Someone mentioned nostalgia to me recently and being young still there aren't very many things that I am nostalgic for especially since I've running away from most things in the recent years. This morning on my way to school I was stopped at a light, while I was sitting, waiting for the green, an Amtrak train passed by on it's way to 30th Street Station. I see the trains go by all of the time, hear them at night when my window's open and never think twice about it, but something this morning made me think about all the times I would take the train from Philadelphia to Vermont before I co-purchased Twila. I used to ride twelve hours up the eastern seaboard and into New England to visit my family whenever I had time off from school.
It would be very rare for me to fly to Vermont and when I did it was often from JFK and would cost almost as much as a train ticket home to get to New York just to shave a few hours off of my travel time. After the planes, trains, and automobiles fiasco at Thanksgiving my freshman year of college, I decided to stick to Amtrak. I even enrolled in the Amtrak points program so that I could get free tickets to Lancaster to visit my mother's side of our family. The train ride to Vermont, also called The Vermonter, took a full day to complete, but it allowed me some free time away from school to read, watch a movie, or work on my log book. In my log book there are many a page dedicated to all of my train rides and the weird stories that came with them.
One summer, during the two week gap between summer and fall semesters, I was forced out of student housing to make way for the cleaners and had to go home. It was also a chance to get away form one of the muggiest summers in the city and go water skiing and eat sushi at the Matterhorn. A week before I had to clear out of my tiny dorm room, I had one of my local friends come down and help me pack up all of my belongings and move them over to my aunt's house out in the suburbs. For the rest of the week that I was on campus I lived out of a small backpack and slept under a set of sheets that I planned on throwing out as soon as I left. The night before I was scheduled to depart I had campus security drive me to the R5 and I caught the last train into the city, this was sometime around 12:30am. My train was scheduled to depart some time after 5am. Lance was at a corporate meeting in Albany, NY and would drive through Whitehall around the same time one of the upstate NY trains would be passing through. We previously arranged that I should take a train to Penn Station and then get on the Whitehall train so that I could meet him and have him drive me home instead of wasting a full day on the tracks. The only problem with this was that there is no early morning way to get to 30th Street without taking a cab and was once a very, very poor college student, in fact I still am. So instead of paying a cab, I spent the night in the train station with a crazy lady who wouldn't leave despite security's best attempts. I slept like a dolphin, one eye open to guard my bag and make sure I didn't miss my train. I eventually made it to Whitehall only to spend half an hour sitting at a picnic table waiting for my dad to arrive (Whitehall is an outdoor platform and a picnic place all in one).
It would be very rare for me to fly to Vermont and when I did it was often from JFK and would cost almost as much as a train ticket home to get to New York just to shave a few hours off of my travel time. After the planes, trains, and automobiles fiasco at Thanksgiving my freshman year of college, I decided to stick to Amtrak. I even enrolled in the Amtrak points program so that I could get free tickets to Lancaster to visit my mother's side of our family. The train ride to Vermont, also called The Vermonter, took a full day to complete, but it allowed me some free time away from school to read, watch a movie, or work on my log book. In my log book there are many a page dedicated to all of my train rides and the weird stories that came with them.
One summer, during the two week gap between summer and fall semesters, I was forced out of student housing to make way for the cleaners and had to go home. It was also a chance to get away form one of the muggiest summers in the city and go water skiing and eat sushi at the Matterhorn. A week before I had to clear out of my tiny dorm room, I had one of my local friends come down and help me pack up all of my belongings and move them over to my aunt's house out in the suburbs. For the rest of the week that I was on campus I lived out of a small backpack and slept under a set of sheets that I planned on throwing out as soon as I left. The night before I was scheduled to depart I had campus security drive me to the R5 and I caught the last train into the city, this was sometime around 12:30am. My train was scheduled to depart some time after 5am. Lance was at a corporate meeting in Albany, NY and would drive through Whitehall around the same time one of the upstate NY trains would be passing through. We previously arranged that I should take a train to Penn Station and then get on the Whitehall train so that I could meet him and have him drive me home instead of wasting a full day on the tracks. The only problem with this was that there is no early morning way to get to 30th Street without taking a cab and was once a very, very poor college student, in fact I still am. So instead of paying a cab, I spent the night in the train station with a crazy lady who wouldn't leave despite security's best attempts. I slept like a dolphin, one eye open to guard my bag and make sure I didn't miss my train. I eventually made it to Whitehall only to spend half an hour sitting at a picnic table waiting for my dad to arrive (Whitehall is an outdoor platform and a picnic place all in one).
One of the stations I pass through on my way into Waterbury.
This weather we've been having as also been something that has made me feel comfortable and miss Vermont, just a little bit. Up north foliage is coming to an end and the winter rains are coming in and stripping the trees of their leaves and preparing everyone for the snow that will begin to arrive at the end of the month. The weather is mostly a cold dampness and overcast. It is the time where wool sweaters are brought out of storage and extra blankets cover the sofa (God forbid and turns up the heat in their house). The mountain begins to start blowing snow on a trail or two to get a jump start on the season and the rink posts the upcoming public skating times. On Sundays I can convince my mother to make pot roast (with Lance's supervision) and I will put on the rain boots I bought in 7th grade and walk around in the last of the wet brown leaves that cover the backyard. For the next week or so the road in front of my house will be coated in hay from the hayrides her church hosts and I will have tried every apple recipe I can get my hands on. It's the brief few weeks that signify the end of a bright, tourist filled fall and before the advent of a white, tourist filled winter that I love the most and wish that I could experience something like it down in the city.
