Not every town has streets named for muses

Indeed I did not get to H's until 8 something. There were almost no cabs and a long line, and an enterprising cab driver packed three parties in at $7 a head. I was brusque with the guy in a way I didn't have in me before living in NYC and always hope will melt away when I'm elsewhere. 

H had beignets on the table for my arrival!

New Orleans reminds me of Philadelphia but this can't be right. I think it has to do with having spent a number of happy New Yearses in Philadelphia and watched the Mummers parade the next day, the same kind of shaggy, shabby eccentricity as Mardi Gras from my glimpses so far. Philadelphia probably lacks the ongoing sense of decadence, right? All other obvious regional differences notwithstanding. Um, it's a stupid comparison. 

The architecture is wonderful in a way a person who spends no time at all thinking about architecture (hi!) can appreciate. 

It's near 70 degrees and some knot of rage is getting unworked. 

My goal for tonight is to consume alcohol while walking down the street. It's just so stupid that you can't do this anywhere. 

Went to lunch in the garden district with H's interesting friend and walked back here to the edge of the Quarter. I think tonight H is indulging my irrational need to eat at Galatoire's, after we take in a bit of Endymion's parade right around the corner. Their Grand Marshal is Kelly Clarkson, who I somewhat secretly like. 

H is asleep and I'm going for a walk. 

I sleep good and I miss a lot of trains

Unbelievably, sitting on the shore of Lake Ponchatrain an hour now. I can actually see the city. We're waiting for freight traffic which is what always happens on Amtrak--the freight companies own the tracks so you're entirely at their mercy. It is tough to believe we could not have slipped through in the last hour but it's an unquestionable authority at two removes, which is to say our conductor might actually know right now that the answer is that we will next move in seven more hours, but has no incentive to tell us that. 

I missed Laurel which is fine. I fell asleep listening to Explosions in the Sky, a Texas band a friend mentioned on fb. They did the theme for Friday Night Lights. I loaded up a bunch of new music for my various rides and, hooray, it's all good so far. 

We sat somewhere in Mississippi for a while refueling. I think we're 11 hours late now. They are currently offering people 50 cents worth of coffee for free to make up for it. Luckily for me I don't really drink coffee so I don't have to trade in/relinquish my pique. 

Last night I sat for an hour or two in the cafe car with the other weary travelers. It's rare you meet anyone much on your wavelength on these things, or it is for me. I did once meet a lovely fellow, a folk-singer from California, who is currently cat- and house-sitting for me for this three week lunacy. 

H, with whom I am staying, is already awake. He has given instruction on how to pronounce Chartres and Rampart so as not to be taken for a rube by taxi drivers. 

Oh hey now there's a truck stuck on the track or something and they're waiting for it to be towed. I am maybe going back to sleep for a few. I'll be surprised if I'm at H's by sun-up. 

How not to start a trip

Right now I'm sitting on a train outside of Meridian, Mississippi at around 12:30 am listening to lute music, so all is more or less as it should be. I could stand to get some sleep, but 1) I can't find my sleep mask which would help and 2) I maybe half seriously want to be up to have a moment of silent tribute in Laurel, Mississippi when we stop there. Birthplace of Leontyne Price and all.

I would put the beginning of the trip as the moment I lay down on my couch to sleep the night before departing and realized I had pinkeye. A trip to the mirror confirmed it. I thought: this will not do. I had it a year or so ago and it's uncomfortable and you really would not want to spend a day on a train with it. 

There were some vigamox eye drops left in the medicine cabinet, doubtless expired I thought, but what was I going to do? I had to get some sleep and there was no way to go to the doctor the next day, so I dosed myself and went to bed. 

They seem to have worked actually but the trip so far has been the kind of thing that might be presaged by a sudden case of pinkeye. 

Basically we ran over someone. Just outside of DC. There was too much of a remove between the passengers and the situation to get very traumatized about it but it instantly turned into a 7-hour delay. 

I found this out by texting with a friend who googled it up.  Amtrak Staff didn't make the smallest effort to give us any idea what was going on. Sitting on a train where nobody is saying why you're sitting still is like being held hostage by bumbling incompetents. 

Finally we lurched south and I took a benzo (having polished off the tiny airport bottles of rum I smuggled on hours before) and put on my sleep mask and useless neck pillow thingy and got some relatively comfortable sleep. I think I had gritted my teeth into a powder. 

Sometimes you make up time. We lost another three hours somewhere. 

My seatmate is a nice enough guy, fairly uninteresting to me as I imagine I am to him. (A while after I dropped into the conversation that I'm "indoorsy" he asked if I had done much backpacking and I refrained from expressing surprise a the verbal form of that common object.)

Blog your trip, someone said

Travel doesn't mean the same thing to me it means to you, almost for sure.  It doesn't mean adventure. It doesn't mean enrichment. It means nervousness.  

I was what you might call a connoisseur of personal ads for some years and I got a glimpse of the degree to which people gauge and sell their self-worth in terms of where they've traveled, so I have the good sense to recognize this as not something I should be proud of, and though defensiveness may at times look like pride, I'm not. 

This summer I turn 40 and it seems like a good time to stop pretending a number of things. Hey world, I am bored at art museums! Things like that. What it is I really don't like is travel. 

If I could teleport, sure. Who doesn't want a change of backdrop, different weather, to see friends who live far away? But I can't divorce these things from the act of getting there. 

So this is about my ardent love of not going places, partly. But it turns out you almost have to travel. So it's also the travel journal of someone who would rather, in almost all instances, be at home.