Musings on a transcontinental trip on an Amtrak train

I will never again take a transcontinental trip on an Amtrak train. Damn you Lake Shore Limited! Luxurious Viewliner accomodations my ass!!!
There is something eternal about traveling through the Midwest on a winter night. Yeah, the images of a Norman Rockwell painting appear hokey and charmingly ancient and the image of early 20th century small town America is a whitewashed ideal that no one alive remembers firsthand. But the rural midwest I saw from my frosty train window are aware and savvy of how urban America has changed, and yet they adapt slow enough to retain their immediate charm. The single iron lamppost lightling the show gently falling on the tracks at the edge of the station. The small town main streets, selling cell phones and soy-based products from new stores, but still retaining their Victorian-style buildings as they intersect with the tracks. The lone silos and decaying barns out in a icy, fallow field. The Georgian-style farmhouses perserving their families' character and independence. The orchard trees decorated with laces of ice, like a forest of glass trees. Out here, you lose a sense of urgency, and with it, disposability. These structures carry with the the tradition of both grandeur and purpose; they were meant to withstand time and fashion. And long after I passed these small towns and independent farms, I wished that they would continue to persevere long after a string of presidents, appliances, and non-essential celebrities. Although I don't agree with all the thoughts and actions of rural America, I find one of their virtues - endurance - something we are always in short supply.

Perhaps Indiana and Ohio are only meant to be seen in the dark.

After witnessing what northern upstate New York - i.e Buffalo - looks like - broken machinery, disrepaired and abandoned factories and mills, burning tires, polluted rivers, I now realize why two of my closest friends are obsessed with post-apocalyptic dystopian futures. Thunderdome anyone?

I had breakfast in the dining car sharing a table with an electromagnetic physicist from Syracuse and his precocious 5-year old daughter (is there any other?) He seemed interested in how my progression into med school was going, and as someone who was an outside observer, appeared extremely critical of the entire process. His experience was with former students at Syracuse University, including one girl who took the most advanced physics and chemistry classes, but was passed over last year. His conclusion was that medical schools were not looking for the most challenged or the most intelligent candidates, but the most accomplished and best work-ethic (the ones with the best GPAs). If not for the MCATs, I would totally have agreed with him, and even then he made some convincing arguments. I went back over a speech my adviser gave from the outgoing AAMC President in 2005 about how the sorry state of medical admissions treated its American candidates, and realized, I wish that physicist guy would be on my admission board... and maybe my friends.

That's my trip on Amtrak. Never listening to you on transportation advice again, Kevin!