5 AM is like a mullet. Come at it from one side and you're having a party - the other is all business. Earlier this week I found myself roused by my alarm at 5 AM so I could catch a train to Pennsylvania for work, putting me unequivocally on the business side - envious of those coming at it from the other side, who were no doubt stumbling home for a quick morning's sleep before waking up to do it all over again.
Whatever jackass said that riding a train was the best way to see the country was clearly from the 1800s. Today's train travelers glide through the backyards of American blue collar industry - which might lead one to believe that our fair country is made up of nothing but dump trucks, factories, and scrap yards. I'm always appalled at how many cars there are driving around on the streets, but what's amazing is how many more there are rusting away in junk heaps, waiting to be scavenged for windshield wiper blades or a replacement steering column.
From time to time, however, you will cut through the center of some little town lacking enough political clout to re-rout the tracks around Main Street. It turns out, in fact, that Connecticut still has a few quaint railroad towns left; the kind with vine-covered brick boxes that serve as banks, the kind without strip malls or fancy all-night car washes, the kind that you wouldn't be able to name riding through on a train if the liquor store wasn't called "Meriden Liquors".
Traveling by train is actually much more peaceful than I remembered. It's impossibly quiet, the only sounds you hear are the occasional whistle and the soft click of the wheels on the tracks. It's actually soothing, and very difficult to judge speed from inside the car. Before I knew it we were entering New York, which would have been impossible in the same amount of time in a car because of traffic. We glided through the tunnels under Manhattan quickly and efficiently, while driving through the same area would have been an exercise in braking and patience at eight o'clock in the morning I drifted off a few times and re-woke to a little drool on my lip and the rising sun in my eyes.
I hadn't been looking forward to this trip strictly on principle (I wasn't aware that my new contract position would involve travel, let alone at such ungodly hours), but took the opportunity to enjoy the moment and fully experience an idyllic trip through the ass-ends of the small towns in the Northeast that were unfortunate enough to be stuck with train tracks. I'm glad that plane tickets were ten times as expensive as the train tickets - the hustle of an airport and matchbox scenery of a plane ride wouldn't have compared.
