Where's Craig?

I have a map of the United States… Actual size. It says, Scale: 1 mile = 1 mile. I spent last summer folding it. I hardly ever unroll it. People ask me where I live, and I say, E6.

—Steven Wright

I'm in Houston, TX, at my parents' house. I got here via train, which I got on at Maricopa, AZ and rode for twenty-nine hours till Houston. There, at the Amtrak station in downtown Houston, I unpacked my bike, loaded my panniers, and rode westward for fifty miles to where my parents live, which these days is no longer in the boonies due to the ever expanding sprawl of the Houston Metro Area.

Here I am at my apartment ready to leave for south Chandler. This is the first trip I've taken that uses all four panniers simultaneously, even though I've owned the bags for three years. Even with two weeks of stuff, I had a lot of spare capacity.

This is the second bike-and-train trip I've taken from Arizona to Texas, the first one having taken place four years ago during Christmastime after I learned about the thrift and ease with which bicycle transportation integrates with train travel. That trip began with me leaving my studio apartment on a cool December afternoon, shortly before sunset. I rode my heavily loaded LeMond bicycle south out of Phoenix, and by the time I arrived at the train station in the city of Maricopa, nearly forty miles away, the cool afternoon had become a cold night. Nevertheless, even after all that biking I was still two hours early. The train was scheduled to arrive at about midnight, and the station didn't open until two hours prior. At first I waited out in front of the station in the frigid desert air, occasionally donning more shirts—cotton over polypro over wool over polypro—until I ran out of extra shirts and traded freezing outside for loitering inside the convenience store across the highway.

Amtrak has since changed their schedule. Nowadays the eastbound train leaves Maricopa at 6:40 in the morning. The new time eliminates the problem of waiting around in the cold like last time, but it presents the new problem of getting to the station early enough. I knew I would need an hour to check-in and fit my bike into its box. Also, I live an extra half-hour farther away from Maricopa and thus need more time to get there. I briefly considered the scenario of leaving my apartment at 1:00 in the morning for the longest and latest night-ride of my life. Next I considered leaving the day before and spending the night cocooned in a sleeping bag along the side of the highway somewhere between Phoenix and Maricopa. But I settled on the best possible option: staying at a friend's house in south Chandler and waking up in cozy comfort at 3:30. I even got fed quinoa and beef and Jack Daniels the night before, which is much better than being food for coyotes or other Sonoran carnivores.

The train ride was uneventful. I remember four years ago being sociable, talking to the other passengers and, well, having a lot of fun. This time I kept to myself: I read, I worked on Project Euler problems on my laptop, I sat in the lounge car and watched the scenery pass by, and I slept. When the train came to a stop in Houston, I was happy to get off and eager to begin my third and final bike ride of my trip to my parents' house.