Tag: NaBloPoMo

Day 5

Trains, Planes, and Automobiles

You’re going on a cross-country trip. Airplane, train, bus, or car? (Or something else entirely — bike? Hot air balloon?)

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This year, I visited Union Station for the first time since the last day I commuted home from DC in 2011.  This was indeed a nostalgia visit.  The station looked mostly the same way it did nearly 15 years ago.  Sbarro was still there right near the Metro exit nearest to the Northeast Corridor (NEC) tracks.  The great hall and the upstairs shops looked the same.  My favorite Indian restaurant was gone, so no mango lassi, unfortunately.

In and out, morning and afternoon, that was my life for a year and a half.  I loved the train.  In the mornings, I’d get the 715 train out of Baltimore and get the last hour of sleep I didn’t get when I was home.  In the evenings, I’d watch out the window or read a book.  I read a lot of books those days.

When MARC rolled out the Kawasaki bi-levels, I was in rail heaven.  The MARC III cars were one level, 5 seats across — 2 on one side, 3 on the other (anyone familiar with New Jersey Transit is familiar with this configuration).  Getting a 3 seater with a buffer seat between me and the other passenger was always the plan in the MARC IIIs.  But in the Kawasakis, I didn’t have to.  They were just 4 seats across, but you had your own seat, a little more room between you and the person next to you.

And they ran so smoothly.

I always tried to get out of work at the right time to run down Connecticut Avenue to get to Farragut North and get the right Red line train to Union Station to get me there at the right time to get that 5:25 express train home.  That was a very popular train and, if I remember correctly, one of the first to get the Kawasaki cars.

The first stop was BWI Rail Station, about 35 minutes from Union Station.

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You get on a plane and it taxis away from the terminal and rolls around to its starting point.  The pilots throttle up and the plane ambles, then gallops down the runway until it lifts off.  That’s what the trip was like.  The train leaves Union and ambles up the first interlocking and onto the corridor.  Past New York Avenue Metro station and out into Maryland, past the Orange line stations at Cheverly and Landover and just beyond New Carrollton, where the local trains stopped, you’d feel that throttling back.

Then zchooooom … past Seabrook … zchoooooomm … past Bowie State …

Now you’re totally relaxed on the upper level.  Small towns, woods, country roads on overpasses, all whirling by.  The train tilting gently into the few small curves, then leaning back up straight.

One evening, when the conductor came to get my ticket, I asked how fast we were going on that stretch.  “One hundred twenty five miles per hour,” he told me.

zchooooooom by Odenton and its long platform and jam packed parking lot, split by the tracks.  A few moments later, the train would throttle back to make BWI Rail Station.  A few minutes later, you were there; it was as close to flying as you could get without leaving the ground.

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Late night Amtrak trains were the best.  I always got a seat and the trains were always quiet, so much so that there wasn’t even much of the usual clackety-clack sound in the Amfleet cars.  Those nights were great for sleeping, too (and Amtrak conductors would not let you stay on past your stop) or reading or even pulling down the food tray in front of me and writing.  I’d just have to turn on the overhead light because those cars were not as bright as the ones on their commuter cousins.  Either way, it was relaxing and peaceful.

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I love driving.  I’m a roadgeek in addition to being a railfan.  I’ve driven tens of thousands of miles over the last 20+ years, but I haven’t been across the country driving, yet.  I haven’t been to Breezewood yet (I’ve driven I-78 through the Holland Tunnel a bunch of times.  Roadfans will get this, even if you don’t).  I haven’t driven the Pacific Coast Highway, yet.  There’s a lot of road I want to see.

But now, for a cross country trip, I want to take the train.  Just give me a bedroom, a seat in the observation lounge, a notebook, and a computer, and i’m good.

Day 4

When you were a kid, did you want to have the same job or a different job than your parents when you grew up?

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Vastly different.

I remember my mother always doing something in an office.  That thing involved her having a desk and a typewriter.  It seemed like everybody at her job knew and liked her well.  But no part of what she did interested me.  She worked at a TV station and the only job I would have wanted there belonged to the weather man.  That, I liked.  Her job seemed boring.

Her next job, she probably did roughly the same thing as she had a desk and a typewriter.  She worked at a radio station this time, however, and what the DJ’s were up to seemed far more interesting than what she was doing.

In my earliest recollection, my dad ran a bar, which I didn’t really understand when I was a kid.  I knew people went to this bar and drank beer, but I never knew or cared to find out why or anything else.  I never much paid attention to the bar beyond that.  No interest.  (I think I’ve only been in bars a handful of times since he stopped working there; the longest amount of time I’ve spent in one, I was an extra in a movie).

After that, my father worked in various roles managing plant and other operations at food processors.  Yeah, sounds exciting.  He liked it.  He became an executive before he retired.  I would have jumped from the roof of one of the buildings.

My parents were highly concerned with my education.  But if they thought they might be pushing me towards some upper management position with a corner office overlooking the Harbor, golf outings at Hunt Valley, and three martini lunches at Haussner’s, that’s not the kid they were raising.  The kid they were raising wanted to read and learn things and question things and be creative.  And active.  Play baseball.  I would have been happier on a ball field or in a meteorology lab or writing poetry at some college campus full of old buildings and lakes.  Or writing maps.  In another life, I’m an urban and transportation planner.

If anything, my parents eventually followed what nearly everybody else was trying to do those days — going and getting a government or corporate job.  I questioned that.  I wanted something different.  Just the way they raised me.

Day 3

What did you think was the coolest job in the world when you were younger? Do you still feel that way now?

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Baseball player, by far.  And it had to be the coolest job in the world.

I’d met politicians and executive types and those jobs weren’t as cool.  Those were the people that bought tickets to see baseball players play, therefore their jobs couldn’t be as cool.  No way, no how.

I was sure that people like singers and actors had cool jobs.  Singers got to make music videos and go around to different places and sing.  Actors got to be in movies and on TV and on stage and that seemed pretty cool, too.  But baseball players got to travel around and be in movies and on TV, too.  So, much of the coolness factor of those jobs, baseball players got to have, too.  In addition to being able to play baseball everyday.

Football and basketball players had cool jobs, too.  Just not as cool as baseball.  Football players had to run into each other and be hit (though they did allow catchers to be blasted by home-bound base runners back then).  Basketball players had to keep putting a ball in a hole over and over and over again.  Wasn’t really my cup of tea.

Physicists.

Doctors.

Cartographers.

Game show announcers.

Train engineers.

Pilots.

None of these, nor anything else, could come close to baseball players in my mind.

In what other job could you … well … play baseball?  Turn a double play?  Hit a bloop single with 2 outs?  Stretch a walk into a double?  Nothing.

In baseball, you had the chance to play in front of lots of people and be loved and admired for doing something that kids did.  You could become a hero.  This was the game, still America’s past time back then.  And you could make a lot of money doing it.  Date a famous person if you could swing (no pun intended) one.

That was the life.  That’s what I wanted to be.  Little League, High school, even in college, after the dream had realistically gone, part of me still nursed it.

Until I stepped on stage.

Until I heard words I’d written spoken by actors.

Theatre.

Telling stories.

Giving life to to characters.

That was the best job in the world.

The preparation.  All the reading.  All the choices.

The rehearsal.  The risk taking.  The vulnerability.

The performance.  The excitement.  The living.

Baseball was great.  Putting on the uniform and representing is a sacred thing.

But in theatre, you can put on any uniform.  Any costume.  Any life.

All of the dramatic storytelling mediums.

I still love baseball.  I watch a ton of games.  The World Series, even if it didn’t go the way I’d hoped, was thrilling.  And I know deep down that there are fewer dreams higher than competing in the grandest game, at the highest level, on the biggest stage.

But making theatre and telling stories, you can live any life, any dream.

Day 2

Back to the office.  I should have read that book on how to balance you writer life with having a day job.  While I’m reading slides about the Salesforce Winter 16 release and filling out a spreadsheet (for something I can’t mention, even though nobody I work with reads this site), I’m constantly thinking about getting back into my Chromebook and writing again.

Back in the day at one of my old jobs, I used to have to cover the front desk for the receptionists when they took their lunch.  When I was asked to do this, I groaned for the first 15 seconds until I realized that I could use that time to write.  I had a notebook and pens with me that day and from that day until the day I left there, that’s what I did.  Receptionist go to lunch, I sit up there and write.  That was sweet.

At this job, they have receptionist coverage and I’d probably have to do my usual work up at the front, so there’s zero chance I’d ever even consider asking to go up there.  I just have to  find the time I find now to crack open my notebook or Chromebook when I’m on lunch myself.

Or just wait until I get off like today.  Run home or to the library as quickly as I can and work there.

This is the life.

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Baseball is mercifully over, now.  This was excruciating if you were rooting for the Mets in the least.  How many blown leads?  How many chances to put these games away that didn’t pan out?  When you could have legit won but made so many mistakes that you played yourself out of it, that’s the kind of thing that stays with you.  And the fans.

The Mets will open 2016 with two games in Kansas City.  Here’s to Noah Syndergaard starting one of those.  High and tight.

So just before midnight Saturday night, I plug in my trusted Dell laptop, the one with Scrivener, to make my final preparations for all of the writing I’m going to do this month and … it won’t charge.

I try it again.  Nothing.  The laptop is at 10%.  I try plugging it into a different power surge.  Nope.  I try my little travel power surge.  It keeps the computer going at first, but won’t charge the battery at all.  I try my other little travel surge.  Now nothing.  The light is on, but now the computer won’t charge, won’t allow at least run on AC power alone.

It’s 10 PM.  I shouldn’t have procrastinated, but I did and now I can’t set up my projects; soon I won’t have access to any of the notes or outlines I’ve done.  In previous years, I might have taken that as a sign that my arms weren’t long enough for my reach.

Instead, I just calmed down, took out my little go-to guy, my Chromebook and at midnight, opened up my writing app and got busy.  I got a thousand or so words done Saturday night.

Sunday was slower.  By 10, I was up watching the Chiefs beat up on the poor Lions and by the time that was over, it was time for the Ravens (who won, although some said after the game that the Chargers were the best 2-6 team ever, even though the Ravens had just gone to 2-6 by beating them).  So the writing was slower and it took many more hours to get done, but done it got.  I’m just, admittedly, posting this stuff after the fact.  (How this ties into my main laptop being unavailable is a long story, but suffice it to say, my preference was to not upset my current system and so I’m posting these late, even if I’ve written them on time.  Scout’s honor.)

Part of the reason Sunday was slow was the desk issue (not having one).  I really need to remedy that soon.  And I need to sacrifice some football after the Ravens are done playing.  I’m glad their bye week is next week.  I can allow myself to ignore football for a good portion of the day to keep the writing going.