Category: Travel

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Living Sacramento Trains Travel

The Dining Car Is Now Open

There are five words that do something to me that no other announcement in travel can match. Not the captain’s voice telling you you’ve reached cruising altitude. Not the gate agent calling your boarding group.

The dining car is now open.

I heard them on the Coast Starlight somewhere south of Portland, the train barely clear of Union Station, the Willamette still visible through the windows, and something in me that had been clenched for months — or maybe years — quietly let go.

I have been thinking about trains lately. About three particular trips, and what they add up to.

The first was the Coast Starlight south — San Jose to Santa Barbara, departing at ten in the morning, seven hours of California unspooling past the window.

There is no faster way to understand the state than from a train at that pace. The Bay gives way to the agricultural flats of the Central Coast, and then somewhere past San Luis Obispo the tracks swing toward the ocean and you are suddenly running along the edge of the continent, the Pacific filling the window, and you realize you have been holding your breath.

Near the end the train passes through Vandenberg — the base stretching out on both sides, the coastline raw and largely empty, the light in late afternoon doing what California light does. I arrived in Santa Barbara at five o’clock feeling like I had traveled through something, not just to somewhere.

That distinction matters more than it used to.

The Portland-to-Seattle leg was different. Shorter — four hours — but charged from the moment we pulled out of Union Station. Portland’s Union Station is the kind of place that makes you believe train travel is a civic act, not just a transaction. The great waiting room, the clock tower, the sense that someone once thought arrival was worth celebrating architecturally.

We were barely moving when the announcement came.

The dining car is now open.

I was traveling alone, which is the only way to truly hear those words. Alone, you are available. You have no one to talk to, which means you might talk to anyone.

I made my way to the dining car and was seated across from two strangers, the way Amtrak still does it — the old practice of filling tables, not preserving privacy. We were somewhere in Washington by the time we finished. I no longer remember their names or even what we talked about, but I remember the quality of the hour: the moving landscape, the food that was fine without being remarkable, the particular ease that comes from conversation with people you will never see again and therefore can be entirely honest with.

There is a word for what the dining car produces. Serendipity is close but not quite right. It is more like availability — the condition of being open to whatever the next hour brings. Air travel has systematically eliminated every version of this. The seat-back screen, the headphones, the tray table as personal bubble. Train travel still creates the conditions for encounter. The dining car announcement is an invitation, and what it is inviting you to is not just food.

The third trip was Richmond to Sacramento — short, almost a commuter run — with my friend Doug Kaye. Where the Coast Starlight rides were solo and expansive, this one was intimate. Two people who have known each other long enough not to need to fill the silence, watching the Bay Area give way to the Sacramento Valley, talking about whatever came up.

Sacramento’s station is the right destination for a train. Old and grand and close to things worth seeing — we walked to the California State Railroad Museum, which is the kind of place that makes train enthusiasm feel entirely reasonable. Steam locomotives the size of houses. The history of the transcontinental laid out in artifacts and photographs. I have been a train person since childhood, since the Union Station in Dayton, since riding the Spirit of St. Louis on the Pennsylvania Railroad with my sister, Mom and Dad, and the museum felt like confirmation of something I had always known but rarely said aloud.

Afterward we walked to the State Capitol. At some point in a hallway we passed Gavin Newsom, moving with purpose in the way governors do, and we nodded in that California way — the implicit acknowledgment that yes, here we are, all of us in the same building, going about our days.

Then lunch at Biba’s.

Biba Caggiano ran her restaurant on L Street for decades. The food was Bolognese in the way that actually means something — rooted in a place, in a person’s memory of that place, translated carefully onto plates in Sacramento, California. I had a tomato onion soup that afternoon that I have spent years trying to duplicate. I have come close. I make it at home now and when I do I am back at the table with Doug, the Capitol visit still warm, the museum still vivid, the train ride from Richmond already receding into the pleasant blur of a good day.

Biba’s closed during Covid. It did not reopen.

I think about what connects these three trips and keep coming back to the same thing.

Train travel insists on a kind of presence that other forms of travel have abandoned. It insists on time — you cannot compress the Coast Starlight into something efficient. It insists on landscape — you will watch California go by whether you planned to or not. And it insists, at least in the dining car, on the possibility of other people.

We have built a travel infrastructure almost perfectly optimized against encounter. Against presence. Against the accidental afternoon that becomes the one you remember.

The dining car is still open, if you know where to find it. The soup I can make at home. The rest requires a ticket and a willingness to sit across from strangers, moving through the world at a speed that still allows you to see it. And time to just talk and share.

Categories
Living Serendipity Travel

The Conditions of the Unexpected

There is a flight I took in 2001 that I have never fully stopped thinking about. Not the flight itself — a forgettable three-hour hop in a middle seat — but the two-hour delay that preceded it. The gate agent’s apologetic crackling over the intercom. The way I surrendered to the terminal, found a bar stool, ordered something I didn’t need. The man next to me was reading a book I recognized. We talked for two hours. He told me about a job. I didn’t take it — but I spent three months considering it, which is its own kind of detour. I came out the other side different in ways I still can’t fully account for.

I have told this story before as a story about luck. I’m not sure that’s what it is.

Alexander Krauss spent years going through the records of science’s major discoveries — Nobel Prize winners, the landmark non-Nobel findings, more than 750 in all — looking for the mechanism behind what everyone had been calling serendipity. The telescope trained on an unexpected patch of sky. Fleming’s contaminated petri dish. The chance observation that shouldn’t have meant anything but did.

What he found upended the romance of the story. The discoveries that seemed most accidental, most shaped by the caprice of an unlucky sneeze or a mislabeled sample, turned out to follow a pattern. Nearly all of them happened shortly after a researcher gained access to a new tool. The accidental observation of cells under an improved microscope. X-rays discovered through a discharge tube nobody had pointed in that direction before. The first planet beyond our solar system, caught by a spectrograph that hadn’t existed a few years earlier. What looked like lightning striking the same improbable spot again and again was actually the same thing each time: a new instrument creating the conditions under which something unexpected could be seen.

Krauss calls this “engineering serendipity.” The phrase stops me every time I read it, because it sounds like a contradiction and turns out to be the most practical sentence in the philosophy of discovery. You can’t engineer the specific surprise. But you can engineer the conditions that make surprise likely. You can build the lens before you know what it will show you.

This distinction — between engineering an unexpected discovery and engineering the conditions for unexpected discovery — is one I’ve been carrying around like a stone in my pocket. Because I think it applies far outside the laboratory. I think it’s one of the central design problems of a life.

The book trend critics are calling “Digital Nostalgia” is, depending on how you read it, either the most sentimental or the most diagnostic thing happening in literary culture right now. The novels topping lists this spring are full of people losing their recordings, waking up in centuries without algorithms, mourning the weight of analog things. Ben Lerner’s new novel begins with a dropped phone in a hotel sink — the recording gone, the moment unrecoverable. Caro Claire Burke’s Yesteryear sends a social-media influencer back to an 1855 that is nothing like the one she curated for her followers: cold, filthy, unfiltered, and somehow more real.

What readers are reaching for in these books is not the past per se. It’s the texture of a life that wasn’t predicted in advance. The feeling of not knowing what came next because nothing had pre-sorted the possibilities. Nostalgia, in its root meaning, is pain at being far from home. What Digital Nostalgia seems to be mourning is something more specific: the disappearance of accident from everyday life.

I notice this in small ways. My phone knows where I’m going before I’ve decided to leave. The algorithm has predicted, with unsettling accuracy, what I will want to read next. The coffee shop I found by walking down an unfamiliar street now gets recommended to me, which is useful and also somehow diminishes the thing I found. The city I live in has become a more efficient version of itself. Less of it surprises me than used to.

This is not entirely bad. But something is lost in the smoothing. And the books people are buying tell you what.

The urbanist argument for cities has always included, at some level, an argument for density as a serendipity engine. You put people in proximity. You make them share transit and sidewalks and bars and parks. Intersections happen. Ideas cross. The great creative explosions of modern history — Florentine painting, Viennese psychoanalysis, the Bell Labs cafeteria — were products less of individual genius than of designed proximity. People who wouldn’t have met each other kept meeting each other.

What’s interesting about Krauss’s argument is that it generalizes this principle to the history of science in a way that makes it quantifiable. It’s not just that cities were generative because they were dense. It’s that they were generative because they were full of new tools — printing presses, coffeehouses, salons — that created new surfaces where minds could collide and refract in new ways. The tool doesn’t make the discovery. It makes the discovery possible, and likely, and reproducible by others.

Which brings me back to the airport bar.

The two-hour delay created an unstructured interval I hadn’t planned for. I didn’t know what to do with it, so I sat somewhere I wouldn’t normally have sat. The man next to me had a book that served as an opening. We were both temporarily outside our routines, which is another way of saying: we were both in a new instrument, looking at something we hadn’t known to look for.

What I’ve been slow to admit is that this kind of moment doesn’t just happen. It happens to people who are outside their routines. It happens in places where unlike people are forced into proximity. It happens when you sit down somewhere without your headphones, without a screen to retreat into, in the condition of being briefly unoptimized. The delay was the tool. The discovery followed.

So here is the tension I keep returning to: you can engineer the conditions for serendipity, but you cannot engineer serendipity itself, and the engineering has to be genuinely open-ended or it stops working. If you design a system that produces specific surprises, you haven’t built a serendipity engine. You’ve built a surprise dispenser, which is a different and lesser thing. Amazon’s “you might also like” feature is not serendipity. It is prediction wearing serendipity’s clothes.

The difference is whether the system preserves its capacity to show you something it didn’t know you needed to see. A new microscope could reveal anything. A recommendation algorithm reveals only a constrained neighborhood of the space of things you’ve already wanted. The former is a lens. The latter is a mirror.

I think this is what the Digital Nostalgia readers are grieving, without quite being able to name it: not the analog past itself, but the unoptimized interval. The moment between knowing what you wanted and finding it, when anything might happen. That space has been shrinking for twenty years, and the algorithm’s promise — to eliminate friction, to anticipate, to smooth — has turned out to be partly a promise to eliminate possibility.

The question I’m sitting with is whether it’s recoverable. Not globally — I’m not interested in the manifesto version of this argument, the call to smash the phones or return to the forest. But personally. Whether I can design my own life to include enough genuine aperture — enough unoptimized intervals, enough new tools, enough places where I am briefly outside my routine and available to be surprised — to keep the surprises coming.

I have some guesses about what this looks like. Reading outside my field. Saying yes to the conversation I don’t have time for. Choosing the longer route. Leaving earlier so the delay doesn’t feel like a crisis.

These are small things. They are also, if Krauss is right, approximately how all the important discoveries get made.

The flight eventually boarded. I didn’t take the job. But I thought about it for three months, which means I thought about my actual life for three months — what I wanted from it, what I was settling for, what I hadn’t been willing to name. The man at the bar didn’t change my path. He changed my angle of view, briefly, enough. I’ve been a little suspicious of smooth trips ever since.

Categories
Travel

The Geometry of the Right Question

The heavy brass key lands on the polished mahogany desk with a satisfying clink. The concierge, impeccably dressed and professionally warm, pulls out a crisp, glossy map. With practiced efficiency, a red felt-tip pen circles a restaurant three blocks away.

It is an interaction defined entirely by transaction and expectation. We arrive in a new city carrying the coiled tension of the unfamiliar, desperate for a good experience. So, we ask the professional where we should go, and they give us the answer specifically engineered for people exactly like us. We want to pierce the veil of the tourist economy, to find the authentic pulse of a place, yet we instinctively rely on the very instruments designed to insulate us from it.

Kevin Kelly offers this approach to wayfinding for bypassing the polished veneer of travel:

“Don’t ask the hotel concierge where to eat. Ask almost anyone else, including drivers, and when you ask, don’t ask where is a good place you should eat; ask them where they eat. Where did they eat the last time they ate out?”

Notice the subtle geometry of that shift. When you ask someone “where is a good place to eat,” you are asking them to play the role of a critic. They instantly, often subconsciously, filter their response. They calculate what they think you can afford, what they assume your palate can handle, or what they believe is socially acceptable to recommend to a visitor. They hand you an idealized map.

But when you ask “where did you eat last,” you are asking for a historical fact. You are bypassing the curation of stated preferences and accessing the raw truth of revealed preferences.

I have spent too many evenings in unfamiliar cities eating perfectly fine, entirely forgettable meals at the places circled in red ink. I suspect many of us have. We hold onto the belief that authority figures hold the best secrets.

The architecture of our choices often limits the quality of our experiences. Kelly’s advice isn’t just a clever hack for finding a better dinner.

It is a fundamental truth about how we navigate the world at large.

We constantly ask the wrong people the wrong questions. We ask financial experts for their market projections instead of asking to see their personal portfolios. We ask successful people for their sweeping theories on productivity rather than asking what they actually did between 8:00 AM and 10:00 AM this morning. We ask for recommendations, which are inherently performative, instead of asking for evidence, which is unavoidably real.

The map is never the territory, and the concierge is rarely the guide. The unvarnished truth of a place—or a life—doesn’t live at the polished desk in the lobby. It lives out on the street, in the messy, uncurated reality of what people actually do.

Categories
Living Travel

Finding Joy in Unexpected Journeys

Travel. The very word conjures images of pristine beaches, awe-inspiring monuments, and bustling foreign markets. But what happens when reality throws a curveball? When your luggage goes rogue, a guidebook steers you wrong, or the weather throws a tantrum?

Good travel, in its purest form, is about so much more than picture-perfect moments and flawless itineraries. It’s about embracing the unexpected, the messy, the delightful chaos that unfolds when you venture outside your comfort zone. It’s about remaining fiercely optimistic, being open to new experiences, and recognizing that the most valuable souvenir you can bring home isn’t a trinket, but a broader perspective.

Open Yourself Up to the Unexpected

Travel bloggers often paint a picture of perfectly curated trips, where every meal is a masterpiece and every sunrise a Kodak moment. But let’s be honest, those moments are sprinkled with a healthy dose of planning, luck, and maybe even a sprinkle of Photoshop.

The real magic happens when you embrace the unexpected detours. Did you get lost on a hike? Maybe you’ll stumble upon a hidden waterfall or a quaint village untouched by tourists. Did your flight get cancelled? Perhaps fate is giving you the chance to explore a new city you hadn’t considered. Serendipity unlocks so many experiences that will provide lasting memories.

Lost in Translation… But Found in Connection

Language barriers can be daunting, but they can also be gateways to rich cultural experiences. Imagine the heartwarming smile of a shopkeeper who patiently helps you mime your way to the perfect souvenir. Or the camaraderie that blooms when you share a laugh over a botched translation with fellow travelers. If you get desperate don’t hesitate to use the translation features now easily in hand on our smart phones.

The beauty lies in the effort to connect, to bridge the gap with gestures, smiles, and rudimentary phrases. These interactions, though initially frustrating, can forge some of the most memorable moments of your trip.

While doing street photography I’ve had my share of turn downs from individuals who really didn’t want to be photographed. But I’ve also enjoyed some beautiful encounters – especially memorable for me are several on the streets of New York City, a place I expected to be much more difficult but where I had wonderful interactions. The streets of Havana provided many similar opportunities – even without a common language.

Embrace the Fanatical Positivity

Travel isn’t always sunshine and rainbows. There will be delays, frustrations, and moments where you just want to crawl back into bed. That’s when the power of a positive attitude shines.

Instead of dwelling on the negatives, channel your inner optimist. Turn a missed train connection into an opportunity to explore a local cafe. View a downpour as a chance to curl up with a good book in a cozy coffee shop.

A positive attitude is contagious. Your smile can brighten someone’s day, and your laughter can diffuse tension. It can even turn a potentially disastrous situation into a funny anecdote to share back home.

The Greatest Souvenir: A Broader Perspective

Travel exposes you to different cultures, customs, and ways of life. You’ll witness traditions that seem strange, cuisines that challenge your palate, and societal norms that differ from your own. Embrace the opportunity to learn and grow.

Challenge your preconceived notions and ask questions. Step outside your bubble and see the world through new eyes. This broader perspective is the most valuable souvenir you can bring back. It will make you a more understanding, compassionate, and well-rounded human being.

Making Memories, Not Moments

Travel isn’t about ticking destinations off a list and collecting flawless Instagram snaps. It’s about creating lasting memories, forging connections, and collecting a kaleidoscope of experiences that enrich your life.

Let go of the pressure for everything to be perfect. Don’t get bogged down by social media comparisons. Focus on immersing yourself in the present moment, on soaking up the atmosphere, and on appreciating the journey, not just the destination.

A Few “Battle-Tested” Tips for the Optimistic Traveler

  • Pack for Flexibility: Don’t overpack, but bring a few versatile pieces that can be easily mixed and matched. This allows you to adapt to unexpected situations, like a sudden change in weather.
  • Embrace Technology, But Disconnect When Needed: Stay connected for translations, maps, and communication. However, don’t be afraid to put your phone away and truly be present in the moment.
  • Learn a Few Basic Phrases: A little effort goes a long way. Knowing how to greet someone, thank them, and ask for directions in the local language can be incredibly helpful. Bonjour!
  • Be a Responsible Traveler: Respect local customs and traditions. Be mindful of your impact on the environment. Leave a positive footprint wherever you go.

The Takeaway: Embrace the Journey

Travel is a transformative experience, and the best journeys are often the ones that don’t go according to plan. It’s about embracing the unexpected, the challenges, and the moments of pure joy. By remaining open-minded, fiercely optimistic, and forever curious, you’ll collect experiences that will enrich your life and broaden your horizons for years to come.

I’m reminded of a walk I took years ago were my mind drifted off thinking about the shoes I was wearing – and all of the places those shoes had taken me: Old Shoes, Talking Shoes

Fueling Your Wanderlust: Inspiration for the Open-Minded Traveler

Here are a few ideas to inspire your next adventure and embrace the “good travel, still good travel” philosophy:

  • The Themed Challenge: Pick a theme and build your trip around it. It could be street food exploration, street photography in a neighborhood you’ve never been, learning a new skill in every city, or volunteering your time with local NGOs. This gives your trip structure while leaving room for serendipitous discoveries.
  • The Local Immersion: Ditch the tourist traps and seek out authentic experiences. Stay in local homestays, take cooking classes with families, and visit lesser-known cultural sites. Avoid the well-known ones.
  • The Slow Travel Movement: Forget the whirlwind tours and embrace the slow travel philosophy. Pick a single location and spend a week or more truly getting to know it. Connect with the locals, delve deeper into the culture, and appreciate the nuances of the place.
  • The Off-the-Beaten-Path Adventure: Venture beyond the usual tourist destinations. Explore hidden gems, quirky towns, and regions often overlooked by mainstream travelers. You’ll discover unique cultures, untouched landscapes, and a sense of adventure unmatched by popular tourist spots.

Remember, travel isn’t about achieving perfection, it’s about embracing the adventure. So, pack your bags, unleash your inner optimist, and get ready to collect a lifetime of stories, not just souvenirs. The world awaits, with all its imperfections and unexpected delights. And travel while you can – it’s a gift that can fade more quickly than you might expect as aging makes travel increasingly difficult.

Bonus Tip: Consider starting a travel journal (physical or digital) to document your experiences, both the good and the unexpected. This allows you to reflect on your journey, capture fleeting moments, and appreciate the growth and perspective you’ve gained along the way. A digital journal also allows you to quickly and easily capture photos along with your thoughts. Highly recommended!

Categories
Travel

Hoover Dam

hoover dam in close up shot
Photo by Christopher Delcamp on Pexels.com

“The largest uncontested achievement of Hoover’s leadership is the one that still bears his name: the Hoover Dam. By the time he got back to America, the plan to dam the Colorado River and thereby irrigate and power California’s Los Angeles “Southland” already existed, but it took an organizer of Hoover’s skill to bring several state and municipal governments, federal agencies, and private firms into agreement on how to divide such a massive bounty.

He needed the entire length of his Commerce terms, but the Chief finally got the damn dam built in his image. First he got representatives from the affected states into a room and hammered out the Colorado River Compact over the course of two weeks. The interstate accord set the future direction of the river, but it was a stacked deck, because the congressional (Senate and House) as well as White House representatives all came from California.”

From the book Palo Alto by Malcolm Harris

See this article on the controversy about naming Hoover Dam. A change in administration from one party to the other while the dam was being constructed provided the opportunity to reconsider its name!

When President Roosevelt dedicated the dam in 1935, he too called it Boulder Dam.

Truman later resolved the matter in favor of Hoover:

…on April 30, 1947, President Harry Truman signed Public Law 43 which read:  “Resolved … that the name of Hoover Dam is hereby restored to the dam on the Colorado River in Black Canyon constructed under the authority of the Boulder Canyon Project Act…

For more on Hoover Dam and its history, see this page on the National Archives website for the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum.

Categories
Aviation Travel

Ode to a Queen

A few days ago, Boeing rolled out the last production model of its 747 line of wide body aircraft. Wikipedia noted:

The first flight took place on February 9, 1969, and the 747 was certified in December of that year. It entered service with Pan Am on January 22, 1970. … The final 747 was delivered in January 2023 after a 54-year production run, with 1,574 aircraft built.

I have many fond memories of this great airplane – from seeing it for the very first time flying in to land at San Francisco International Airport (which must have been in 1970) to my first flight which – best of my recollection – was on TWA flying from San Francisco to New York. My last 747 flight was on a Lufthansa 747-8 flying out of Bangalore to Frankfurt in 2016. 

I had a few flights in a seat on the 747’s upper deck – a special treat! The upper deck was also where the cockpit was located – it always seemed to be so high up off the runway that landing a 747 seemed to require some special skill and depth perception! On the other hand, the airplane’s landing gear really smoothed out landings as it had this swing mechanism where the rear wheels on the main landing great touched down first and then pivoted to smoothly bring down the front wheels. The early models of the 747 had a circular staircase to the upper deck where there was a lounge instead of seating. This upper deck cockpit design also facilitated adding a nose door which pivoting upward in the freighter version of the 747. In fact, the last 747 delivered was a freighter to Atlas Air.

Speaking of Atlas Air and that last 747, after delivery it flew from Seattle to Cincinnati as it was put into service. The pilots on the first flight of that last 747 has some fun on their flight – trading a lovely tribute to the “Queen of the Skies” on their radar track.

NASA used a special version of the 747 as the transporter for the space shuttle. In 2012, NASA flew a final flight of its 747 carrying the shuttle Endeavor to its new home in a museum in Los Angeles. Along the way, the NASA 747 toured the San Francisco Bay Area and I was fortunate to be able to make a few images of that flight:

While the last 747 has been delivered by Boeing, it will continue to be flown for many years ahead. Most airlines have removed 747s from their fleets but a few (including Lufthansa) continue flying them. I’d enjoy taking another trip on one of these beautiful aircraft. In the meantime, I’ve got lots of good memories about trips and sightings of the 747.

Update: February 03, 2023 – a few additional thoughts on the 747.

  • For many years, two 747’s have provided air transport for the US presidents – and the current 747’s are soon (?) to be replaced by two new models that have been undergoing customization for some time.
  • Wired added an article about the negatives of the 747 – saying it should have been retired “many years ago”. The article also adds more interesting details about the history of the 747. Fuel economy is the biggest detractor: “A Boeing 747-400, which was manufactured between 1989 and 2009, costs around $26,635 an hour to run. A Boeing 787-8, which is still produced today, costs $14,465 an hour to operate—45 percent cheaper.”

Update: February 04, 2023 – The New Yorker also has an new article about the 747 titled “The World the 747 Didn’t Predict“.

Because the 747 could now seat more travellers on a single flight, airlines were able to sell more tickets at lower prices. Suddenly, travel, particularly intercontinental travel, was accessible to people who had rarely, if ever, been in the air. The 747, in a sense, taught the world to fly.

Categories
Memories Sydney Travel

A Fond Goodbye

I’ve done a lot of airline travel over the years – accumulating over 1 million miles on two US airlines. That’s a lot of flying! Every once in a while I’ll calculate just how many hours of flight those numbers translate to – and that’s when I reflect on just how happy I am that those miles are behind me and not somewhere out there ahead! Over the last two years, I’ve done exactly one trip – thanks to Covid-19!

Over those many miles in the air, there is one airline experience that I’ll never forget – the one and only time I ever flew on Alitalia, the Italian airline that flew its last flight a while back. On that occasion, Christopher Buckley shared a satiric “remembrance” to Aliatalia in the New York Times. In his piece, Buckley noted the airline’s nickname: “the Pope’s airline.” That triggered my memory…

My memory of flying Alitalia begins in Sydney, Australia. I had spent a few days on business in Sydney – one of my favorite cities. I was on a multi-week business trip around Asia.

We were about to check out of our hotel in Sydney to catch a morning flight to Bangkok where we were going to meeting with a large group of clients the following day. As we were checking out of the hotel, the front desk manager asked: “Have we heard about the strike underway at the airport?” We replied: “No! Strike, what strike?”

Turns out there was a labor dispute that had flared up involving the airport baggage handlers who were refusing to work that morning. In sympathy, other union workers at the airport had also gone out on strike – including the aircraft refuelers. We decided we’d better call our airline (Qantas) before leaving the hotel to verify that our flight to Bangkok was still going to fly that morning. Qantas assured us that while all of their domestic Australia flights were being cancelled because of the strike that our flight to Bangkok wouldn’t be – our flight was the first leg of Qantas #1 to London and they assured us they were doing everything possible to avoid cancelling that flight. With that reassurance, we finished our hotel checkout and grabbed a taxi to the Sydney airport.

Our ride to the airport was uneventful – until we left our taxi with all of our bags and headed into the terminal building to check in for Qantas #1. Literally as we were walking into the terminal, the overhead display showing all of the flights began clicking away (I love those old clicking airport and railway terminal signs!) and the display for Qantas #1 changed from On Time to See Agent – not very encouraging! This was years before iPhones – so we didn’t have airline schedule information in the palm of our hands!

We lined up at the Qantas checkin counter and got the bad news – the flight had indeed been cancelled. No good alternatives were offered by Qantas – we were stuck. “See you tomorrow!” was the best they could offer but by then we would have missed the first day of our big meeting with clients in Bangkok! We were desperate for a better solution.

Fortunately for us, we happened to notice on the overhead display in the terminal that an Alitalia flight that was coming into Sydney from Bangkok and scheduled to arrive in about 90 minutes. We rushed over to the Alitalia check-in counter (fortunately there was no line!) and spoke with the Alitalia agent – asking him if this inbound plane might be heading back out to Bangkok on a return trip? Would the airport worker strike also result in the return flight also being cancelled?

I’ll never forget the agent’s reaction when he told us that he was going to do everything possible to keep this flight on schedule and to not have it impacted by the strike. He looked at us and said simply, with a strong Italian accent: “No one screws with the Pope’s airline!”

This guy was one serious, dedicated agent. When the flight arrived from Bangkok, he kept it parked out on the tarmac well away from the terminals – isolating it from the striking airport workers. We were escorted to buses (no union drivers apparently!) who bused us out to the plane (a 747-Combi – part airliner and part cargo plane).

As we waited in our bus to board, the agent told us to watch the unloading door on the side near the back of the plane. Slowly they unloaded two cars from the big door on side of 747 and lowered them to the ground. On our bus were the soon-to-be owners of those two cars – both Ferrari’s – who cheered as their cars were unloaded. After that bit of excitement, we left the bus and walked up the stairs to board at the front of the 747.

Once boarded we got the usual briefing and started taxiing for takeoff. As we turned the corner and starting rolling (not a lot of other air traffic that morning!) the big 747 picked up speed and started to lift off – with a big round of cheers and applause erupting in the cabin as we heading out of Sydney. Sort of like “escape from Saigon”! Only we weren’t headed back to Bangkok. We were on our way to Melbourne. Turns out that this was this flights regular route. Rome to Bangkok to Sydney to Melbourne back to Bangkok back to Rome. Our time in Melbourne was brief – we did pull up to the terminal, some passengers deplaned, others boarded, and we were off for Bangkok. Oh, one other thing – we also refueled in Melbourne after being kept from refueling in Sydney because of the striker airport workers!

We made it to Bangkok a few hours later than originally scheduled on Qantas #1 – but in time for our big meeting the next day. Alitalia saved us! My one and only flight on that now defunct airline.

There was one other time I encountered Alitalia. But this time it was from a distance. I had a layover for an hour or so at the airport in Denver. Turns out I was there waiting the same day that the Pope was flying in on one of his tours of the U.S. And, of course, he was flying “his” airline – Alitalia. I was able to see his plane land and taxi in just before I had to board my next flight.

Ciao Alitalia! The Pope’s airline indeed! Thanks for the very fond memories I have of your service!

Categories
Living Sacramento Travel

A Day Trip to Sacramento

Recently my friend Doug Kaye and I decided to venture beyond our usual San Francisco city street photography venues to get out beyond the bay a bit. After considering a couple of options, we headed to Sacramento for a day.

Doug lives in the North Bay and I’m on the Peninsula so we needed to figure out the best way for both of us to make the trip. After a bit of research, we settled on taking the train – the Capitol Corridor line which runs from San Jose to Sacramento – taking advantage of a special “Friends and Family” discount for buying two tickets.

We met at the Richmond BART station which is adjacent to the rail line making for a convenient transfer for me – I usually take BART to get into San Francisco and on this day I took BART under the Bay to Richmond and made the short walk from the BART station to the Amtrak station. Doug drove over the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge to Richmond.

We were pleasantly surprised by the Capitol Corridor train. It was about fifteen minutes late in arriving – but made up that delay and got us to Sacramento right on schedule. The train cars are double deckers and we headed upstairs to sit on the left side of the train. After leaving Richmond, the train line runs along the edge of the Bay as it heads northeast before crossing the Martinez Strait to head on to Davis and Sacramento.

Doug took advantage of the snack bar in one of the other cars to bring us back a fresh cup of coffee. We arrived in Sacramento on-time and took the long walk on the underground walkway from the train landing to the station building.

The Sacramento Valley Station is in the heart of downtown Sacramento and has one of those classic old high-ceiling waiting rooms.

It’s about a 15 minute walk from the station to our first stop at the California State Capitol. Right after going through security screening into the building, I caught a glimpse of Governor Gavin Newsom as he moved down the hallway waving to visitors.

The Assembly gallery in the Capitol was open the day we visited although the Senate gallery was closed and we weren’t able to visit that room.

On the main floor of the Capitol are several historic offices – including the old Treasurer’s Office which recreates the period when California’s state government didn’t trust banks and kept all of its assets in a big safe in that office! The old Governor’s office was also very interesting – it has many desks for more than just the governor himself!

For lunch, we headed to Biba Ristorante, a great Italian restaurant in a neighborhood east of the Capitol complex that came highly recommended. We enjoyed a great lunch (I had a delicious tomato-onion soup followed by Pollo alla Milanese)

After lunch we headed to Old Sacramento and the Delta King – an old stern wheeler which has been turned into a hotel. It’s in beautiful shape – looking freshly painted and very “ship shape”.

We walked north through Old Sacramento looking at the shops, saloons and restaurants along the way heading to the California State Railroad Museum.

This museum, a California State Park, is remarkable – an amazing place for railroad buffs. The upper level has a large model railroad display which brought back memories for me of the American Flyer train set that was one of my treasured toys growing up. One of the displays is a series of examples of all of the various model railroad gauges – all the way down to the tiny Z scale trains.

California State Railroad Museum

The docents at the Railroad Museum were a delight. They enjoyed telling us more about their exhibits, answering our questions and sharing. We particularly enjoyed the walk through both the sleeping car (which rocks and has sound and light effects simulating being on a real train trip to Chicago – “all trains go to Chicago!”) and the dining car with its displays of railroad dining china settings.

After the museum, we walked back to the Sacramento Valley Station and caught our return Capitol Corridor train to Richmond.

While this was a long day, we had a great time – and we got in a lot of exercise – over 10,000 steps and over 3 miles of walking. A great day of exercise for my legs as I’m finally back to almost 100% following my broken femur accident last spring!

Notes: All photos taken with an iPhone 11 Pro Max and edited on the iPhone using Photos.

Categories
History New Mexico Nuclear Energy Nuclear Weapons Travel

Visiting the National Museum of Nuclear Science & History

Update (July 2023): see my review of the Christopher Nolan film “Oppenheimer” based on the book “American Prometheus“ by Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin.

While I was in Santa Fe in July, I took the opportunity on my way back to Albuquerque to catch my flight to stop by the National Museum of Nuclear Science & History again. This was my second visit – having initially made a quick visit to the museum in July 2018.

Roughly speaking, the museum is divided into three sections – two indoor (nuclear weapons and the peaceful uses of nuclear energy) and the aircraft and missile display area outside. The weapons section is the first part you walk through at the beginning of touring the museum. It describes the history of the development of nuclear weapons – including the race America was against countries like Germany and Japan to develop this technology. It also includes discussion of the famous letter from Albert Einstein to President Roosevelt that led to the creation of the US national effort that became the Manhattan Project.

There’s an interesting exhibit that creatively recreates the scene at the Los Alamos Laboratory as this work was underway. I was particularly struck by the several old mechanical desktop calculators in the display – as the math involved in designing these weapons wasn’t perfected using computers but, rather, slide rules and these old calculators.

The rest of the weapons section includes examples a many nuclear weapons – including facsimiles of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki Japan that led to the end of World War II with that country. As you walk through this display of weapons, it’s striking how they start out being relatively large but then shrink down in size to much smaller dimensions.

Outdoors in the aircraft and missile display area are examples of the Boeing B-29 used over Japan along with a beautifully preserved Boeing B-52 and also a Boeing B-47. There are a number of smaller aircraft as well – along with a replica to the tower used at the Trinity test site in New Mexico where the first test of an atomic weapon was conducted.

I’ve visited this museum twice and learned new things each time. On my recent visit, they were showing a film about the B-52 bomber which was quite interesting. I didn’t know that back in the 1950’s General Curtis LeMay (heading up the Strategic Air Command) had B-52’s in the air constantly that were armed with nuclear weapons and flew toward the Soviet Union only to then turn back and return. Only after a couple of nasty accidents involving aircraft crashes with nuclear weapons on-board did this practice moderate.

The other thing I learned about Albuquerque is what a nuclear city it is. Just a few miles from the museum site is one of the largest storage sites for nuclear weapons in the world – something called the Kirtland Underground Munitions Maintenance and Storage Complex (KUMMSC) where the US stores nuclear weapons – most waiting to be removed from service and disassembled.

Categories
Food and Drink France Travel

Better than French Fries!

During a recent visit to Normandy, we had lunch in the fishing village of Port-en-Bessin-Huppain at Le 47ème Brasserie. I should have ordered some seafood – the fresh fish market in town is right across the street – but, instead felt like a burger. When it arrived, I was surprised – no bun but, instead, top and bottom layers of hash brown-like potatoes. Not something you could pickup and eat like a normal burger – but it was very delicious nonetheless!

Nearby, just across the bridge, is a beach of sea shells unlike any I’ve ever seen (see below). After lunch, I walked about and did some exploring there.