Traveling by Train

Traveling by train is amazing! True, it might be a little more distracting if my children were with me. But since they aren't, I can’t imagine a more leisurely and enjoyable way to travel. I watched the sunrise on Mt. Shasta, had a great conversation with previous strangers over breakfast, and have had more than one interesting conversation about politics, sports, and religion (finding out I’m a pastor either kills conversations or opens up a whole new can).

I think the thing I’ve liked most is how I’m not allowed to be hermetically sealed as a traveler. There’s movement, forced conversation over a meal, and also less stress. It just doesn’t have the same intensity or stress as flying. It’s been a good decompressing way to start my time away.

On one other note, I finished my first book. I mentioned it last night. It’s nothing heavy, but I’d recommend it to anyone wanting to see how financial greed and scheming in the 80’s seeded our current financial crisis. It’s a memoir of a man who worked at Salomon Brothers as a bond trader. First published in 1989, it was spooky in places to think about how that story told over 20 years ago directly informs so much of what we face now.