Matthew H Fish
Lead Service Attendant
- Joined
- May 28, 2019
- Messages
- 499
Hello, I just moved a long long way, and I thought I would share a trip report here, because technically, I did ride a train...but the moderators might not agree.
From Santiago, my friends drove me to the airport. Only right before I left did the e-Mail say that I should be at the airport 4 hours before the departure gate, and so I was stressed out getting there. Of course, once I did get there, it was "hurry up and wait", because I ended up getting through security and waiting for departure at least an hour before the plane was supposed to board. Which it eventually did. Slowly. It was a 777, so three blocks of three seats each. I was rather cramped, and it was hard for me to fall asleep after it lifted off. It was a night time flight, leaving at 11 PM. I slept a little bit before waking up on the approach to Mexico City. When I got out in Mexico City, it was early in the morning, around 6 AM...and I had to go through customs, meaning waiting in a line. Even though I was only transferring in the airport, I still had to fill out a form for immigration. Then, in the Mexico City airport, I had to pick up my luggage, and wander around, finally realizing I was in the wrong terminal. (This was, after all, around 7 AM in a foreign country when I had barely slept and was trying to navigate through one of the world's biggest and busiest airports). Luckily...they had a train! The Airtrain, which went for a couple of kilometers between the international arrivals, and international departures. It was a "people mover" type train, with the cars just being two benches about 10 feet apart, and with lots of standing and luggage room in the middle. The ride was pretty bumpy, and only lasted a few minutes.
Then I waited in line to check my luggage again. And then I went through a security interview, waited in line, waited in another line, finally boarded the plane, waited for it to take off...and then was uncomfortable and tired, until I came into San Francisco. And went through immigration for the second time that day. I was, honestly, a little worried that I might raise suspicions (living for three years in Chile might raise a flag of some sort), and was mentally steeling myself to have my bag checked...only it turned out easier than I thought. I stumbled my way out of the terminal just in time to see the airport shuttle bus I was planning to take pull away. I went inside and asked the information desk about it, and they told me the time...and then also answered a follow-up question by saying that the bus only took cash. This alarmed me, since I had no cash and didn't have a debit card, just my credit cars. I quickly got on the airport WiFi and wrote an e-Mail to the bus company, who told me that no, I could use a credit card. For a back-up plan, I was wondering about taking BART to a place where I could get to Marin County and take the commuter rail to Santa Rosa, but based on my state of tiredness at that point, that seemed like a lot of moving around to get where I was going. So eventually, I did get on that shuttle bus, that wended its way slowly through San Francisco, (I got to see the MUNI), over the Golden Gate Bridge, through Marin County (where I did see the Sonoma Marin Area Rail Transit train), and finally to Santa Rosa, where my mother picked me up...and we then drove another four hours northwards to Eureka, California.
That was pretty tiring.
So, the biggest observation about air travel
Yes, air travel is incredibly fast compared to other forms of transit. Once you lift off from the ground, until the time you touch down. And of course, for going from Chile to the United States, there is no other possible way to do it...until we have a ferry to cross the Darien Gap.
But I guess the main thing I would observe is that there is nothing at all efficient, comfortable, cheap, aesthetic or any other good quality about air transit. I think that air transit tries to pass itself off as this "serious" form of travel, where everything is very professional and calculated. But other than the immense amount of technological achievement that airplanes represent, everything else seems to be rather...haphazard. Most airports are badly designed, confusing to navigate, and aesthetically lacking. Most airports are also located in places that are inefficient at getting to, and hard to access with other types of transportation. Boarding a plane is also not very efficient. With Amtrak, at most stops, it is literally 2-3 minutes, 5 minutes at most, to let passengers off and on. With my planes, we had to wait in line for a long time to get everyone on. And everyone off. And then we waited to taxi. There are a lot of lines to stand in. My luggage was not moved automatically, I had to travel across an airport to retrieve it, then find a place to recheck it in. And of course, planes are very uncomfortable.
So, like I can understand that if you have to literally cross an ocean, or travel thousand of miles, airplanes might be "the only way to do it", but it is confusing for me why anyone travelling under 1000 miles would want to go the additional expense and discomfort of flying, when it is not really that much more efficient. I guess because it is so culturally engrained that flying is "the normal way to travel" that people just accept all the problems with it as givens?
Oh, and also, California has a lot of rail services, but they aren't arranged in a very efficient way for a dazed traveler. Get off at the San Francisco Airport, take a BART line, take a ferry to Larkspur, take a bus to San Rafael transit center to get on the SMART...that is not really an intuitive process.
Anyway, so that is my trip report. I apologize if it is mostly about trains in their absence.
From Santiago, my friends drove me to the airport. Only right before I left did the e-Mail say that I should be at the airport 4 hours before the departure gate, and so I was stressed out getting there. Of course, once I did get there, it was "hurry up and wait", because I ended up getting through security and waiting for departure at least an hour before the plane was supposed to board. Which it eventually did. Slowly. It was a 777, so three blocks of three seats each. I was rather cramped, and it was hard for me to fall asleep after it lifted off. It was a night time flight, leaving at 11 PM. I slept a little bit before waking up on the approach to Mexico City. When I got out in Mexico City, it was early in the morning, around 6 AM...and I had to go through customs, meaning waiting in a line. Even though I was only transferring in the airport, I still had to fill out a form for immigration. Then, in the Mexico City airport, I had to pick up my luggage, and wander around, finally realizing I was in the wrong terminal. (This was, after all, around 7 AM in a foreign country when I had barely slept and was trying to navigate through one of the world's biggest and busiest airports). Luckily...they had a train! The Airtrain, which went for a couple of kilometers between the international arrivals, and international departures. It was a "people mover" type train, with the cars just being two benches about 10 feet apart, and with lots of standing and luggage room in the middle. The ride was pretty bumpy, and only lasted a few minutes.
Then I waited in line to check my luggage again. And then I went through a security interview, waited in line, waited in another line, finally boarded the plane, waited for it to take off...and then was uncomfortable and tired, until I came into San Francisco. And went through immigration for the second time that day. I was, honestly, a little worried that I might raise suspicions (living for three years in Chile might raise a flag of some sort), and was mentally steeling myself to have my bag checked...only it turned out easier than I thought. I stumbled my way out of the terminal just in time to see the airport shuttle bus I was planning to take pull away. I went inside and asked the information desk about it, and they told me the time...and then also answered a follow-up question by saying that the bus only took cash. This alarmed me, since I had no cash and didn't have a debit card, just my credit cars. I quickly got on the airport WiFi and wrote an e-Mail to the bus company, who told me that no, I could use a credit card. For a back-up plan, I was wondering about taking BART to a place where I could get to Marin County and take the commuter rail to Santa Rosa, but based on my state of tiredness at that point, that seemed like a lot of moving around to get where I was going. So eventually, I did get on that shuttle bus, that wended its way slowly through San Francisco, (I got to see the MUNI), over the Golden Gate Bridge, through Marin County (where I did see the Sonoma Marin Area Rail Transit train), and finally to Santa Rosa, where my mother picked me up...and we then drove another four hours northwards to Eureka, California.
That was pretty tiring.
So, the biggest observation about air travel
Yes, air travel is incredibly fast compared to other forms of transit. Once you lift off from the ground, until the time you touch down. And of course, for going from Chile to the United States, there is no other possible way to do it...until we have a ferry to cross the Darien Gap.
But I guess the main thing I would observe is that there is nothing at all efficient, comfortable, cheap, aesthetic or any other good quality about air transit. I think that air transit tries to pass itself off as this "serious" form of travel, where everything is very professional and calculated. But other than the immense amount of technological achievement that airplanes represent, everything else seems to be rather...haphazard. Most airports are badly designed, confusing to navigate, and aesthetically lacking. Most airports are also located in places that are inefficient at getting to, and hard to access with other types of transportation. Boarding a plane is also not very efficient. With Amtrak, at most stops, it is literally 2-3 minutes, 5 minutes at most, to let passengers off and on. With my planes, we had to wait in line for a long time to get everyone on. And everyone off. And then we waited to taxi. There are a lot of lines to stand in. My luggage was not moved automatically, I had to travel across an airport to retrieve it, then find a place to recheck it in. And of course, planes are very uncomfortable.
So, like I can understand that if you have to literally cross an ocean, or travel thousand of miles, airplanes might be "the only way to do it", but it is confusing for me why anyone travelling under 1000 miles would want to go the additional expense and discomfort of flying, when it is not really that much more efficient. I guess because it is so culturally engrained that flying is "the normal way to travel" that people just accept all the problems with it as givens?
Oh, and also, California has a lot of rail services, but they aren't arranged in a very efficient way for a dazed traveler. Get off at the San Francisco Airport, take a BART line, take a ferry to Larkspur, take a bus to San Rafael transit center to get on the SMART...that is not really an intuitive process.
Anyway, so that is my trip report. I apologize if it is mostly about trains in their absence.
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