Listen to the whistle

From the wide Pacific Ocean

To the broad Atlantic shore

From sunny California

To ice-bound Labrador

She's mighty tall and handsome

She's loved by one and all

She's the hobo's accommodation,

the Wabash Cannonball.

It was cold, and it was wet, and it was drizzling.  I was out for a walk after lunch, trying to work the kinks out of a newly arthritic knee, and enjoying completely a damp (but not pouring rain) day in January.  It's a Northwest Corner kind of love -- you have to live here to appreciate it.

Off in the distance came the wail of a train whistle.  I'm nowhere near railroad tracks, so far as I know, and the sound came from the direction of Seattle's King Street Amtrak station, several miles away.  The mournful sound of a train's whistle seems almost designed to complement dark skies and drizzling rain.  I was happy, in that sad way that Scandinavians in the Northwest tend to be happy.

And I was reminded that I'm only about five weeks from my train ride to Chicago.  A train ride, from various starting points, that has become another of my winter "traditions" over the past three years.

Assiduous readers of this blog will recall that I traveled to Chicago from San Francisco on the "California Zephyr" in 2022, and from Los Angeles on the "Southwest Chief" last year. This year, I'll be hopping the "Empire Builder" here in Seattle, a 48-hour ride to Chicago.

I'll be "riding the rails" in a comfortable roomette on the Empire Builder, which seems somewhat decadent compared with a "hobo's accommodation" on the Wabash Cannonball.  But comfort aside, I suspect much of the emotional charge is similar -- the sense that you're traveling great distances, night and day, and that, once on that train, you have no control over where it stops or the route it takes.  In fact, you have no responsibilities at all -- you simply gaze out the window, read a book, meditate on the mysteries of life and your place within it.

Of course, unlike a hobo, you also look forward to three meals a day in the diner, and maybe an aperitif before dinner!

Unlike the past two years, I won't be returning to Seattle by airline as soon as I arrive in Chicago.  A couple of friends will be traveling up from their home in West Lafayette, Indiana, to greet me upon arrival.  By chance, I'll be in Chicago in the midst of a city-wide theater festival, and we plan to take in a show or two, while catching up and exploring Chicago so far as possible in that city's ungodly winter weather. 

This will be my third ride on the Empire Builder.  I rode it to Chicago when I was 14 years  old, on my way to a three-week stay with a former elementary school classmate whose family had abandoned the Northwest.  I reveled in my adult-like independence, even while gladly welcoming being taken under the wing of my friend's family upon arrival.  My second ride was just fourteen years ago, the first section of a train odyssey to Boston, heading to a nephew's wedding on the Maine coast.

I am so ready to roll!  I feel like stepping out the door into the gathering dusk and listening again for that lonesome, distant cry of a train's whistle.  Empire Builder?     Wabash Cannonball?    Whatever!

Listen to the jingle, the rumble and the roar

As she glides along the woodland, o'er the hills and by the shore

Hear the mighty rush of the engine, hear the lonesome hobo's call

As you travel across the country on the Wabash Cannonball