Margin Notes: Travel, Fountain, United, Flags

The International Fountain at the Seattle Center puts on impressive shows, though in this 27-December-2010 view it was far from its peak 120-foot height

TORONTO, ONTARIO - As a final follow-up on my recent visit to the Seattle Center, the most interesting scene at the Seattle, Washington tourist attraction is likely the International Fountain. This isn't the fountain I remember from my youth, but a 1995 installation by WET Design that shoots water up to 120 feet in the air in patterns coordinated with music. It may not be the Bellagio in Las Vegas (also a WET installation), but it's worth seeing if you're at the Center--and it even keeps performing in the rain.

* * * * * *

While rain may be the defining characteristic of the Puget Sound region, militant secularism is another. Thus, perhaps it is not surprising that I think I heard "Merry Christmas" or even "Happy Holidays" uttered less often in public that in any time in my lifetime. People were definitely shopping, celebrating, and giving to the Salvation Army, but they weren't greeting each other much when I was around.

* * * * * *

The holiday spirit did not seem to be missing at Customs and Immigration. Both entering the United States and returning to Canada were far more straight-forward than usual in the past few years--some of the basic questions weren't even asked, and the US agent was even polite for the first time in recent memory.

* * * * * *


A United 777 in the new paint scheme prepared to depart Denver, Colorado for Zurich, Switzerland on 22-December-2010

While I also have no complaints about United Airlines for the first time in recent memory (I still had frequent flier miles to use), I encountered a United plane in the post-Continental merger paint scheme for the first time. Frankly, I thought the 777, bound from Denver to Zurich, looked terrible. When the same paint scheme was used by Continental, at least the airline name was in a serif, sophisticated font. The sans serif, all-caps font used by United with the colors looks terrible to me.

* * * * * *

As a final transportation note that I keep neglecting to make on each trip to the Pacific Northwest, the city of Kirkland, Washington deserves credit for the pedestrian flags it places at crosswalks. A holder on each side of the street is filled with flags that pedestrians can use to signal that they want to cross the street and stop traffic. It seems to work quite well--though I still think that Toronto's directions to simply point at the other side of the street seems to accomplish the same thing without all the infrastructure used by Kirkland.

Travel: Looking Down

The town of Verdi, Nevada, not far west of Reno, was viewed from the air on 21-October-2010

TORONTO, ONTARIO - Over the years, I have often been surprised at what I have managed to recognize as I looked down from the window of a commercial airplane. While I have experienced a fair portion of the western United States, especially, on the ground, my mind doesn't seem to have much difficulty realizing that scenes that I had seen only from the ground before were appearing outside a window five miles above them.

The first time I really surprised myself was on a flight from Denver, Colorado to Seattle, Washington. The plane had gone above the clouds shortly after departing Denver. When the clouds cleared and I looked down, I immediately recognized the location as being Baker City, Oregon, not exactly a common destination in my life, in the middle of the Blue Mountains crossing of Interstate 84. As the flight path would essentially follow that freeway to the Columbia River, it was pretty straight-forward to verify that, indeed, I had correctly recognized Baker City, as LaGrande, Pendleton, and Herimston followed.

On another occasion, I had been engaged in reading something interesting when the descent toward Sea-Tac Airport south of Seattle, Washington caused me to look out the window. Within seconds, I realized that I was looking at Index, Washington, with its railway loop away from US Highway 2 along the Skykomish River. As Gold Bar, Monroe, and Everett soon followed, it became clear that I once more had been correct.

It hasn't only happened on the west coast, but just about anywhere I've been on the ground. On a flight back to the United States from Europe, I once looked down to recognize Acadia National Park in Maine, picking out Cadillac Mountain and thinking that I was glad I had not noticed the planes above when I had been there.


Downtown Sacramento and West Sacramento, California (note the Capitol building in the lower left) were viewed from a flight on 21-October-2010

So, it should not have been terribly surprising to see some familiar scenes from a window seat today. Leaving San Francisco, the plane entered a cloud bank, but it cleared in time for a view of Sacramento, then I started to read after Roseville, throwing a glance out the window to recognize that I was looking at Verdi, Nevada. It would have been nice to visit Cabela's or shoot pictures of trains crossing the Truckee River, but the plane had long since reached cruising altitude, so I went back to reading.

Travel: Appropriate Modes

TORONTO, ONTARIO - If there's one thing a scientist or engineer learns that is applicable to life in general (and I would contend there is plenty), it is the concept of scale and magnitude. The Newtonian physics that one learns in high school works just fine until one gets down to the scale of atoms, just like talking about Congressional spending "pork" works just fine in creating a national mood and getting people mad, but rarely leads individuals to actually vote out their own Congressperson who "brought home the bacon."

The same concept of scale can apply to travel. Much has been written over the years about the joys of walking around a neighbourhood or city, including this recent piece in the Christian Science Monitor that started me thinking about the topic again. As someone who likes to explore even cities the size of (at least "old") Toronto by foot, I agree that walking speed offers the best possibility to see what's actually around and interact with people. But, of course, it's not practical to walk all over Canada, or even a smaller country like Switzerland. (Okay, maybe the Vatican, but it's really a city.) Just try walking to the moon!

I would suggest that the best way to explore a city is by foot, the best way to explore a county or parish is by bicycle, the best way to explore a state or province is by car, the best way to explore a country is by train, the best way to explore a continent is by air, and the best way to explore a planet is by spaceship. This idea could be probably be formalized, perhaps by saying that an appropriate mode must be able to take one over the distance involved in one leg taking at least a few hours but less than a day for the averaged-sized entity (cities as large as Los Angeles or Chicago or countries as large as Russia or Canada might take more time), but would take perhaps a dozen trips to really explore what could be seen from that mode thoroughly.

I suppose it's possible to learn something about Las Vegas, Nevada, Chicago, Illinois, or even Ellensburg, Washington by flying over it instead of walking around. But can one surmise the quality of entertainment in Las Vegas, the cuisine of Chicago, or smells and wind of Ellensburg by flying over it? Not without a good deal of imagination, and if one has that great of an imagination, it scarcely seems necessary to travel at all.

There's probably an engineering take on that phenomenon, too--call it the Glitch Quotient, Td/I, where Td is travel distance and I is extent of imagination. At the limit where I approaches infinity (an amazing imagination), the Glitch Quotient goes to zero, and the correct mode of transportation goes to none at all. Just don't ask me the units of measurement for the Glitch quotient.

Travel: Catching Up

TORONTO, ONTARIO - When I left home for what proved to be five weeks of travel around the new year, the vast majority of the blog posts that occurred during that time were focused on the experiences I was having as I traveled. As a result, I gradually collected a list of things that I would have written about that were effectively "bumped" by the travelogues. Yesterday, I finally cleared that backlog.

That, of course, was not the only backlog from that travel. My mail was piling up for five weeks. I had five Christian Science Monitors and four Chemical & Engineering News issues waiting to be read, along with other mail. Only this morning did I finally clear the stack of newspapers, and now I can start working down the other reading stacks. Podcasts? I think I had 2.5 days worth of programming backlogged when I returned six weeks ago. It's down to about half that now. Railfanning notes? That's a complicated one since I still had material from 2005 to catch up on, but suffice to say I've only written up what I saw after the New Year on my recent trip. Pictures? Those paying attention will notice that I still haven't presented the pictures from Arizona yet.

The fact that one can spend a much longer time dealing with the aftermath of a trip than one spent traveling in the first place is a reality that I have long loathed. Some people deal with it by intentionally taking a few days of home vacation after traveling (in some sense, I have that but taking a job search seriously is much more like telecommuting to a job than being on vacation). Most of the time, one just has to gradually catch up as I have been doing. There's a reason why I preferred to only spend 25% of my time or less traveling (on business or pleasure); three-quarters of time was about enough to catch up and stay sane.

In any event, now that the blog is in some sense caught up, it may quite often be less than daily. It is clear to me that quality of writing and topics has suffered of late; I'll be writing only when I think I can present something well, even if it means a few days are skipped.

Travel: Coming Home

TORONTO, ONTARIO - "Where are you coming from today, sir?" the immigrations officer asked me as I handed him my customs form and citizenship documents. I suddenly didn't know what to say. This is always the first question asked as one enters Canada at Pearson International Airport in Toronto, but I hadn't thought about it this trip until that instant.

Was I coming from Cleveland, Ohio, where my last flight originated? Phoenix, Arizona, where I started the day? Sacramento, California, the farthest I had been from Toronto? Seattle, Washington, the area where I had spent the most time? After a long pause, I finally looked up at the officer and said, "I'm sorry. I've been so many places in the United States this trip that I barely remember where I was this morning."

While I had been dazed by his question, he had apparently seen enough of my declaration to realize that I had been out of the country for five weeks and that my home address was in Toronto, less than eight miles away. "That's okay, sir, you're almost home now. You can sleep in your own bed tonight."

That statement really stunned me. Entering Canada is normally a reasonably pleasant experience compared with entering the United States, if for no other reason than the polite language used even when being thoroughly questioned. A statement that could have come from my grandmother being voiced by a burly officer of African descent, though, was almost more than I could process. I thanked him, and he sent me off to collect my checked baggage with no further questioning.

It may have been snowing lightly outside, but it's supposed to be snowing in Toronto in January. Riding the subway for the first time in over a month was quite comforting. Once upon a time on a trip home from the airport, I had seen an inter-racial, teen-aged couple sharing headphones, a scene which has become a iconic vision of multi-ethnic Toronto to me. Today, there were just commuters heading home from work, but most of them struck me as in less of a hurry than the drivers on Arizona freeways over the weekend.

Soon, I was taking great pleasure in cooking in a kitchen where I knew the location of everything I needed, and in doing just my own dishes afterward. I had never been away from my legal domicile so long in my life, and it made everything about returning worth cherishing. Indeed, the immigration officer was correct--I suspect I will enjoy sleeping in my own bed tonight.

Transport: Walking in to San Jose Airport

TORONTO, ONTARIO - Today, the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, is traditionally the busiest travel day of the entire year in the United States. According to AAA estimates, 38.4 million people will travel at least 50 miles over the weekend, 2.3 million of them by aircraft, and about 1.7 million today alone. When I was an undergraduate, I developed a very specific routine for my Thanksgiving travel, flying from San Jose to Seattle on the Wednesday evening and returning on Sunday morning, fairly typical for college students. What was not so typical is that my routine included walking in to San Jose Airport.

The first time I traveled using San Jose Airport for Thanksgiving, I decided to include my first trip on Santa Clara County's light rail system, which had an "Airport" station that I knew to be several blocks from the airport. However, the trouble started well before I even reached the public transportation system, as I found I could not walk very far with my wheel-less suitcase before my hands could not take it anymore. Fortunately, a good samaritan offered me a ride to the train station, and I was able to stick to my schedule--and I've never traveled with without wheels since. I took Caltrain all the way to the end of non-rush hour service at Tamien station, transferred to light rail, and rode up to the Airport station. The light rail had been slow in the rain and was late, so I missed the connecting bus to the airport and the next one would not run for an hour. I decided I'd better walk in to the terminal on Skyport Drive. Even having to rest from my non-ideal suitcase along the way and fighting the fact that there were no sidewalks, I probably made it to the old Terminal C in fifteen minutes, and did catch my flight, which was quite delayed.

The next year, besides having wheeled luggage, I decided the smarter way to get to the airport was to deboard from Caltrain at the Santa Clara station--which has a view of the airport runway--and take what was then the #65 bus to the terminal. While my train was on time, the bus ran about twenty minutes late, and then ran into traffic that was backed up all the way past the end of the runway. After realizing that I could walk faster than the bus was moving and starting to worry about catching my flight, I requested that the driver let me off. I walked along Airport Boulevard from the far southeast end of the runway to Terminal C, looking back to see that I was indeed a fair distance ahead of the bus, and again had no problem catching my delayed fight.

The third year, I left campus behind my intended schedule and thus was one train later than I really wanted to be in arriving at Santa Clara, placing me one bus later heading to the airport. On this year, traffic at the airport was not nearly as bad, but I could see that there was a backup around Terminal A, which the bus would serve before serving Terminal C. Again worried about making my flight, I convinced the driver to let me off in the backup on Airport Boulevard right at Skyport Drive, which was a much shorter walk in to Terminal C than the previous two years, but probably saved me at least twenty minutes of sitting in traffic to reach the terminal I wanted. The move may have been traditional, but it was unnecessary, as my flight was delayed over an hour.

My final year of college, I followed the same travel pattern as the previous two years, using Caltrain to Santa Clara and the now-#10 bus into the airport. Airport traffic was again ridiculous, and the bus--now just a shuttle between Santa Clara Caltrain and the light rail Airport station through the airport--was almost half an hour late. When it ran into traffic along Airport Boulevard, I again got off well back along the runway and walked into Terminal C--this time to find that my flight was delayed two hours.

After that experience, I decided I'd had enough of traveling on the busiest travel day of the year. When I moved to the Boston area the next year, I didn't even try to go home for Thanksgiving, and I would not be with my family for US Thanksgiving again until I was no longer living in Boston.

Margin Notes: Travel, Running Lean, Ford

VIA Rail Canada train #71 sat at Windsor, Ontario after its arrival from Toronto on 23-July-2009

FLINT, MICHIGAN - Quite a number of companies seem to be running way too lean during this recession. VIA Rail Canada, normally a master of customer service, couldn't seem to get enough staff people to organize a high passenger loading from the Special Olympics earlier today. At every stop from Toronto to Chatham, Ontario (except Ingersoll and Glencoe), there were Special Olympics athletes boarding the train, and getting them on board took more than ten minutes in virtually all cases. Even after making up some running time, this meant my train to Windsor, Ontario was nearly an hour late, almost completely because of increased "dwell time" at the stations.

* * * * * *

Another company clearly running lean is Enterprise Rent-A-Car. An employee at the office I visited today said, "We're not buying any cars--we don't know what's going to be around in a year, and so everything we have is out on the road." As a result, I had to wait a bit longer than desired to pick up a reserved car, but I've waited longer for less honest reasons at other rental car companies in the past, and the desk employee was clearly working hard to find one. For the incredible daily rate I was getting, that was all I asked.

* * * * * *

On board the train, VIA employees were clearly trying hard. As much as I prefer getting up and going to the café car as one usually has to do on Amtrak, it is rather nice to be served at one's seat as VIA does on its corridor trains. With the train running late, I decided to eat on-board, and purchased a "sandwich combo" and soft drink. While value for the dollar may be debated, it's hard not to view VIA food as high-quality; I've always said it is because the Quebecois will not put up with bad food so VIA has no choice. For whatever reason, the turkey sandwich was the best I've had in a long time, and it came with cheese and carrots.

* * * * * *


The salad dressing on-board my VIA Rail Canada train on 23-July-2009 had an interesting brand name

Apparently "FOB" doesn't have the same connotations in Canada as it does in immigrant communities in the United States. The dressing (actually dip for my carrots) that came with my lunch had the brand name "FOB"--I guess "fresh on board" doesn't conjure up images of "fresh off the boat" here. Maybe they were trying to evoke the political FOB--"friend of Bill" [Clinton].

* * * * * *

I don't think being a political FOB would have helped much at the border. The United States border agents were excessively rude, but more disturbingly, they seemed rather incompetent in retrospect. They never asked me if I had anything to declare (which I didn't)--if I had, unless I had offered that information on my own, they would have never known. Are they so busy worrying about terrorism that they've forgotten about commerce?

* * * * * *


Ford's global headquarters in Dearborn, Michigan were noted on 23-July-2009

Once on the United States side of the border, I was clearly in Ford country (well, after leaving the Renaissance Center and its GM offices, anyway). I drove on the Ford freeway, I found "The Henry Ford" (with its plethora of museums and attractions practically on the order of Disneyland), and while enjoying Michigan Avenue in Dearborn, I drove past Ford's world headquarters.

* * * * * *


A Joe Ricci dealership was found in Dearborn, Michigan on 23-July-2009.

The car dealerships on Michigan Avenue also don't seem to end in Dearborn. Among them, I found a familiar name--Joe Ricci, known to boat racing fans across the nation as the sponsor of an unlimited hydroplane in 1985 and 1986.

Media: The Plight of Travel Radio

KLAMATH FALLS, OREGON - While approaching this 20,000-person Oregon town near the California border this evening, a radio program ended and it was time to scan the radio dial to find something else. Starting on AM, I found a strong local signal at 960 AM, running the top of the hour news from ABC. Staying tuned in to see what would come on next, the result was silence. Yes, at five minutes after the hour, KLAD 960 AM had an entire minute of "dead air" before Kenny Rogers' "The Gambler" started to play.

We can speculate what was supposed to be on during that minute. Perhaps a local commercial was supposed to air, perhaps a weather forecast was supposed to be played off a tape, perhaps the song was supposed to start immediately after the news. In any event, the "Country Legends" station provided neither local information for a resident of or traveler to Klamath Falls nor its formatted entertainment.

This kind of failure is all too common in radio today. I remember listening to KONA-AM out of the Tri-Cities, Washington on Thanksgiving day once and hearing an entire half-hour of the network feed, including dead air (silence), sports and feature feeds, and actuality (quote) feeds without narration. The lack of production values are not limited to AM; the same thing can happen on FM, and silence isn't any better in stereo.

There was once a time that traveling afforded the opportunity to hear local information and styles not found in big-city radio. I fondly remember hearing a combination of Navajo and English near Tuba City, Arizona in 1991, songs I hadn't heard before on a music station (then KFMJ-FM) in Grants Pass, Oregon in 1984, and surprisingly in-depth farming news on KREW-AM out of Sunnyside, Washington in 1989.

Those times are gone. If a somewhat rural station happens to have good production values, it is likely voice-tracked out of a larger market and has no local character. If it isn't listenable, then it's likely as pathetic as KLAD was tonight. There are likely exceptions out there, but I can't remember the last time I found one. Now, when traveling, if I can't receive a quality big-market signal (say, KCBS and KGO out of San Francisco or WBZ out of Boston), then I often don't even bother scanning the dial, or if I do, I only do it once. Regardless, I almost always end up deciding to listen to a podcast instead.

So, what was the chosen program today at 19:05? There were only two other local and strong stations on the AM dial in Klamath Falls, both conservative talk stations. With Sirius satellite radio available, I chose the BBC's World Today on channel 141. There's a reason why satellite radio sells in vehicles.

Margin Notes: Travel Transitions, Static Media

SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA - Traveling by airplane can be jolting. I will never forget being amazed that all the license plates changed states after taking a two-hour flight for the first time as a child. In recent years, the transformations that I have been more likely to notice have been those in atmosphere. The change in pace between the airport in Toronto and the airport in Chicago can be dramatic (and Chicago is hardly the fastest-paced US city); people just move faster and more deliberately on the United States side of the border. The pacing difference is not as pronounced between Toronto and Denver, but what I really noticed today upon landing in Denver was that people in the US airport were physically larger on average... and Colorado is actually one of the states with the lowest obesity rates!

* * * * * *

As I have written about before, there's a dramatic difference in atmosphere when making a transition between Air Canada and United. I far from idolize Air Canada, but in many ways it is reflective of its home country--quite likely to get one to the destination, perhaps a bit late but rarely egregiously so, no exceptional customer service but rarely any memorable substandard moments either, and general bilingual calm on board the aircraft as both crew and passengers follow rules in a civilized manner so the common goal of reaching the destination in some degree of comfort is achieved. United, in contrast, seems to be most reflective of the worst of the United States--smiles from employees are the exception rather than the rule, there's an assumption by the crew that passengers are always trying to get away with something against the rules (and indeed some are), and there's a general feeling that each person just wants everyone else to get out of their way. This time, though, there's no lost baggage or egregious lateness to complain about, so they actually exceeded expectations. Any way one looks at it, though, it's jarring to go from bilingual, sedate Air Canada to unilingual, stressed United.

* * * * * *


An aerial view departing Denver showed the proximity of Boulder, Colorado to the mountains on 29-April-2009; the snow-capped Front Range was to the left, and the town of Boulder to the right in the same frame.

Dramatic transitions could be found outside the aircraft as well. The flight path out of Denver to Sacramento provided a nice view of Boulder, Colorado. The home of the University of Colorado is well-known for its proximity to the mountains, and the aerial view above makes the point--the snow-capped mountains of the Front Range and the city of Boulder could be placed in the same frame. Even that distorts the situation, as there are plenty of mountains without snow closer to the town.

* * * * * *

When I last visited Boulder in 1998, I rather enjoyed the radio dial there, which is effectively the same radio market as Denver, with true community radio stations and an interesting mix on the commercial portion of the dial. I was surprised to find all of the stations I spot-checked during my brief layover at the airport still having basically the same format, from talk station KOA (though the "50,000 watt blowtorch of the Rocky Mountain west" is long gone) to adult contemporary station Alice 105.9 (which then called itself "Alice 106"). In a volatile industry, this was a surprising observation.

* * * * * *


Leni Schwendigger's "Deep Time/Deep Space, a Subterranean Journey" was viewed from the train concourse at Denver International Airport's Terminal A on 29-April-2009

A surprising observation in Terminal A of Denver International Airport was this railroad-themed sculpture by Leni Schwendigger entitled "Deep Time/Deep Space, a Subterranean Journey." For a trip that will feature some significant railroad activities, this was an appropriate piece of art to encounter, even if it was at an airport. Of course, the piece was a play on the trains that run between the terminals at the airport, which I must add have amusing organ-style sound effects of trains as they arrive and depart at their stations.

* * * * * *

The inter-terminal trains are one element of what makes Denver a quite functional airport for connecting between aircraft; were it not for the winter weather and the major airline with a hub there, I would try to connect there more often.

Transport: Blame it on Lawyers

TORONTO, ONTARIO - During my trip over the holidays, not a single leg occurred as scheduled. Every single air leg was re-scheduled or canceled as a result of winter weather or general airline incompetence. A road trip to visit my grandparents took much longer than it normally would have because all the mountain passes were closed, necessitating a detour through the Columbia River gorge for the second straight year. Even my warm-weather leg from Sunnyvale to Placerville, California was subject to delays--my bus from Stockton to Sacramento was held for a late connecting train, which itself had been held in Bakersfield for a late bus from Los Angeles.

The transportation meltdown has been especially pronounced this season in the Pacific Northwest. A series of snowstorms battered Washington and surrounding states for the second half of December, resulting in many of the delays that I experienced, and now that everything is melting, flooding has caused an even wider paralysis--until just a few hours ago, Interstate 5 and the BNSF Railway had been closed between Seattle and Portland for several days. The only realistic way to get between those two cities was by air (and, for once this season, the airlines were operating normally), since the mountain passes were closed as well.

It seems a legitimate question why Interstate freeways--originally conceived as a part of a national defense system--should be so vulnerable to flooding. There are perpetual flooding candidate locations along I-5 in the Chehalis, Washington area where the lanes could be raised and flood culverts installed if it were chosen to spend the money to protect against these rare events (that seem to be not-so-rare as the years pass). In this time of fiscal stimulus, perhaps that kind of project can be made "shovel-ready" in time to capture some Federal dollars.

On the Amtrak side of the equation, the passenger carrier is at the mercy of the freight railroad that owns the line, which in Washington state means BNSF. For many years, the BNSF had a policy that after any weather-related incident which disrupted the track structure--usually a mudslide--the line affected could not have passenger trains operated on it until no further incident occurred for 48 hours. In other words, freight trains could operate for almost two days before another passenger train would be allowed, leaving passengers stranded. The policy has had an adverse impact not only on Amtrak but on the Sounder commuter trains that operate between Everett, Seattle, and Tacoma, Washington.

Clearly, if other trains are operating, then it would be physically possible to operate the passenger trains--in fact, it must be safe, or the railroad would not put its own train crews at risk. Even if the freight carrier is allowed to clear a backlog of profitable freight trains before running passenger trains again--an argument whose legitimacy could be argued when taxpayer dollars have been spent to upgrade the tracks to handle additional passenger trains--that rarely would take two days. Something else is causing the BNSF to not allow the passenger trains to operate.

It turns out that something is liability. If BNSF allows the operation of a passenger train and a weather-related accident occurs, then it is open to lawsuits, and their lawyers determined that the 48-hour policy was required to demonstrate commitment to a safe operating environment. Never mind the people that cannot get to work because their commuter train isn't operating for two days while the trains carrying their garbage to the landfill are running. At some points, the BNSF has claimed that it was a Federal Law as reported in this article (or maybe the reporter just made a mistake), but no such law seems to actually exist.

There are plenty of other reasons to be upset with trial lawyers. I am still amazed about the things that I was able to do in Australia on tourist railroads and even in public parks that would never be allowed in the United States because of the potential liability. Specialized doctors quit their practices because they can't afford the insurance, we can't swim while a boat race is occurring, fences have to be placed in unsightly locations to prevent people from entering property and injuring themselves ("no trespassing" signs are not enough), we can't run excursion trains unless covered by Amtrak's insurance policy, the list could go on for paragraphs. The fact that public transportation is being shut down when it is needed most--during times when other forms of travel may not be practical--is yet another reason that legal reforms are required in the United States.

The "California Zephyr" may never be trapped on Donner Pass the way the "City of San Francisco" was in January 1952 thanks to modern policies necessitated by liability concerns, but routine travel in the wake of seasonal weather will be impeded.

Travel: Over the River and Through the Woods

BELLEVUE, WASHINGTON - According to Wikipedia, Lydia Maria Child wrote the poem "A Boy's Thanksgiving Day" in 1844. Before long, it was set to music and became the song we know as "Over the River and Through the Woods" today.

While written as a Thanksgiving song, many variations have come into existence over the years, mostly notably lyric changes to make it apply to Christmas instead of Thanksgiving. I somehow learned the song as "to Grandmother's house we go" instead of "to Grandfather's house we go." This is not surprising, as the most typical Thanksgiving of my youth was to visit my maternal grandmother and her sister Lucile east of Renton, Washington. It wasn't a long journey, and technically it didn't cross a river (though Coal Creek was close) though there were woods and one year there was even snow, but it was still easy to relate to the song.

Today, for the first time in over a decade, I will be traveling to my paternal grandfather's house for Thanksgiving. The song applies, as there are multiple rivers and multiple woods in the 225 miles between Bellevue and Kennewick, Washington, and there is undoubtedly snow on Snoqualmie Pass. Modern vehicles are a far cry from a horse and sleigh, but the journey will be much like the adventure written about a century and a half ago.

Over the river, and through the wood,
To Grandfather's house we go;
The horse knows the way to carry the sleigh
through the white and drifted snow.

Over the river, and through the wood -
Oh, how the wind does blow!
It stings the toes and bites the nose
As over the ground we go.

Over the river, and through the wood,
To have a first-rate play.
Hear the bells ring, "Ting-a-ling-ding",
Hurrah for Thanksgiving Day!

Over the river, and through the wood
Trot fast, my dapple-gray!
Spring over the ground like a hunting-hound,
For this is Thanksgiving Day.

Over the river, and through the wood -
And straight through the barnyard gate,
We seem to go extremely slow,
It is so hard to wait!

Over the river, and through the wood -
Now Grandmother's cap I spy!
Hurrah for the fun! Is the pudding done?
Hurrah for the pumpkin pie!

Happy Thanksgiving!