Monday, August 20, 2007

"Nothin' could be finer than to have your ham and eggs in Carolina..."

There is no other way to travel. Trains are the way to go. Even when you go coach, you are still better off than those people in first class on airplanes.

I just moved from Atlanta to Washington on the Amtrak Crescent, and there it is an amazing feeling to be eating breakfast in a cafe speeding through the Virginia countryside at 80 mph. It's also an awesome sensation to walk into Union Station's great hall and realize that you are only four blocks from the center of government for the United States.

It's a shame that Atlanta got rid of its great stations. The Terminus would have definitely rivaled Washington; but alas, Atlanta found the Richard B. Russell Federal Cube to be a more important use of the land on which Atlanta's foundation as the capital of the New South had been layed. While we can't turn the past back, we can still shape the future, so I would encourage Georgia to commence construction of the long-awaited Multi-Modal Passenger Terminal. Of course, they don't build 'em like the used to, do they?

Anyway, I've started this blog to chronicle my new life in my new home, Metropolitan Washington; so I expect that it will be a nice mix of news and commentary on both my old home and my new one.

Anyway, the last stanza of my favorite poem comes to mind at the moment:

Travel, Edna St. Vincent Millay

My heart is warm with the friends I make,
And better friends I'll not be knowing,
Yet there isn't a train I wouldn't take,
No matter where it's going.

No comments: