2:54 PM:

I'm taking a short break from working on my personal statements (as if I haven't been grabbing every possible excuse to do so) to present a quick report from Dallas. This has been sort of an oasis of calm amid the month of travelling, actually; nothing to do but stay inside all day typing and looking at the cats, who have, for the most part, been avoiding me. I've been torn between the impulse to make friends, and the fear of what might happen if they do start being friendly. It's been really nice, and I don't think I want to leave. The only other activity has been occasionally going out for a nice bit of kosher food, which, last night, included meeting Never and Bryan. A good time was had by all.

Otherwise, Erin's been standing over me with a whip, occasionally cracking it when it seems as if I'm slacking off, so I'd probably better get back to those applications. (Okay, actually she just checks up on me and threatens to glare occasionally, but it sounds better my way. Besides, if she owned a whip, I'm sure she'd be brandishing it around now. Especially after she reads this...)

Her account is here, by the way. It's good, and accurate. Do check it out.

2:10 PM:

And then, the trip from Vancouver back to Chicago:

God works in very mysterious ways.

The trip from Vancouver to Chicago was in two legs: a bus from Vancouver to Seattle, then a train from there to Chicago.

True to form, I caught the bus at the last minute. Katie and I had spent the preceding hour or so at Lush and Murchie's, and we got to the station with perhaps five minutes to spare. Following a false start, in which I made the unwarranted assumption that my bus would be leaving from the part of the terminal at which I'd arrived two nights before, we located the bus just to the side of where we'd entered in the first place. Just a bit out of breath from sprinting there, I handed the driver my ticket, which he accepted, ripping off the stub and giving it to me as the receipt.

It wasn't until I was about to board the train, perhaps a half hour after arriving in Seattle, that I discovered that I'd given the bus driver the wrong ticket; that is, the Seattle-to-Chicago one, not the Vancouver-to-Seattle one. Oops. After a quick consultation with an Amtrak official in front of the train, I ran back to the bus on the other side of the building, traded tickets with the driver, and boarded the train, in the coach car designated for those travelling to Chicago.

And found that half the car was designated for families or couples, and that all the window seats in the other half were occupied. That, I figured, was what I got for having messed up the ticket thing and been the last person on the car. I sat down next to some other guy, but really wasn't happy about it; the prospect of spending over two days (and nights) in an aisle seat failed to thrill me.

While sitting there and sulking, I overheard a passenger asking an Amtrak official whether there was an outlet at which he could recharge his cell phone. She replied that the ones in the bathrooms were about it; that these train cars were made before the modern boom in portable electronics, and that there was only one outlet in each one.

While wandering the car a few minutes later, I found that one outlet; it was near the baseboard, quite easy to miss, and was being used by the guy in the seat next to it. So, nice to know, but not terribly helpful for me... but my main concern was still that of having company at the window seat.

Looking around a bit further, I found an empty two-seat spread in the next car down. I got confirmation that I'd be allowed to switch to it, and did so. Shortly thereafter, I found the outlet in that car; there was a guy sitting next to it, but the overhead tag indicating his destination wasn't there. A few minutes later, he switched to a seat behind mine. I asked him whether the seat he'd just vacated was, in fact, up for grabs. He said that it was, I switched there, and I'm there now. I'm using my Palm to write this entry, but I'm planning on getting out my laptop in the morning and getting back to work on my personal statement. Who knows, I may even have a decent draft by the time I get to Chicago...

...and if I'd given the bus driver the right ticket in the first place, the chain of events that led to my getting the seat by an outlet probably never would've happened.

God works in mysterious ways.

---

My Discman seems to have disappeared.

It's not in the seat pocket in front of me, which is where I'm pretty sure I put it last night. Nor is it in my knapsack, nor in my coat pocket, nor at the last two seats I was in. I'm rapidly been led to the highly unsettling conclusion that somebody swiped it, either while I was sleeping, or while I was visiting the restroom.

I'm not sure what to do from here. Most of the people who were in this car last night have already gotten off the train, so it seems reasonable to assume that the thief is many miles away by now.

Damn.

---

Through a combination of luck and peserverance, my laptop now plays some MP3s. But not simultaneously with text editing. Still, it's something. Being able to hear "Wig In A Box" again is nice.

This might possibly be taken as an example of God sending the cure before the malady, I suppose.

More entries from the Palm! First, the Vancouver entries:

So I arrived in Vancouver. Proeeded to the nearest payphone and called Katie, a very good friend of mine, who was both the person I was going to be staying with, and the reason I'd made the trek out to Vancouver in the first place. For reasons still unknown, the call didn't go through. So I hailed a cab, rang her doorbell a few times, and began to wonder whether she'd gone to pick me up at the station and we'd crossed paths. But, no, she answered the door, and all was well.

---

I was, I think, even less understandable than usual during my stay in Vancouver, and I've been trying to pin down why. I think there were
three factors:

1. It's been a long trip, and I was a bit out of it.
2. My perpetual ear infections have been acting up again; a side effect of this has been that my right ear's been kinda clogged up, both reducing my hearing therein and magnifying the sound of my own voice.
3. I think I unconsciously code-switched to my mode of speech used with people who know me really, really well, which usually means that they've spent lots of time talking to me and have gotten somewhat used to it. In Katie's case, we'd communicated exclusively through typing until now.

Oh, well.

---

Tuesday afternoon, I caught up to some extent on my e-mail and journals while Katie was in class, then sallied forth to meet her at a kosher deli. Predictably, I left a bit late and then got a little lost along the way, but I did find it in the end, at which point I had the best pastrami sandwich I've had in years.

Yes, years. And I remind you that I am a New Yorker; I know whereof I speak.

I also had a potato k'nish, which was small, but about average in taste.

From there, we went back to her apartment to prepare for Extreme Karaoke. We've had a pact for some time now to the effect that when we finally got together in Real Life, we'd go for karaoke wearing black pleather.

The evidence suggests that my black pleather pants have been treated with karaoke repellant. This is the second time I've worn them for this purpose; the first time, karaoke was cancelled entirely. This time around, time ran out before they got to either of us... and we'd arrived shortly after the start. Either the entire crowd of regulars signed up the moment the night began or... well, I dunno. Either way, it was disappointing.

Then we went back and watched Evita, which I had not seen before, and still haven't seen half of, as I dozed off for awhile in the middle. Nothing against the film; I was just wiped out.

---

Tuesday, we went back to the deli, where I picked up a corned beef sandwich and a package of bagels. From there to Lush, where I spent a small fortune on bath products (but without having to pay for shipping!), and Murchie's for tea, after which it was off to the bus station.

I had the corned beef on the bus. It was good, but not superior. (Note, however, that I much prefer pastrami to corned beef in general, which may be skewing my perceptions somewhat.) I've been having the bagels on the train, spread with peanut butter.

3:56 PM:

Oh, and here's a batch of entries written on my Palm between the first trip to Chicago and Vancouver, having been beamed to Katie's Palm there, and e-mailed to me since...

The train ride to San Francisco started appropriately enough. I had thought, for some reason, that we were to be leaving at 2:30 PM. (I have since checked my notes, and have no idea where I got this impression.) So after a brief meeting with Mary Anne -- I had a cup of tea, which I was grateful for afterward, and she lent me some books and a bunch of CD's -- I grabbed a cab to the Amtrak station. After a slight hitch when it came time to pay the driver (he couldn't break a twenty, and I ended up paying him in quarters), I arrived at the terminal a few minutes past 2 PM, secure in the knowledge that I'd made it with time to spare.

Aftr a brief false start, I found the Quik-Trak machine, got my tickets... and found out that the departure time was, in fact, 2:15 PM. Got directions at the information desk, ran to the train, got to the appropriate car, was ushered in, and the train was in motion no more than ten seconds later. Whew!

---

The car is nice. I'm on the upper level; it's sparsely populated (I'm writing this at the start of the trip; that may change), and there's plenty of leg room. No outlets in sight, but I haven't tried roaming in search of one yet, so I haven't given up on the possibility of using my laptop yet.

---

There appear to be no outlets on the train. Oh, well. It was a nice idea while it lasted. At the moment, I'm in the car with the snack bar, where I've just shown off my Palm and its foldable keyboard to the admiring snack bar lady. Not as good as a real laptop, but not terrible either, and the benches and tables in the car give me a good surface to work with.

We're travelling through Colorado just now. Snow, mountains, canyons, and cliffs. Kinda nice, if you're into that sort of thing, which, for the most part, I'm not. (I am fond of rivers, though, and we've got one of those too.) Also, sun; I wish I'd brought my sunglasses.

The ride itself is pretty nice, dozens of times better than Greyhound. Leg room! The ability to move around! A smooth ride! A lack of motion sickness! The only area in which Greyhound comes out ahead is in its rest stops, allowing one to buy food and drink that's more or less affordable. Not having brought ready-to-eat provisions (a glaring lack, in hindsight), I'm reduced to spending a fortune on cinnamon buns, chocolate milk, and the occasional bagel. I came on here with a $20 bill, and it seems clear that I'll have spent it on food by the time we reach our destination.

Still, it's been surprisingly pleasant -- if mind-numbing -- so far. I find myself dreading the second half of my tour, when Greyhound takes over.

The mind-numbing bit applies, though. I've played dozens of games of solitaire at this point, gotten three paragraphs into writing an essay about solitaire, gotten a few chapters into the fifth Young Wizards book, and that's about all I have to show for the past day or so.

---

Sleeping is a bit of a problem. I'm glad I'm not taller than I am, and that I'm relatively flexible, but even with two seats to stretch out on, and with my travel pillows, it's impossible to get comfy. It's just a matter of finding a position in which the discomfort level is managable for awhile.

---

"If those of you on the right side of the train will look out your windows, you will see the dark. This is the famous California Dark, first explored by Maurice Merriweather in 1889, in an attempt to find the source of the monsters that hid under his bed. Maurice was lost there for two weeks, during which time he survived by eating his hat, his boots, and half a package of candles. Eventually he remembered the other use for candles and found his way out again."

I didn't actually say this out loud while we were going through a tunnel -- in counterpoint to the insipid commentary that had come before -- but, man, was I tempted.

I'm in Dallas! This is a bit of a surprise, actually, as I was originally supposed to be in Houston at this point, but I missed the bus I was going to be taking there, and rampant schedule revising followed in its wake. Long story. On the bright side, I got to begin a phone conversation with "Houston, we have a problem," and, honestly, opportunities like that don't come along every day. It also turns out that I'm going to be spending more time than originally anticipated in both Dallas and Houston, and that my trip to New York will be much shorter than originally planned, so, on the whole, things seem to be working out quite well.

I still need to write my personal statement and put all my applications together, though...