Canada 2010: Travel: British Columbia

It has finally come to pass that people are starting to converse, starting in Jasper.

Word makes its way around the train quickly that I am an American volunteering at the Olympics.

As the train reboards (note the elk), I’m approached by one of the two people who were speaking Spanish earlier in the afternoon in the observation car. He asks me about my visa situation and trying to work at the Olympics as well – we make plans to talk after the train has boarded.

Traveling with Nathalie, his Colombian girlfriend, the two have come from New York City via Toronto. He just graduated from NYU – he had been giving tours on bike of the city to tourists. She works in human rights advocacy – studying the impacts the drug trade has on women refugees in neighboring countries to her own Colombia.

It is also my first experience with Australians who aren’t just “Australians,” – it was time to start working on my geography, after all. One is from Perth, two are from Brisbane.

J.R and Ray, I finally record their names – the conductors aboard the #1, The Canadian.

The first freight train in a while, there seems to be a relationship between the amount of freight trains and the conversation level people in the economy class have. Talking with other people is nice – a young batch got on in Jasper, most are Australians traveling from Australia to Vancouver to Banff, then to Jasper, then back to Vancouver, then to South America; the Aussies travel in funny ways.

I come up with a tentative title for my novel (The Lab: Inside America’s Knowledge Production Factories) on the train as I finished coding it today and I am extremely pleased…We’re headed towards Kamloops, BC.

When we arrive for a short break, lights shimmer on the hillside, it is beautiful, I’m reminded of Duluth for the first time. Moving on, it turned dark and mysterious as we’re heading into the BC interior – no idea where we’re at, truly.

I think finally, now, I don’t know really, the whole thing of the train is finally realizing itself for me.

To meet these people; I become such fast friends with them.

Louis and Nathalie, I share some salami and whatever meager things I have in my carry-on with them; they pour me a gourd of herba mate at nine pm, telling me not to expect to sleep anytime soon, I experience mild euphoria, finding a brief window of heightened focus of the texture of my hand but then it is gone.

We’re sitting in the lounge, below the observation car. It is a party; we’re all train friends now. Sharing music, food, experience, plans, stories, philosophy until bedtime.