Two Weeks, Four Time Zones, One Train Seat: My Cross-Country Amtrak Adventure
The epic journey that taught me about America, humanity, and myself, and why I could never do it again in my thirties
2017-08-25
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The epic journey that taught me about America, humanity, and myself, and why I could never do it again in my thirties
At 27 I decided to circumnavigate the United States by train. Two weeks. One backpack. Sleep in my seat every night. No hotels, no flights, no rental cars. I wanted to see the country slowly and stay offline the whole time.
At 37 the same plan sounds like a prank my spine would not forgive.
Looking back, I'm amazed I thought this was reasonable. Two weeks in a train seat felt like adventure at 27. Now it reads like a form of torture with scenery.
Seattle to the East Coast and back through almost every kind of American geography I could name:
You don't fly over this. You watch desert turn into forest turn into plains over hours. That's the whole point.
The dining car became my favorite part. Not the food. The conversations.
A few I still remember:
These weren't airport small talk. You share a table for an hour. You actually listen.
In 2017, two weeks without notifications was already weird. No Twitter scroll. No instant Google for every random thought.
The first few days my brain kept reaching for a phone that wasn't doing anything useful. Then I finished whole books. Wrote pages in a journal. Had a conversation that ran past midnight because neither of us had anywhere else to be.
I didn't plan a digital detox. The train just didn't offer one. I'm glad.
Sleeping in a train seat for two weeks is not comfortable. Day three my back complained. Day seven I dreamed about flat surfaces. Day fourteen I walked like someone who'd been camping for a month.
At 27 discomfort felt like proof I was really doing something. At 37 I'd book a sleeper car and call it wisdom.
A lot of what became "Don't Cook Bacon Naked and Other Life Lessons" started on that train. When you sit with your own thoughts for days, dumb observations and real ones pile up in the same notebook.
The title came from an elderly farmer at dinner. I don't remember how we got on cooking, but he said, deadpan, "Don't cook bacon naked. Learned that one the hard way when I was about your age." Perfect life advice. Obvious and still somehow deep.
Small towns where the train stops for three minutes and half the platform waves. Conductors who remember your story from last trip. Observation cars where strangers compare notes on the same sunset.
I'm not pretending the country is simple. Slow travel just shows you more sides of it than a feed does.
Not like this. My back says no. My calendar says no. I'd still take the train across a chunk of the country. I'd sleep horizontal. I'd maybe check email at a station stop.
If you're 27 and thinking about it, go. If you're older, keep the route and upgrade the seat.
Full set of photos from the trip: Flickr album.
And if you liked this story, the book expands on a bunch of the notebook entries: "Don't Cook Bacon Naked and Other Life Lessons".
I'm glad I did this once, at exactly the age when sleeping upright for fourteen nights still counted as fun. I don't need to prove that again.