pseydtonne | Two for Tuesday

We've just stopped at Maitland. It's half past seven in the evening a few days after winter solstice in the southern hemisphere, so it's dark out. I can't see evidence of massive flooding right now. In theory this train shouldn't be speeding along at all. We should be coming to a washed-out bridge in the Hunter Valley. I can still see work crews in the streets handling re-electrification but otherwise I'd never know this town had been victim to the worst flooding in fifty years two weeks ago.

This first-class carriage has been a blessing for my back and my sleep schedule as I try to get back to Boston time in advance. It's early Monday morning, five-thirty at home. The day I've already had is just starting where most of you will read this. By the time I post this, you'll be long into your work day and I'll be debating whether to get a good night's sleep only to be zonked when 3 a.m. Sydney time is 10 a.m. Los Angeles time and a customs agent is asking me where the hell I've been.

The agent's Tuesday morning will be my Wednesday. I will have already lived through his day. I will likely be thinking that I am clairvoyant, that I know when he will spill coffee on his jacket that afternoon or that it's immaterial what happens. I hope to have a look that says wisdom and concern, as I'll have half a day's flight to practice it.

The curse of having my own sleeper is that I have no one to pester. I try to talk to others in their sleepers but something feels improper. Each person seems to be saying "I need what little separation and quiet this sleeper can offer me. Thank you but no."

I tried to have a conversation in the cafe car but that failed as well. I couldn't even get the teenagers roaming the corridor to go more than a couple short sentences. I'm in a cloister and I may not rejoin the talking world until I alight the train.

This ride reminds me of the Water Table Route down the Mohawk Valley into the Hudson. Maitland is where Sydney's CityRail suburban service begins, thus making the last two and a half hours of the journey an express run with only discharging passengers and no new riders. Maitland is thus Poughkeepsie. I do not know these suburbs so I cannot tell whether Broadmeadow (our next stop) is like Croton-Harmon or more like Yonkers. I can only guess by the frumpy passengers walking down the platform that this is nothing thrilling. Then again, perhaps the demographic for long-distance trains in Australia is the same as America's.

-enough until I wake up later, Ps/d