Home Contents ************************** Video of Ohio, PA, and New York. Part of the lounge on the Lakeshore Limited. The other half of the lounge. They're separated by the food counter. My portable hard drive. I put the camera's memory cards in it and hit a button to copy so I only need a couple of memory cards on the trip. The Lakeshore Limited. The sleepers are in the background at the front of the train, the lounge and part of a coach is in the forground. The coaches at the rear, and Robert in the "white" shirt. Viewliner sleeping cars. Hey, what's going on on the left? Not the man you want escorting you off the train if you're papers aren't in order. Just an attendant helping a lady onto the train. Robert. Syracuse, NY. The General Electric Company in Schennectady, NY. I wish I'd had seen it coming. This is where my dad used to work. Jules, "The Alien". Last photo before New York. Video from around Erie, Pennsylvania to the Hudson River. Go to New York City

Day 4 June 12th, 2007 From the Great Lakes to New York City I slept straight through from 1am to about 7am. At 9am Eastern Time we were in a siding just outside Erie, Pennsylvania waiting for two freight trains to pass. I didn't expect there to be freight delays in the Northeast. I'm not sure why, since Amtrak shares the rails with freight there too. I guess I just expected the Northeast to be more passenger rail friendly. Eventually the freight trains passed. Even after all these train trips, it still startles me when we're stopped in a siding and a freight train suddenly flies by the window. At a small station somewhere in upstate New York, I was outside taking photos when I saw some guy getting patted down by the Border Patrol. As the train left the station I could see them through the window, loading him into the border patrol SUV. They just keep taking people off my trains! As usual, I spent most of my time in the lounge. But the lounge on this train was a totally different experience than the lounge on the Superliners. On the Superliner cars there is 85-feet of upstairs floor to ceiling windows and a small cafe below. But on the Lakeshore Limited the lounge, like all the other cars, is single level. It's split in thirds, with a small horseshoe couch on one end, the snack counter in the middle, and tables on the other end. It seems like it's designed much more for eating than socializing with strangers or watching the scenery go by. As it was, I didn't spend too much time on this part of the trip chatting with people. I was typing in the lounge when I was joined by a somewhat inebriated gentleman who looked like he hadn't changed his shirt since 1974. He was complaining that he lost his credit card. I couldn't imagine this guy ever having a credit card, but he said he had one to buy his tickets and he had it on the train. He was the standard drunk guy you'd find in a bar sitting on a stool and complaining about his life. After complaining a while he said "should I just say fuck it and get drunk?", or words to that effect. Then he pulled one of those itty-bitty bottles of alcohol and slammed it. At some point he said the magic words "I need $35 to get my card back and I don't have $35. I guess I could get a little from a bunch of people..." Sorry, buddy. you ain't getting anything from me. Shortly afterward he was passed out (I'm not going to call it "sleeping") across the table from me. He had a food box in front of him containing a Pepsi, three bottles of prescription pills, and five empty mini-bottles. I really don't know why the lounge attendant didn't cut him off long time ago. According to the train ticket he had his name was Robert. I made sure to take a stealth photo of him. I really wanted him to wake up so I could record his rantings for posterity, but that wasn't meant to be. There was another lady sitting across the asile asking everyone who walked by if they had a phone charger that might fit her phone. She didn't look like she was in the best situation either. I think she was stuck on the train going to New York and had no money. Somewhere just about dead center of New York State, cell-phone charger lady went nuts. She was totally drunk and in tears because she's "been on the train for six days from California." I guess days are shorter when you're nuts, because I'd been on the train from California and it was only four days for me. I was putting my money on Robert, but crazy lady took the lead and got booted from the train about three hours later Albany. In addition to acting generally insane, it turned out that she had been going back and forth on the train panhandling and then taking the money up to the lounge and buying drinks with it. She latched onto some other lady who later said that crazy lady told her that nobody knew where she was except her ten-year old daughter. The lounge car attendant said she's the oldest runaway he's ever met. I wondered how Lisa Marie was doing on her trip to Orlando, and if the weirdos followed only me. A bit later a fourteen year old kid sat down at my table and was asking me questions about my PDA and keyboard arrangement. The keyboard on the PDA got lots of notice. He "confirmed" that the border patrol got the guy off of this train. I'm not sure of the details, but he said that the border patrol came onboard and was asking people if they were aliens or something. I wasn't sure how that would work, but apparently the guy said he was, and they got him off the train. I also had a short conversation as we traveled down the Hudson River with a guy who was on his way to New York for some sort of legal business. He was saying that he got a B&B in Harlem for only $90/night. He talked about boating on the Hudson River and how I need to go explore the area around Lake Ontario. He left me with his email address and we all went to prepare for our arrival in New York City. I tried to return to my seat, but there were strangers sitting in it. Who knows how long they were there, but it annoyed the hell out of me. I may not spend much time in my seat, but when there s an NYP tag (New York Penn Station) over a seat you'd think people would stay out of it. I collected my backpack and waited with Ebony, Iana, and Jules in the vestibule for the train to get to New York City. The banana peel stayed under the seat. The train seemed to take forever to finally roll into Penn Station. Jules, Ebony & Iana, and I got off the train and we walked together upstairs. I told Iana to stay close to Mom because they were in New York City now, and then left them to go into the streets of Manhattan. Go to New York City