Starlight

Leaving Reed on the Tuesday happens far too soon and all at once: wake up, complete the pack, bid farewell to room, return key, stagger to bus stop with luggage, and, for the first time ever, watch a bus arrive at the exact time it said it would arrive. As with most things, the event itself (of departure) is mundane. No tears or nothing, just a quick glance back at Eliot Hall as the bus moves off. The idiot sets a determined jaw. Onwards.

We meet the parental unit at the hotel and taxi multiple suitcases to the Amtrak station, where a 'red cap' porter who looks like something out of Thomas the Tank Engine helps the idiot redistribute the weight in her luggage so that all items measure less than 50 pounds. Unlike me, she has never learnt to travel light. How many times in this blog have I started a sentence with the words, "Being imaginary, I can ...", followed by the various liberties open to a person of imaginary status? Well, whatever, here's another. Being imaginary, I can travel with the proverbial kitchen sink on my back, and no one gives a monkeys.

Our train is scheduled for 14.30, so we leave our luggage in the sleeper car lounge and catch another taxi to the West Hills where the Dubays have invited us for lunch. It is rather luxurious spending time with the parental unit when taxis are the standard means of transportation. The idiot grumbles at them for failing at frugality, but at the same time is thankful for not having to rely on the Portland bus (dis)service. I have mentioned the Dubays a few times in this blog, but now must reiterate the extent of their generosity and kindness towards the idiot. Some friends of the parental unit in Somerset handed out the Dubays' address before she left for Portland last August. Since their first dinner invitation in October, they have been nothing but exceptional. This final Tuesday morning is the only available time the parental unit and the Dubays can meet, and in the end it serves as quite a nice segue into the slow return home. And by 'home', I mean England home. The Dubays comprise at least one pre-existing link between Portland, OR, and Somerset, UK - a link to which the idiot can now contribute. Inga also has a strong connection with Reed, as she was a pupil and colleague of the famous calligrapher Lloyd Reynolds (cf. Steve Jobs' Commencement speech at Stanford). Joe was a math(s) Professor at Harvard. Taking us on a tour of their house, Inga points out Joe's Phi Beta Kappa certificate displayed on the wall. A fearsomely impressive couple. After lunch they drive us to the station and give the idiot the squeeziest goodbye hug in the world.

I face forwards on the Coast Starlight, in the direction of California, while the idiot faces back to catch every last glimpse of Portland. About an hour or so into the journey she requests a symbolic swap, and I take her seat and she takes mine. We listen to Morricone on the ipod with one earphone each. Neither of us have ever experienced a sleeper train before; the retractable bunk bed instigates a small round of applause. In addition to the sleeper car, the train has an arcade car, a cinema car, and a viewing car (floor length windows to watch Oregon turn into California). We spot Crater Lake from a distance. At 4pm there is cheese and wine tasting in the lounge car, hosted by conductor Gary, and the mother, the idiot and I attend with gusto. Then we have steak and red wine for dinner in the restaurant car. Then we sleep off some of that end-of-semester exhaustion as the train rocks across the border. Then we wake up firmly in CA and eat a 6am breakfast before arrival. Then we lose the faculty to form sentences more than a few words long and begin everything with 'then'.

Although we have not travelled to San Francisco by foot, the 13 hour train journey is somehow more faithful to the space/time continuum than a 2 hour whizz on the plane. I am for the first time compelled to say, "shittinghell, this country is BIG."

Consette x