The Train in Maine Goes Mainly Up In Flames

(Photo: Me)

I'll get to this in more detail in the future, but I wanted to let you all know about our adventure today. I'll let the fine reporters at the Portland (ME) Press-Herald fill you in:

Downeaster, truck collide in 'fireball'

NORTH BERWICK — A Downeaster train with 109 passengers aboard slammed into a trash-hauling tractor trailer at 11:05 a.m. today, killing at least one person.

The driver of the truck died in the collision, said Cliff Cole, a spokesman based in Amtrak's New York office. Some of the train's 109 passengers were injured, but it's not clear how many or how seriously they were hurt, said Steve McCausland from the Maine Department of Public Safety.

Justin Nelson, 24, of Los Angeles, was traveling on the Downeaster with his wife as part of a cross-country rail tour when "we drove through what looked like a fireball."

"We were just sitting there, running along, when all of the sudden, the train started violently shaking," Nelson said. "Then there was fire all around us. There was lots of screaming."

At the scene of the collision, heaps of trash covered the gravel alongside the tracks for several hundred feet. Various other charred debris smoldered amongst the garbage. The locomotive and at least one passenger car were still aflame more than an hour after the crash, according to eyewitnesses.

To answer your questions: We are okay, and are presently sitting in our hotel in Bar Harbor. In fact, there were no serious injuries on the train. The engineer and conductor were treated for smoke inhalation, and one passenger complained of a head injury. All were released from the hospital today.

And yes, I'm getting a copy of that newspaper.

Victoria

Photos to be uploaded later, when we have better Internet access.
(We are currently aboard Amtrak's Adirondack in Schenectady, NY en route to New York City.)

We boarded the Pacific Coach Lines bus to Victoria, which would deliver us onto the ferry at Tsawassen Terminal (Pronounced Tuh-WAS-sen) on the mainland and drive us in to downtown Victoria from the Sidney terminal on the island. PCL buses get priority booking on the ferry, so they're the first aboard and the first to depart upon docking. After our driver got us situated on the Spirit of British Columbia's vehicle deck, we were all shuffled off the bus and up to the passenger areas of the ferry. Dani and I were expecting to get a bit of time to relax and enjoy BC Ferries' complimentary wi-fi. (As you can tell, we haven't had a lot of time on the Internet on this trip.) However, the damn thing didn't work until 20 minutes before our arrival in Sidney, during which time Dani was able to upload some photos to Facebook (and that's it). We were forced to look out the windows, and the scenery was spectacular- cabins and homes clinging to the sides of the tiny islands that form the passage between the mainland and Sidney, served by smaller ferry boats that shuttle between docks on each one of them. While I can't say the isolation appeals to me, the views certainly make a case for moving there.

(Photos from boat go here!)

We were called back down to the bus as the ferry arrived on the island, and they drove us into downtown Victoria- stopping along the way at Mayfair Mall. Of course, I only realized after we left the stop that our hotel was within a block of said mall. (On the way in, I also spotted an Accent Inn which I recognized immediately as the former Stay-N-Save Victoria, where I stayed the last time I was in the city with the Serrano High Rattlesnake Regiment. Sadly, the attached restaurant no longer advertises their famous sirlion steak.)

Upon our arrival in downtown Victoria, we quickly found ourselves confronted with Dani's lack of bus fare, so we had to find a place to make change- and this on a budget. The local 7-11 was unable to make change without making a sale, so he managed to extract a loonie from me for unnecessary breath mints. We grabbed one of the many frequent buses along Douglas St. and headed to our hotel.

At our hotel, we found ourselves confronted with the same trouble that befell us in Vancouver- the hotel wanted a $200 deposit, and we were in no position to provide the same. This time we were unable to bargain our way out of the requirement, and had to cajole my mother into providing a credit card to hold the room. This would be the first time I would reach out to my family for assistance, but not the last. After a tense hour or so, we managed to get situated in the room, proceeding to take care of things like blogging and laundry and planning our next day's sight-seeing.

I woke up early the next morning to go take in the sights, while Dani slept in. (This turns out to be a theme of the vacation.) The first thing about Victoria that was immediately apparent to me was the fact that the town is a tourist trap. Not a bad place to go if you've got money and are looking for a quick getaway, but most of the attractions of the area were a bit too rich for our tiny trip budget. Victoria's two main industries are tourism and government- it is the provincial capital of British Columbia- and it seems like what you would get if you crossed Avalon, CA (on Catalina Island) with Sacramento. Readers familiar with both places should catch my meaning.

Anyway, I wandered the harbourfront for a time, taking pictures of the various operations going on there. Victoria is the second-busiest floatplane port in the region, behind Vancouver, and its small and beautiful harbour makes for excellent photography. I also watched the departure of the M.V. Coho on her way to Port Angeles, WA- it is amazing to see a boat of that size maneouvre its way out of such a small harbour. It basically had to perform a giant three-point turn. After that departure, the Victoria Harbour Ferries performed their "world famous" water ballet. I'm not sure how world-famous it is, seeing as I'd never heard of it, but I did watch for a while and take pictures.

I found myself in the early afternoon wife-less and without much motivation to go sight-seeing without her, so I was lucky that we were in town during the Victoria International Jazz Festival. Free concerts were being held in Centennial Square, so I took my lunch next to a fountain while listening to live jazz. There are worse things in the world...

After lunch, I met up with Dani and we proceeded to check out the (actually) world-famous Empress Hotel. This massive structure was built by the Canadian Pacific Railway in order to entice eastern leisure travelers to the company's rails and steamships. Along with Wimbledon, it is one of the last snooty British things- you can still take high tea in the dining room, or visit the attached conservatory (complete with a live pianist). It is also a magnificent building which dominates the harbourscape of Victoria, topped in copper roofs that have turned green with age, complementing the Parliament Building across the water. So, of course, we had to have a look around.

There are a few interesting things open to the public at the Empress, including the aforementioned conservatory (which is now attached to the Victoria Convention Centre). Another nice spot is the Empress Archives, which showcase the history of the building and have quite a few knick-knacks from the hotel's past- old brochures, menus, invitations, silverware and toiletries and the like. There was also an amusing hallway of self-deprecating editorial cartoons. (Also on this hallway were a pair of ridiculously comfortable chairs. Neither of us wanted to get up from them...)

Of course, since we won't be able to afford to stay somewhere like the Empress for a very, very long time, we decided to take a quick peek at how the other half lives. We didn't manage to get terribly far. There was an unguarded elevator near the Archives which led us straight up to the top floor, where I was hoping to get a view of the harbour. Sadly, it seems that all the windows on the floor have been reserved for paying customers, so we headed back out.

We wandered in the general direction of the Parliament Building, but stopped to listen to a busker on the waterfront. It seems that the Victoria Interntional Busker Festival was running concurrently with the Jazz Festival- they were quite organized, down to arranging locations and selling programs and t-shirts at the local mall. This particular guy was quite good, singing mostly covers of classic rock songs with a boy who, I assume, must be his son. We dropped a few cents into his guitar case after a half-hour's listen. (Would've given more if we could've.) The new-found knowledge about the busker festival made my happening upon a superhero playing a keyboard earlier a touch more sensible.

When we arrived at the Parliament Building, they were just starting up an organized tour- the only way you can get in the building on weekends. I'd played on the steps of this structure before, in 1999, but if I'd been inside the memory escapes me. I'll let the photos speak for themselves.

As most of downtown was rolling up the sidewalks (and we were limited, by budget and transit agency whim, to traveling in the direction of our hotel), we proceeded to try and visit one of Victoria's other landmarks, the Craigdarroch Castle. It was built by the coal magnate John Dunsmuir as a testament of his wealth and prestige, although he died before its completion. It now belongs to the City of Victoria, which gave us hope that admission might be free. It wasn't, so we didn't go in, but we did take some great pictures of the outside.

After the castle, with our bus transfers running out of time, we headed back to the hotel and went to sleep. The next day would bring us to the Victoria Clipper and our first deviation from the original itinerary- an unplanned night in Seattle.

Unexpected Rescue!

Thanks to the overwhelming generosity of my grandparents, Dani and I caught an afternoon Southwest flight out of Oakland to Chicago Midway. We're sitting in our pre-paid hotel in Chicago, and Epic Train Trip is back on schedule. I'm, quite simply, stunned.

More AmFail

Just when you thought it couldn't get worse, it does! The California Zephyr, which was supposed to be taking us to Chicago a few days late, had now been canceled due to flooding. We've been sent back to Riverside, where we have to wait until 5 July to catch a train back east. At this point, we will not be visiting Chicago, Toronto, or Montreal, and we'll be a day late in to New York. FML

Vancouver

Right now, Dani and I are aboard the Coast Starlight en route to Sacramento, where we'll catch the California Zephyr to Chicago and the Lakeshore Limited to Buffalo, NY (for Niagara Falls).* Due to the AmFail I posted about earlier, we're going straight through with no stopovers in order to keep on schedule. That means we'll have 4 consecutive nights on the train, which should provide ample time for catching up on the blog. (Sorry for not updating, but we have been very busy!) With that, let's take a look at Vancouver!

We got in to Vancouver at nearly 23:00 after leaving Portland, so we didn't have any time for sightseeing that night. We just wanted to get into our hotel room- but our hotelier had other ideas. See, it seems that it's common practice in Vancouver to require a $200 damage deposit in order to rent a room. Since we're rather broke at the moment, this was a problem. (We've pre-paid for all of our accommodations on the trip, and I've never seen a damage deposit more than $30-$50.) We managed to talk him down to C$50, and then had to put down US$55 because of the hotel's exorbitant exchange rate of C$1=US$0.90. (The current official exchange rate is C$1=US$1.01, so we lost ~US$5 on the deal.) After this bit of negotiation, we settled in to our room at the Howard Johnson Plaza. It was obviously smaller, older and less comfortable than the Clarion in Portland- and it cost twice as much- but it was closer to downtown. We tried to get the Internet to work, to no avail, and then went to sleep. (We did actually figure out the Internet the next day- we needed a ticket from the front desk to log in.)

The next morning, we enjoyed the free hotel breakfast again (and their pub's misspelling of the word "burrito"- they left out an R) and set out to explore Vancouver. First on Dani's agenda? The mall. (You can ask her why...) Specifically, the Metropolis at Metrotown, the second-largest mall in Canada and right on the automated SkyTrain rapid transit line. We actually took the bus there, and the sheer volume of transit offerings at the establishment were pretty impressive.



Canadian buses are, of course, stereotypically polite, apologising for not taking on passengers:


Dani took this photo because she believed it would make her sister jealous:


The mall was not really my cup of tea, besides the bus loop and train station. Dani, however, was quite excited by the difference between Canadian and American fashions. I also learned something- well-known clothing company American Apparel is a Canadian concern, which grew out of a small clothing shop in Montreal. They advertise this prominently on their Canadian stores, and seem to downplay it in the states.

After the mall, we headed to Granville Island, a touristy bit of the city with a large indoor farmer's market. (Granville Island sits in False Creek, and interestingly it is not an island, nor does it sit in a creek. The "Island" is actually a peninsula, and the "Creek" is a small inlet off of the ocean.) To get there, we caught the aforementioned SkyTrain, the longest driver-less train system in the world. The low labour costs of this model allow TransLink, the local transit agency, to offer SkyTrains every 6-8 minutes, from 04:00 to 01:00 daily. The train is connected to an extensive network of local buses, and their operation in concert is a wonder to behold.



The Island itself is a bit of a tourist trap, but certainly a scenic one. We had some great views of the cityscape from the surrounding parking lots, and enjoyed wandering around through the various shops. (The Public Market was fantastically huge and delicious-smelling-- torture when you can't afford to eat much more than PB&J sandwiches for the week.) We also watched some of the tiny water taxis that ply their trade on and around False Creek.



There were also seabirds and skyscrapers, both hallmarks of the region.




We sat for a bit and watched a window-washer dangle from one of the many condo buildings that sit on the north side of False Creek.



After False Creek, we decided to head to another prime location for people-watching (especially local-watching): the University of British Columbia. The Point Grey campus is at the far western edge of Vancouver, and is not actually within the city limits. Sitting at the edge of a peninsula jutting out into the Georgia Strait, it is a stunning place to visit. They also have a well-respected Museum of Anthropology and several botanical gardens on site, but those cost money and time, so we didn't visit them. (There's also a well-known nude beach, Wreck Beach, on the site, but we didn't visit that either.) Here's some photos taken from the north end of the campus, in and around the rose garden and Museum of Anthropology.




During my search for a graduate school, I applied to UBC. As evidenced by the fact that I'm still living in Riverside, I didn't get in. If I had, though, my department would have been here, in Buchanan Building, Block C:



We also saw other things around the UBC campus: a nice plaza in the centre of campus, totem poles, and the UBC Amateur Radio Club, VE7UBC. Yes, I tried to go see if I could chat with them, but nobody was operating that day.




We headed back towards the city and Commercial Drive, a counter-culture-ish neighbourhood just outside of downtown. (Any place with a People's Book Co-op can't be bad, right?) We wandered in and out of the various bookstores and shops, and we suffered what Dani called a "moment of weakness" walking past a pizza shop. $5 for a small pizza with up to three toppings. They put yellow cheese on the top in addition to the usual mozzarella, but it was still delicious. (Of course, most things are delicious after a week of peanut butter & jelly sandwiches.) We also ran across a shop that had a shop dog. We watched the dog run in and out of the store and the neighbouring coffee shop, until at one point it seemed to enter the store and emerge from the coffee shop. Our first theory was that there was some sort of link between the two shops, but when the second dog emerged to frolic with the first (they looked nearly identical), we were proven wrong.

On the Drive, we also ran in to striking Canada Post workers. (Note that, if you asked for a postcard from Vancouver or Victoria, you'll be getting it sent via Seattle.) Protesting severe cuts in mail delivery, wages and mass layoffs, the workers shut down the entire nation's postal system for nearly two weeks. Delivery service should have resumed today, though workers were forced back to work by legislation, and the union is fighting the new law. (As a union member myself, I support the CUPW strikers, and wonder when the working class in this country will have the cajones to pull something like this.)

As we reached the top end of the Drive, we decided to head to a park on the North Shore called Lynn Canyon Park. It came highly recommended by a local. The bus we ended up taking, however, lumbered down Vancouver's notorious East Hastings St., basically the only skeevy part of town worth mentioning. Needless to say, we stayed on the bus, but some of the area residents joined us. One gentleman butted in to a conversation that Dani and I were having to inquire if I believed in Jesus (after a minute or so of incoherent ramblings, followed by "So what do you think?"). I told him I wasn't sure- and that's true, I'm not entirely sold one way or the other on the historical existence of Jesus of Nazareth- and he informed me that I'd better get sure on the subject. Fortunately, he then decided to sing America's "A Horse With No Name"- badly, and despite having forgotten the lyrics- rather than pester me with religion.

We alighted at Vancouver's fantastic Waterfront station, a hub for just about any transportation option you can imagine (besides long-distance rail & bus: those are handled by Pacific Central Station some distance away). They've got three SkyTrain lines, more buses than I can count, the West Coast Express commuter train, and the SeaBus ferry service. It was the last that Dani and I sought. The SeaBus is a frequent, passenger-only ferry service operated by unique double-ended catamaran vessels. It's basically an extension of the SkyTrain across the Burrard Inlet to North Vancouver, and the terminal on the north side is the main bus exchange for the North Shore. We grabbed a #229 bus up to the park and set out on our adventure. (If you ever go, you can take the 228 or 229- the 228 gets you closer but is less frequent.)


The suspension bridge is a trip. As you can see, it's just what you'd expect- an Indiana Jones-style wooden suspension bridge across a deep chasm. There are actually two such bridges in North Vancouver, the other being the Capilano Suspension Bridge. The one in Lynn Canyon, however, is free, and the person who recommended the place said it's almost as good as the other. Capilano charges a whopping C$32.95 for adult passage.

Lynn Canyon Park itself, though, isn't just a suspension bridge. It's a phenomenally lush and beautiful park, with Lynn Creek running through it. Hiking trails mostly follow the creek, but a few branch out into other parts of the park, or even other parks (as in the case of the Baden-Powell Trail). It's a pretty interesting experience- roughly half an hour's journey, by public transit, from the bustling centre of Vancouver, and you're in a quiet, peaceful forest that feels as if it were nowhere near human habitation.



Dani has officially decided that Lynn Canyon Park is her happy place.



We were pretty tired after Lynn Canyon, so we headed back to the hotel, packed up and slept.

The next morning, when pondering what to do until our 3pm departure to Victoria, we realized that we had not visited Vancouver's massive Stanley Park. This huge park sits on a peninsula just north of downtown, and is the largest park in Vancouver's park system. (It is named after the same man, Rt. Hon. Frederick Stanley, Earl of Derby, who gave his name to hockey's Stanley Cup. He was Canada's sixth Governor-General.) The park includes a zoo, a miniature railway, and a seawall ringing the peninsula, which is popular with cyclists and roller skaters. Hoping to save money, we decided to take advantage of Translink's 2-hour transfer policy- a one-way fare gives one two hours of access to the transit system. We picked up a bus at our hotel, paid the $2.50 (although I'd find out later that Dani mistakenly paid $4.50), and made a beeline for the park. Once there, we looked around as long as we could (sadly, not long) until our transfer was about to expire. We had maybe 20 minutes, but we did get some pretty great photos:






With our obligatory (albeit cursory) visit to Stanley Park complete, we used the last few minutes of our bus transfer to take us back to Pacific Central Station, where we awaited our bus to Victoria. We also resolved to find a way to move to Vancouver as soon as possible.

*(Editorial update: The blog-updating time I referred to at the beginning of this post, onboard the Coast Starlight, was mostly taken up by dealing with the latest meltdown of Amtrak's western long-distance trains. Thanks to my grandparents, and no thanks to Amtrak's "customer relations" department, I'm finishing this post in a hotel outside of Chicago. We are back on schedule, and don't anticipate any more delays, but blogging time has suffered. I'm doing my best, and will keep you all updated. -JN 22:01 CDT, 30 June 2011)

Quick bites

We toured the Parliament Building in Victoria, BC today. It's gorgeous, but I feel sorry for the tour guide who has to explain the subtleties of the Westminster parliamentary system to ignorant Americans several times daily.

Quick Bites

On the way out of Vancouver, Dani forgot how much a toonie is worth. I gave her $4.50CDN to pay for bus fare both in Vancouver and Victoria- two toonies and two quarters. ($2.50 per bus, planning to get more quarters on the ferry.) She proceeded to drop all $4.50 into the farebox in Vancouver. We found out when waiting for the bus in Victoria.