music i like (a non-exhaustive list)
bob dylan - wilco - radiohead - weezer - joyce manor - blood cultures
sweet trip - broadcast - crumb - spirit of the beehive - car seat headrest
grateful dead - vampire weekend - magnetic fields - death cab for cutie
mountain goats - spoon - the strokes - band of horses - phoenix - the shins

Amtrak Wrapped 2024
Published 22 December 2024

This year, I spent 5,987 minutes on trains this year - or 4 days, 3 hours, and 47 minutes of consecutive riding.I traversed a total of 6,114 miles of Amtrak rails. That's approximately the distance (in a straight line) from Washington, D.C. to the border of Chad and Sudan.I rode on an Amtrak train on 30 out of 366 days (it's a leap year, remember?), and had 31 "travel days." The reason for this discrepancy - which I'll get into below - is due to a severely delayed train to Philadelphia on 9/15/24, which I opted not to take after waiting 2h 30m on a departure delay.I traveled most often on Sundays, followed by Fridays. (Makes sense, I do a lot of weekend trips.) I traveled most between 6-7pm (9 trains I took departed within that hour), followed by 8-9pm (5 trains departed within that hour, which is ironic because I hate the 11pm arrival time they entail). Distribution charts below:

I rode Coach class 16 times, Business class 13 times, and First class 1 time. I actually ended up riding in First completely free, after I used a Select status upgrade coupon on a Business class ticket reimbursed by my job. It fucking ruled.As for specific trains I took: I rode 4 times on Acela 2259, 3 times on Acela 2104, and 3 times on Northeast Regional 137.I've pissed away a total of 9h 46m this year either waiting for delayed trains to arrive or getting delayed on departed trains. Thankfully, Amtrak has given me a total of 45m of my time back, from trains arriving early to their destination. I experienced significant delays (≥25m) on 4/19, 7/5, 7/19, 7/21, 9/15, and 12/9. Notably, I experienced delays every single day I traveled during the month of July - underscoring the severity of Amtrak's heat delays in the summer. This is because when rails reach a temperature of 140F or higher, the maximum speed of trains is reduced to 80mph. Why must trains go slow on hot rails? When the rails get hot, the steel can get deformed and develop "sun kinks" - you go over one of these too fast and you just derailed the train and killed everyone on it. Amtrak's Northeast Corridor infrastructure - built anywhere between the 1830s and 1917 - was simply not built to withstand the extreme heat of today's summers, exacerbated by climate change. Read more about it here.The longest time I spent waiting on a train’s departure was approximately 2h 30m on 9/15. Northeast Regional 108 was scheduled to depart from WAS at 7:21 PM and arrive in PHL at 9:21 PM. It was delayed 2h 59m leaving WAS. I tapped out and went home before this, and ate shit on the ticket cost. Initial delays caused by mechanical issues were exacerbated by trespasser activity between Baltimore and Aberdeen, effectively halting travel for 7 trains on the N.E. Corridor around 8pm. Tragically, two men on an ATV were killed by oncoming southbound Northeast Regional 149. From what I understand, Train 108 was held up at BAL for ~1hr before passengers were transferred onto one of the N.E. Regional 60-series trains (not sure if it was 67 or 68 - I need to do more research on this.) They arrived in PHL at 1:45 AM, 4hr 24m after they were originally scheduled to arrive. Needless to say I was glad to be in my warm bed with Spencer while the worst of this was going on - and I’m sure the person who was supposed to pick me up was glad she didn’t need to stay awake until 2AM to get me.This was the worst but not the only significant delay I experienced this year. On 4/19, I learned the hard way never to rely on a train hauling ass up from North Carolina, when Carolinian 80’s arrival to WAS was delayed 1h 50m. The latest I arrived at a station was 12:48 AM, after Acela 2259’s arrival at WAS was delayed 1h 25m (originally scheduled for 11:23 PM). This is the gamble of the 2259 and other 8pm trains. The temptation to snag a ticket cheaper than peak hours, that doesn’t kill your entire afternoon and evening, is strong. But as soon as your shit gets delayed you’re not walking in the door until after midnight.The longest trip I took was 4h 52m on 7/5 — on an Acela no less! What could’ve been a sub-3hr trip on Acela 2174 was instead a nearly 5 hour odyssey to make it back home to see Bob Dylan with my dad. After an on-time departure at 6:30 PM from WAS, Train 2174 stopped abruptly less than 30 minutes into the trip, just outside of New Carrolton. We stayed stuck on the tracks for about an hour and a half, with minimal communication as to what was going on, but it ended up being something wrong with the breaks IIRC. We chugged backward to WAS and boarded a new train… then moved AGAIN to a different train when the first transfer was also found to have mechanical issues. I gained a new record for the most separate Amtrak trains I’d been on in one day, but it really sucked ass. I ended up bonding with the woman next to me about how much of a drag the situation was - she was trying to make it up to NY for her friend’s surprise engagement.If you’ve read up to this point, it should be abundantly obvious the enormous role that Amtrak plays in my life - both as part of my lifestyle and as a deep passion of mine. I don’t have my driver’s license and I scarcely know how to drive a car at all. Amtrak is my #1 means of long-distance travel. (I fucking hate flying). It wasn’t cheap, either - this year, I spent a total of $2,989.34 on Amtrak tickets.Why am I like this? Why, at age 22, do I vehemently refuse to get behind the wheel of a car and pound pavement? Why do I spend thousands of hours and dollars on trains?When I was a child, I loved taking the train, much in the way children do, as a novelty. When I was an adolescent, I loved the promise of the train. I attempted to channel my suburban angst into something productive by learning about urbanism around 12-13. Unencumbered by car traffic; producing less carbon emissions per rider; freeing up road space for walkable neighborhoods; connecting urban centers; in my view, our ideal world is oriented around the train, not the car. For about as much time, I was (still am) plagued occasionally by vivid dreams of car crashes. Sometimes I’m behind the wheel, sometimes not. I die in a lot of them. But they are so real that I know, absolutely know, what it feels like to be in one. And I’m going to avoid these dreams coming true as much as I can.It gives me joy and I feel quite lucky that I can live the way I do now as an adult. I wouldn’t want it any other way, and I think my kid self would agree. Above all else what has compelled this year of back-and-forth travel is my love for my family and for New York. This year, I traveled exclusively between WAS and NYP (save for the aborted Philadelphia trip). Yes, I fucking LOVE TRAINS, but ultimately what is most dear to me is where they take me.