faith it registered

25:38 in our bones, and that's where we'll store the memories of Oklahoma and Richard and the smell

25:43 of train tracks and the look of moonlight roving over a darkened field as you drift off. And Cora,

25:50 lest you think I forgot, here is the postscript on your great-great-grandfather.

25:55 Half a century after he escaped, he returned to Pennsylvania. He was 72 now, having gone on to

26:02 become a successful illustrator and a generally upstanding guy who paid actual dollars for his

26:07 train tickets. Maybe something deep in his bones hadn't been sitting right, because he walked up

26:13 to that Pennsylvania prison and confessed. I guess the officials there had bigger things on their

26:18 minds because they shrugged and let him go. There's my trivia for you, Cora.

26:23 Thanks for the trivia, Cora and Chris. I asked Chris what it was like to travel with his daughter

26:37 as the world of adolescence beckons, as he puts it.

26:42 She's a very thoughtful person, and there's usually a lot going on internally. I tend to

26:49 just sort of blather any thought that crosses my mind or tend to articulate it. But she's always

26:55 thinking like 10 things and saying two of them. So it's interesting to travel with someone like

26:59 that. Chris also said that because he didn't really travel much as a child, he's committed

27:05 to spending every last dollar on going and doing wacky harebrained things with his kids.

27:11 If you want more wacky harebrained things from Chris, you can visit his website,

27:15 chriscollin.com, or follow him on Twitter or Instagram @chriscollin3000. His most recent

27:21 book is Off the Day the Internet Died, and we'll link to all of that in our show notes.

27:26 He also created several of the songs you heard throughout the episode.

27:29 And a final shout out to Oklahoma and his song, Mandy Sue.

27:40 Ready for more travel stories? Visit us online at afar.com/traveltales,

27:45 and be sure to follow us on Instagram and Twitter. We're @afarmedia. If you enjoyed

27:51 today's adventure, we hope you'll come back in two weeks for more great stories.

27:55 Subscribing makes this easy. You can find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast

28:01 platform. And be sure to rate and review us. It helps other travelers find the show.

28:07 This has been Travel Tales, a production of AFAR Media and Boom Integrated.

28:11 Our podcast is produced by Aisling Green, Adrienne Glover, and Robin Lai. Host production was by John

28:17 Marshall Media staff, Jen Grossman and Clint Rhodes. Music composition by Alan Koreshia.

28:23 And a special thanks to Irene Wang and Angela Johnston.

28:27 I'm Aisling Green, your traveling as much as I possibly can host. I am so happy to be on the

28:35 road again. As we explore the world this year, remember that travel begins the moment we walk

28:41 out our front door. Everyone has a travel tale. What's yours?

28:46 [Music]

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