Billys Rant!!!

Let me begin by acknowledging that this posting is not likely to be of interest to many. But I do feel it is an issue that needs to be addressed. Trains in America!!!

A country that can put a man on the moon, Start and End Wars with just about any country they feel like, home of Wal-Mart and a county that can elect an African American to be its president, but yet cannot get something as relatively basic as a train network right.

I have been here now for over 5 weeks and in that time I have taken the train about 10 times, mostly in the last few days to be fair. The first problem arises when you go online to see how to get somewhere. There must be a part of my brain that computes distance with time. For instance, a journey of say 50 miles should, in my brain at least, take no longer than say 45 minutes. And then you look at a map and you see that things are relatively close to each other, so another part of my brain thinks well maybe there will be some sort of direct service, or failing that only one change – or something like that!!!

BUT OH NO........

This is America. Land of the free and land of the most ineffectual train service I have ever seen in my life. First of all I wanted to get down the coast from San Francisco to meet up with Emma and Karen. Total of about 70 miles. That took me 2.5 hours and a change from a train to a bus. If I had wanted to go a further 25 miles down the coast, it would have been 4 hours, 2 trains and a bus. But I put that behind me and thought maybe it was just because it was the coast roads or something like that!! Oh No.

Next train saga. Trying to get from one suburb of LA to the other. Santa Clarita / Valencia to Anaheim. This involved 2 taxis, 2 trains and would have included a bus if I had not caught a very short connection. In total it took nearly 3 hours, to cover less than 100 miles.
Anaheim to Simi Valley – similar saga. Would have needed to change trains, nothing wrong with that, but the train station was 12 miles away from where I wanted to be!! Not their fault but still.
Anaheim to San Diego. Relatively simple, straight down the coast. 2.5 hours to cover less than 100 miles again, and it was delayed due to signal failure (they probably ceased up due to lack of trains passing them!!)

And finally the biggy!!! Los Angeles to San Francisco. I should start this by saying it has been a rather pleasant journey, but it’s just the sheer length of time involved to cover 447 miles. ELEVEN and a HALF hours. Do the math. That’s not even 40 miles an hour. And god bless them but there are some people on this train that are going all the way to Seattle from LA. Total of 1377 miles. Guess how long. We left at 10.15 am today; they will get to Seattle at 8.45pm tomorrow night. 34 and a half hours. Madness.

Now I understand why everyone has a car over here. Outside of the cities everything is designed to be driven to. We stopped at a drive in ATM cashpoint on the tour. Everything is car orientated. On the plane over they said that LA has more cars than people. Traffic is the top tourist attraction because that’s what people see most of!!! Mental.

In yesterday’s election there was a California proposition to build a high speed rail link between San Francisco and LA, which would take 3 hours. Definitely a good idea, but people done seem to be interested in it. I think it passed in the end, but I’m not 100% sure.

Ironically I’m typing this on the train, killing what’s left of the 2.5 hours remaining. I booked a sleeper car, which is basically 2 seats facing each other which turn into a bed, with another bunk above it. It is very comfortable, but for 11.5 hours it’s just a bit much. And for 34.5 hours, it’s insane. Looking around me it seems to be for obese people who can’t fit into an airplane seat. To be fair the ticket was cheap and cheaper for me than paying excess luggage on my flight from San Diego to San Francisco which I was booked on for next Monday. The whole Luggage thing needs to be sorted when I get home. Need to take 50% of what I have to OZ so it’s time to get brutal!!!

3 full days left in San Francisco and indeed the US. It’s been amazing. Cool to see the vastness of the country, and I only saw 4 states. To see all the national parks we saw and to experience all that we did was utterly amazing and I will remember it for the rest of my life. Special mention would have to go to Tom the tour leader who lead us to all these places and let us experience the highpoints of the trip without pressurising us into doing stuff! Looking forward to my last few days in San Francisco. No specific plans as yet. Want to spend a day in the Golden Gate Park area and see more of it as I just passed through it briefly twice when I was here a few weeks ago. Hopefully meeting up with Tom again for a few beers and we may even do a wine tour or something along those lines if it fits in.

Flying home on Monday. Arrive back into Cork on Tuesday evening. Hoping to do a mini tour of Ireland in the week following. Want to get to Limerick to see Olivia, Emma and Karen, Up to Dublin to catch up with Mark, Laura and David and Collette in Greystones. Then up to Belfast to catch up with Ryan and Alfie and my mountains of post. Then back down home to see everyone properly there and for my mams anniversary mass as well.

And then it’s off to Australia. Crazy long flight ahead of me there. Need t o look at my budget as i get the feeling i may have overspent over here!!! Time to raid the piggybank (though I think it’s pretty empty!!). I purposely haven’t really thought about Australia and New Zealand much, but now that it’s less than 3 weeks away I’m getting very excited about it! Surf School here I come!!!!

Sub Note - i typed all that on word and now i have access to the internet i have posted it. Since typing it i am now back in San Francisco after a night in Oakland. Tom met me at the train station and we did a mini world tour of cool bars in Oakland. We went to brussels and hawaii for beers (funky bars, not literally brussels and Hawaii) and they were pretty cool bars. I explored Oakland this morning and its a really nice place. Very laid back and cool. Jumped on the Bart across the bay and im now at the hostel, ironically one block away from the hotel we started the trip on and only a few blocks away from where i stayed when i first got here all those weeks away. Nice to be back in a hostel again - did you ever think you would see the day i would say that. The four seasons people are having a crisis meeting about that comment as you read this. By the way - for those of you who have stuck with this and read this far, well done and thank you!!! for those who havent, well they will have to live with that, wont you!!!!! Not you - your reading it!!!!