Winging It

Before we start packing our Samsonite Streamlites with sun tan lotion and extra cartons of Chesterfield straights for the rail trip to Miami aboard 'vintage' railcars, we should take a moment to check the schedule board and make sure that we are boarding the Reality Limited.

I am a grand supporter of railroads in America, passenger or freight, and the thought of speeding across glistening rails in a Pullman while sharing a few hours of chitchat and libation with an imaginary Jackie Gleason on the way to Miami is a seductive daydream come true.

But, I have ridden those rails from Washington to Miami and my own experience was less Twentieth Century Limited and more Hooterville Cannonball. If one imagines a train heading to Miami and one looking out the window to watch the cars and trucks driving parallel to us on I-95 being left in the dust, well, you may want to adjust the rabbit ears and foil balls on your Imagivision set.

After boarding at Union Station in Washington, we made the famous underground U-turn and broke into daylight looking across to the Capitol heading south. Upon crossing the mighty Potomac River, I leaned back into my chair; adjusted the reading light; twisted the flow collar of the diesel fume distribution nozzle to my liking, and settled in to read a fat and pretentious looking classic novel.

Somewhere around Fredericksburg, VA I noticed that I was still on the first page of the pretentious novel and I attributed this to having lost the ability of my eyes to follow words on a printed page which was wildly undulating in my hands. 'It was the best of times..... It was the bes t o f t t t t t imes....'. The track must be really bad in this section. How many more hours? Twenty-three.

I didn't feel well and my only remedy was to repair to the Cafe car for something to eat. Doing so required passing through two cars forward with a few air operated doors thrown in to raise the degree of difficulty- I would learn why later- in the judging. Now its my turn: large coffee, is that a pecan roll? sure, ah, and a bag of Fritos, can you heat the egg and cheese sandwich? Thank you. Now, showtime.

I managed to bump the automatic door switch with my elbow and tiptoed across the fun house floor of the vestibule between the cars without losing anything from my cardboard lunchbox. Upon entering the next car I noticed that all the passenger seats were facing me, and every person in those seats came to attention when the air door hissed shut behind me. With white knuckles gripping the food tray, I began what would become a piece of railroad performance art - lower body gyrations of a high wire walker fused with the upper body schtick of a sidewalk mime. All of this synchronized to the unpredictable wobble of the track beneath the wheels. I finally landed back in my seat with most of the food intact and a 9.6 score from the crowd in car 7234. How many more hours? Twenty-two.

After twelve hours of unscientific observation, I was convinced that our train was traveling one foot side to side for every three feet of forward advance. In keeping with the spirit of placing a positive spin on anything to do with railroads, I calculated that, with all directional movement factored in, my body would have traveled 1,300 miles rather than the 1,000 miles which my fare paid for. A bargain.

When I awoke from a nap, I looked out the window trying to make out where our Silver Streak was now located. The conductor said, "Tampa." I responded, (maybe yelled, I don't recall for sure): "Tampa? That's not on the way to Miami!" Had I taken time to read the schedule I would have known that we were going to leave the 'straight-down-95-to-South-Florida' route to trundle across the center of the state before heading down to the land of coconut palms. How many more hours? Eight.

The remainder of the trip did not disabuse Amtrak of it's soviet operations style on this line: the train had to back into Tampa from somewhere outside the city since the railroad station was at a dead end of track; we crossed near Lake Okeechobee at about three miles an hour due to misaligned track for lack of real soil in the Everglades region to build on, and we sat for an hour on a siding next to a drainage canal waiting on the northbound Silver Streak to finally pass us- at three miles an hour.

Late in the afternoon, the train finally broke out of the bush country and it was so exciting watching cars and trucks parallel to us being left in the dust whenever they had to stop at a red light or a stop sign. The conductor announced our next stop as West Palm Beach and we managed to totter and squeak our way into the perfectly manicured station. After twenty-five hours aboard the Silver Streak I decided that enough was enough and that West Palm Beach looked perfect for disembarking. I gathered my things, stepped off the train and in keeping with the spirit of placing a positive spin on anything to do with this railroad, I called Hertz on my cell phone. Vintage railroad experiences are best left to the run between Hooterville and Pixley.