Amtrakin'

As I start this bit, we're jerking slowly past some switchtracks in South Norwalk, Connecticut. At about this point the view-from-train will segue from a mix of rough and/or charming seaside towns to the graffiti, scrap metal, and industrial backyards of the NYC to Baltimore-Washington corridor.

I spent our hour-long wait in the New London train station reading Jeff all the informative posters describing the architectural work of Henry Hobson Richardson (whose last station, in 1888, was the very one in which we were standing.) Studying the founding fathers of the Arts & Crafts movement, and the purveyors of their aesthetic legacy has been a lifelong hobby of Jeff's, but now reading such informative exhibits for himself wouldn't work. He does, however, love to listen. And I enjoy reading interpretively, just in case any talent hunters from NPR may be hovering nearby. Not sure what the surrounding Amtrak passengers think.

Behind me on the train, a couple of older ladies are animatedly discussing the dementia-related incapacities of their various relatives. I could lean over the back of the seat and say "Hey! Me too! This guy right here!" But they'd probably think I was as nutty as the lady a few towns back who, finding herself below New London instead of Boston (where she meant to get off) suddenly went full-scale wacko, regaling our entire train car with a 10 minute, expletives-not-deleted monolog about how her life was now ruined and how "they" (the Amtrak people, I surmised) had ruined it, and how she was going to kill someone this afternoon. This incited a good deal of amused grinning and chuckling from Jeff, who is beyond grasping how you hardly want to be a lightning rod for the wrath of a psycho, if you can help it. Gabe and I and the rest of the car listened with poker mouths but raised eyebrows while a conductor gingerly prodded the imploding passenger toward the best position for ejecting her at the next stop.

I remind Gabe a couple times that he could read his student handbook, which is conveniently stowed in my tote bag. He prefers Forbidden Knowledge: Travel for now, and has just described the various means by which people have, successfully and un (in terms of survival,) attempted barrel rides over Niagara Falls.

Our trip has been a good one, as these things go. Gabe was corralled by an evidently more organizationally-minded kid to be one of a trio of roommates for a hexagonal tower room in the warren-like third floor of the Victorian in which they'll be living starting at the end of the month. One sleepwalks, Gabe sleeptalks...the other one--the organizer--will, with luck, sleep heavily. I am leaving the orientation program comfortable that--all the usual leaving-home adjustments notwithstanding--Gabe has a decent year in an agreeable environment ahead of him.

As for me, I am looking forward to a couple of opportunities to poke around maritime Connecticut when we return to move Gabe in, and again on Family Weekend. While waking in strange hotel rooms becomes more and more disorienting--and therefore grump-inducing--we can usually wash the worst of the cobwebs away with an orange juice and coffee.