Salvation Is A Pop Song

I'm Esther Einhorn on a train.  I spy with my little eye:  

Rows of fallow land.  Mountains of majestic beauty.  Piles of useless, rusted crap.  Snow covered pines.  Early morning elk.  Graffiti.  Industrial cities of tanks, pipes, and silos.  Dirt roads.  Four feet of snow in some places.

I like winter when the trees are bare and I can see the birds on the branches.  Don't they know their cover is blown?

I met an old woman on the train who had ten children.  She didn't want to spend Christmas with any one of them.  She took the train from California to Oregon just to see the snow, and then she turned right around and went home.  I met a man who wouldn't stop talking and his wife who had long ago stopped listening.  I met a woman at the wine tasting in the parlour car who liked the Cabernet but thought the Pinot Gris was too bitter.  The train was taking her to a rehab facility in Washington.

On the ride north, I emptied my jar of pennies and paid for a sleeper car.  I fell asleep in summer and woke up in winter.   It was Christmas morning and the brilliant snow hung heavy and thick.  On the way south, I'm taking coach.  I fell asleep intermittenly and woke up aching all over.  These are the peaks and valleys of my life.

If you live in Los Angeles, take the train to Portland!  

If you live in Portland, take the train to Seattle!  

If you live in Seattle, take the train and the ferry to Canada!  

If you live in Canada, stay there!

Ride the Coast Starlight.  

Happy New Year from the Einhorns.  May 2009 bring you more adventure, more regularity, less Vicodin, more endorphins, less pain, deeper love, a few lessons the hard way, many more the easy way, more lifelong friends, less consumption, more substance, less substance abuse, and more travels.  The train ride up the coast takes 30 hours.  But it is the journey, and not the destination.