Doin' the Cattle Call

 

by Pa Rock

Constant Victim

Just about every year I publicly vow to never get back on board a passenger airplane.   I've made two trips to far-flung destinations this year, North Carolina and Oregon, and the travel aspects of both were awful.  Passengers are treated like cattle in the airports and on the planes, though with fewer comforts than the cows would likely have, and the brand new Kansas City Airport (MCI), which I flew out of and back to both times, is a sprawling, freaking mess - on its very best days.  So no more flying damnit, and this time I mean it!

But I have one more trip that I really need to take this year, a pilgrimage to Salt Lake City where I can work at the Mormon Library for a week to finish up two family history books that are on my bucket list of things to complete before the Grim Reaper shows up.  Yesterday I started looking at travel alternatives that could get me to Salt Lake City.

The Biden campaign team talked about expanding national passenger rail service and moving toward high-speed rail back during the 2020 election campaign, but that's all it was - just talk.    After almost three full years in office, if anything at all has been done toward those goals it has been in the busy northeast corridor, the same train routes that Biden himself used for all those many, many years that he was in the Senate.  Nothing has been accomplished on the very few other passenger lines that service the rest of the nation.

I could only find one way to contact the US Department of Transportation other than by sitting down and writing a formal letter - which I will do, perhaps later today - and that was an email form on its website.  So I used the email form a few weeks ago to ask about progress on rail transportation and did not get a response.  We will discuss that @SecretaryPete when you start organizing your campaign to give Kamala Harris the short shrift and come begging for campaign donations.

Currently to get to Salt Lake City from Kansas City by train, I would have to drive to Omaha and leave my car - on the street, I guess, because Amtrak apparently has no long-term parking facility in Omaha. I would board a train there in the middle of the night, and I would arrive in Salt Lake City the middle of the next night.  Cost packages vary, but trains are generally more expensive than planes.

So I moved on to Greyhound which offers bus service, with its best option being a bus that leaves KC late at night, has one layover in Denver, and arrives in Salt Lake twenty-five hours later - for around $220 one-way.

So I thought about driving.  It's around 1,100 miles and, for me, would involve spending two nights on the road.  So the cost would include gas, motels, meals, and time - lots of time.

A flight out and back could be had for under four hundred dollars and could be accomplished in a few hours each way.  Of course, if I wanted to take luggage, sit someplace other than a middle seat, or be treated like a human being, that would be extra!

Maybe my grandchildren will have real travel options when they are my age.  An old man can only hope.

Keep them doggies movin', Rawhide!