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On a positive note, you could have been on Amtrak: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/11/us/amtrak-delayed-va-fl.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/11/us/amtr
by toddm 4y ago
On a positive note, you could have been on Amtrak:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/11/us/amtrak-delayed-va-fl.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/11/us/amtrak-delayed-va-fl.h...
- timcavel 4y ago[dead]
- maxbond 4y agoI will always elect to be stuck on an Amtrak than stuck on a plane or in an airport. I'll take a book to the observation car and read next to the Mennonites doing their knitting and love every minute of it, no worries from me.
- robswc 4y agoWhat is stopping you from doing that in an airport?
- maxbond 4y agoI suppose nothing, I'll just be miserable while I'm doing it because I hate airports. A personal preference.
- themitigating 4y agoWhat is your preference based on?
- reidjs 4y agoProbably he’s been to… any airport. Maybe they’re bearable if you can get into a lounge
- maxbond 4y agoMore or less. The chairs are hostile to stop you from getting too comfortable. I've had 6 hour layovers before and had to sleep in those terrible chairs under fluorescent lights. On the last flight I took there was barely any good near my gate, there were like 4 bars instead. You can't leave your luggage anywhere, so you're dragging it all over the place. You get jammed like sardines into the plane, and you can't stretch your legs. You can't really relax because you have to stay abreast of announcements, in case they change your gate or cancel your flight or what have you. Everyone is on edge. Et cetera. On the train there's more room, you can move around, and the atmosphere is more relaxed. Some people like planes. I saw an HN comment where someone said they took lots of "flights to nowhere" over COVID and used the plane as their office. I don't understand that at all. But to each their own. I will say the views are unbeatable.
- nullify88 4y ago> I will say the views are unbeatable It's hard to agree with that. There are some amazing train routes through Austria, Norway, Switzerland, Germany that keep me looking out of the window the whole way.
- maxbond 4y agoI love the views from the train too, but I feel like the view flying is something magical everyone should experience at least once in their life. The ground fading away, the tiny cars, glittering rivers, seeing it in reverse for landing. That is something I'll wax poetic about. But if I could take the train the rest of my life I would. Clearly the middle ground here is to bring back zeppelins. /s
- thombat 4y agoNo sarcasm needed for zeppelins: the idea of gliding over the landscape low enough to hear through the openable window what's happening below fast enough to be useful for a domestic voyage, and in reasonable comfort: What's not to like? I was waiting for a Ryanair flight from Friedrichshafen when one of the Zeppelin NT craft flew past, heading over the Bodensee towards Switzerland. It looked simultaneously classic and futuristic, the sort of shiny utopia future of 1950s sci-fi book covers. I envied HARD.
- ghouse 4y agoCan't take knitting needles past TSA.
- ggm 4y agoActually you can. https://www.tsa.gov/travel/security-screening/whatcanibring/items/knitting-needles https://www.tsa.gov/travel/security-screening/whatcanibring/... Final decision vests with the TSA agent at the desk. But there are needles which are short metal/plastic parts, with a long flexible back (eg for circular knitting) which are very unlikely to cause an issue: the point is smaller than a pen.
- gonzo41 4y agoThe expectation of speed at the airport, because planes move fast, creates urgency for everyone. When you're on a ship or a train there's a time component to your expectations of travel. A delay in an airport feels worse than a delay at a train station or at a port.
- Johnny555 4y agoWell, sometimes it's because you already boarded and started to taxi and there are so many planes on the ground that there are no gates open to get back to the terminal so you spend hours on the plane waiting for a slot to open so you can get off, meanwhile the galley runs out of food/drink and the toilets fill up. Then when you finally get into the terminal, it's chaos, no one knows when planes will be flying again so you're not sure if you should stay there or try to get a hotel (which fill up quickly from all of the stranded travelers)
- weakfortress 4y ago[dead]
- KennyBlanken 4y agohttps://www.google.com/search?q=passengers+trapped+on+plane https://www.google.com/search?q=passengers+trapped+on+plane
- xwdv 4y agoIf Amtraks were more luxurious, I might agree with you, but these days you might as well be riding Snowpiercer (and I don’t mean the good parts).
- maxbond 4y agoIn that the wealthier clientele have better accomodations? Outside of Southwest isn't that true of airplanes? But I'd like to see more investment in rail & a better coach experience, absolutely.
- brewdad 4y agoMy seat on the Amtrak Cascades in September was more comfortable and had about 6 inches more legroom than any airplane I’ve ever flown on. First or Business class on an international flight will be way better than a roomette on Amtrak however.
- rmason 4y agoAre you aware that an Amtrak passenger train was stuck in South Carolina for 39 hours this month? Some of the passengers felt they were being held hostage. At least at an airport you can walk outside and catch an Uber.
- katbyte 4y agoBlame the fact freight generally overrules passenger: https://youtu.be/qQTjLWIHN74 https://youtu.be/qQTjLWIHN74 Amtrak isn’t allowed to be successful Either way rather be stuck on a train then a plane anyday
- sclarisse 4y agoThere’s a reason for that. Freight has priority because the freight companies actually own the rails, and actually use them, and it’s a significant contributor to the US economy. Amtrak is an unwelcome guest that they are required by law to put up with. If they wanted better service, Amtrak could pay for it, except the big cross country routes are already crazy unprofitable. The actual sane solution is to shut down those routes and run buses. American heavy rail outside the NEC is better suited for freight anyway. Build new dedicated corridors for fast passenger services, or stay home.
- bobbylarrybobby 4y agoWell, another option is that the government could pay for Amtrak’s track the way they do for roads. We don't make car manufacturers or taxi/bus companies pay for the roads, so I don't see why it's on Amtrak to pay for their own rail.
- sclarisse 4y agoOn the highways, the government has taxed motor vehicle fuels at the federal and state level (supplying occasional infusions from the general fund) and occasionally set up tolls for specific projects, generally setting higher for more intensive use (trucks). Thus bus and truck operators pay for use of the highway, perhaps occasionally joined by taxpayers generally. By contrast, on the railroads, Burlington Northern Santa Fe or whoever purchased the rail from the decrepit husk of bankruptcy that preceded it, and upgraded it, and installed all the new safety equipment, and maintained it over time. The capital involved here is, by and large, private. So there shouldn’t be any surprise that the situations are different. I don’t know why you want to drag in manufacturers, though. It seems to muddy the water.
- alexose 4y agoI remember a time in the mid 2000s where a 20 hour delay was the norm for the northbound Coast Starlight. I used to catch the previous day's train from Salem to Seattle...
- SV_BubbleTime 4y ago[flagged]
- happyopossum 4y agoWTF are you putting on your eggs that anyone can smell from more than a foot away? Seriously- a soft boiled egg (hard boiled more likely given the travel context here) is almost completely odorless…
- brewdad 4y agoThey do have an odor to them, especially since most people tend to boil them to death but I can think of a hundred things more offensive in a confined space.
- dzhiurgis 4y agoBoss used to microwave smoked mackerel in office kitchenette. Would coincide with half the staff leaving for lunch out :D
- nosianu 4y ago> They do have an odor to them I never had an egg that smelled unless it was bad (which too hasn't actually happened to me). My sense of smell is pretty good, I smell all kinds of little things (incidentally, I think that loss of sense of smell can be an early signal for approaching death, if there is no non-deadly cause to explain it). I read the replies here: https://www.quora.com/Why-do-boiled-eggs-stink-but-scrambled-eggs-dont https://www.quora.com/Why-do-boiled-eggs-stink-but-scrambled... -- but I've never seen this in five decades of egg eating. I think I would remember a stinking egg (would make me more reluctant to make more for quite some time)? What does "overcook" mean in this context? I've done up to a little under 10 minutes for some larger eggs. I think there may be something very wrong with the food, and subsequently the bodies, of your mass-incercerated and terribly treated chickens. I did see some funny eggs (inside colors) - that UI refused to eat - in places that bought the cheap mass-produced eggs. My mother also gets eggs with unnaturally deep colors, I think that's something they must have added to the chicken's prison food. That's an issue I have with discussions - but also with studies - about this or that food, for example "meat is bad", but anything really, tomatoes or potatoes too. Each food type has a vast spread, and everybody just uses the name of the food but people are all talking past one another because they have vastly different actual food in mind.