“I am couch-surfing around America – seeing six cities and going through 18 states in three weeks,” I would announce to my American friends. “By car…?” they would suggest. I would explain that I had bought a rail pass allowing me to gander around for under $400. Their response to this was a sneering laughter making me feel naively cuckolded. What was it they weren’t telling me?
Los Angeles – Days 1 & 2
I went nervously to my first couchsurfing hosts. Well, more slowly than nervously. LA is America’s second largest city and yet probably has the worst public-transport system in the world. Standing on a skateboard and farting would get you to your destination faster than LA’s haphazard buses that begrudgingly crawl around the city, though it’s not so much a city as an urban sprawl that someone vomited on to the coastline. It’s possibly the most visually offensive place on earth (and this is from someone who lived in New Jersey for nine months).
This feeling was only accentuated when, while waiting at a bus stop, a homeless man started chatting to me. He was forcefully friendly. He eventually followed me onto my bus announcing “I am going home with you. We will be good friends!” My rhetoric was simply no match for his insistence. After two days of being a hobo-magnet, it was time to escape LA.
San Francisco – Days 3 & 4
And so I got on my first long-distance train – the Coast Starlight from LA to San Francisco. Everything Americans had told me about their trains was baloney. I lolloped down onto my throne and entertained myself with palatial views of the sea on my left and majestic Coastal Mountain scenes on my right.
These sights probably could have entertained me for most of the scheduled eleven-hour journey. Unfortunately we steamed into San Francisco five hours late, by which time all romanticised notions of train travel had departed from my mind. I met up with Charlie (my couchsurfing host) and kipped down for the night on his sofa.
The next morning I arose like a clichéd simile in a Jilly Cooper love romp. Then started my two-day tour of San Francisco – Alcatraz, Coit Tower, Lombard Street, etc. By the end I found myself sitting in a bar exhausted, watching Ice Hockey and nursing a beer.
I got chatting to the very enthusiastic hockey fan beside me. When I said I wasn’t an ice hockey fan the man jokingly ruffled my hair. Two seconds later his team scored. I became the lucky charm. If you ruffled the Brit’s hair your team would win. But, as the barman initiated, to ruffle you had to buy me a beer. By the end my hair was a mess and I could barely stand, but my sacrifice had not been in vain – the locals had won and I was leaving San Francisco with a sense that I had given something back.
Portland – Days 5 – 7
I got on the 18-hour overnight train to Portland. I woke up the next morning crumpled from sleeping on chairs, but looking out onto a national park’s snow-covered peaks. The trains had started to charm me once again. These positive inclines only set me up for a greater fall when we stumbled into Portland, again five hours late. These trains were like an awful friend – simultaneously great fun and insanely annoying.
My new couchsurfing host Kathleen found me slightly confused and lost in the centre of Portland and started her role of tour guide and host extraordinaire. An Oregon native, Kathleen showed me all the wonderful things the much-mocked city of Portland had to offer.
By the end of the weekend we were sitting in her 11th storey apartment, sipping cocktails and watching Jeeves and Wooster. This confirmed that couchsurfing was fantastic.
Seattle – Days 8 – 10
I jumped on the three-hour stint to Seattle. It would have been short, had there not been so many delays that I eventually rolled into my destination 6 hours later. I now hated trains.
I was really looking forward to visiting Seattle. Years of being rather provincially moronic and watching the sitcom Frasier had left me with something of an unrequited, ignorant love of Seattle. My two days weren’t awful, but they were underwhelming.
My couchsurfing host Erin was lovely. Seattle was picturesque. The people were friendly. But there was just a sense of fun and purpose missing. All the tourist attractions were pleasant. The people were pleasant. The whole city was just a bit too pleasant.
Empire Builder Train – Days 11 – 13
With this I got on my next train – the 45-hour journey to Chicago. I had my MP3 player charged, a stack of books to read and lots of snacks to munch on. But nothing could have prepared me for the Empire Builder train. By midway through the next day we were delayed by about 3 hours. The dreary flatness of the northern landscape did little to make the situation any more positive. And then, at around midnight (28 hours into the journey), we stopped somewhere in pitch-black North Dakota. There had been a mix-up and we sat in the dark for 5 hours. There is nothing more irritating than sitting in a stationary vehicle.
But by the next morning the delays were starting to be cut down. We got down to 6 hours. Then 5 hours. Now 4 hours. It felt like Apollo 13 when they think they might be able to survive and everyone watching is willing them on. Then there was a loud thump, the brakes were shoved on and we went from 80 mph to nothing in the space of seconds.
Someone in rural Wisconsin had decided to cross over a junction when it was on red and been ploughed into with a few tons of train. We eventually limped into Chicago after 60 hours on the train. Trains were my nemesis.
Chicago – Days 14 – 16
I arrived in Chicago at 1am. I hadn’t slept properly in nearly three days, I had been living off chicken sandwiches and I just wanted a goddamn bed!
The woman I was meant to be couchsurfing with told me to just get a taxi to her house and give her mobile a ring because her doorbell didn’t work. I told the taxi-driver the address and he asked “Really? There?” This should have been a premonition. I eventually arrived at her house in the middle of Stabby McStabbison neighbourhood. I rang her phone. She didn’t pick up. I rang her eight more times. She still didn’t pick up. The taxi-driver eventually told me that he didn’t want to stop in this neighbourhood too long. It was at this point I decided that a hostel might be a better idea.
Unfortunately I had arrived in one of the biggest cities in the US on a Saturday night when the area was full of tourists and two large conventions were in town. Finding a bed wasn’t going to be easy.
After sitting in an internet cafe for about an hour phoning every hostel and hotel in Chicago I discovered the only bed in the city was in a large corporate hotel. I arrived at the front desk desperately tired.
My feelings of exhaustion were not helped when the receptionist told me the price of a room for one night would be $400. I literally burst in to tears and started begging her for any discount. I eventually got $150 off, collected my tear sodden bill and dragged myself up to my room.
The End – Days 17 & 18
So what advice can I impart? Essentially I learnt that America has built a fantastic railway network that goes anywhere and everywhere. They have put trains on the lines that are comfortable. And then they have fallen at the last hurdle. They have got all the hard stuff done, but they don’t maintain it and run it properly.
Some say it’s lack of funding. Maybe. But I think the US train system has been overpowered by the car. You do a road trip through America on their highly-maintained highways. You don’t potter through on trains. But the train network is coming to a precipice. Less tourism, less profits and less care mean a lesser network. America will be a blander place without its trains. Maybe this is what the car-obsessed nation wants. It’s a shame.