Man, we have really screwed the pooch in Iraq, in case you missed it.

I boarded the Carolinian yesterday @ just after 11 am and arrived in Greensboro, NC–4 hours away by car even when obeying every traffic law and stopping at all state lines to pee–8 hours later. In other words it’s es lento como mollasses en Enero. That’s the barest essentials one need know when considering train travel. The experience itself was not so bad. I had people to talk to and fairly interesting scenery to watch, as well as a bag full of books and a packed iPod. And I also could have taken an express, thus dispensing with pointless stops in places like Selma, NC, population 3687. No, the real trouble started when I finally arrived in Greensboro and had to wait for a solid hour before I could get my one measly checked bag.
As my brother said, it seems that since it’s their job to get passengers and their luggage from one place to the next they could at least pretend to be efficient about it. He also remarked dryly that it made sense that Amtrak’s usual solution to this problem was just to derail the train, thus eliminating the baggage handling from the equation altogether. Instead they had us all coralled into the baggage room searching out our own luggage. Ugh.
So train travel is not the nostalgic event I thought it might be (my train mix helped, with big doses of Iron & Wine and Joanna Newsom), but at last I’m home and plotting my second escape.