Maybe not so much to write on Southby days – it's a blur and difficult to differentiate the days once you're here. Wore my Learning Pool t-shirt, I know that much. I need to write more about Learning Pool because they are good people doing good things. I'll be wearing my tee again tomorrow and…
I'm going to post these little jottings that I've been making while on the road – no order, structure yet, they're the bones of what I'll be writing about later. Advisory: may contain platitudes, truisms and inanity. Unexpected joys The joy comes mostly when you realise how it's all been leading up to this, how…
I'm aware that in the rolling daily updates there's been little talk of how it's actually going for me how i'm _gulp_ *feeling*. Well the headline is I feel great. I'm really enjoying the whole thing. Taking it much more easily than last year. Hardly worrying at all, except when I do. The "Solve…
There's nothing like it getting dark over a cold, grey wet Illinois and waking up in glorious Arkansas sunshine. I'm back in the South – hurrah! Into Texas and we hit Dallas at around 11am. I would have a double seat to myself from now on as Marisa was getting off. We had a whole…
Breakfast with Tracy: scrambled eggs, toast and an apple – simple and perfect. I was a little worried by the fact that a couple of inches of snow seemed to have fallen overnight. But that's just me thinking London thoughts. As Tracy pulled back out of her garage over the fresh white stuff, I knew…
I had a better night on the train, well kinda. I worked out a couple of comfortable positions to lie in (for some value of comfortable) and I alternated between them. At one point I thought "There's a blog post in here: 'The 10 most comfortable ways to sleep in a coach seat on Amtrak'"…
So I arrived at Milwaukee station today and (I don't know why I hadn't done this before) asked for a ticket to Austin for tomorrow. No, sorry, that train's fully booked. Damn. There are a couple of seats still available the following day if you pay a small supplement, but Wednesday, full. Um… OK. It…
A long-distance train journey is a great opportunity for meditation. Especially when you find yourself without a phone signal most of the way and unable to connect to a carrier that will give you data at all. So after waking at Spokane (where a drunk guy was getting thrown off the train) and managing to…
Ann and Kevin were the second couple I stayed with who I'd never met before. But most bizarrely, they, like Philip and Tania in SF were an Anglo-American couple. What are the chances? I land in two couple's lives randomly and unexpectedly and both the guys are English. And, I just realised as I was…
Saturday was my first full train day. I was on board for just about 24 hours. Having snoozed for a couple of hours at a time and checked in on Foursquare when I could I got up just north of Redding and had a look around. Went up to the observation car and sat and…