Trains, Canoes, and Automobiles

Kiki and I just returned from a round trip on the Amtrak to Seattle and the Olympic Peninsula and purchased a 2021 Nissan Leaf. 

The Olympic Peninsula is stunning. The photo above is not enhanced or put through any filters. We enjoyed a weird day tour in a Mercedes mini-bus with our guide Mei and a nine other folks. It was a pretty cool bilingual tour (Mandarin & English, in that order).

Also fun and amazing was the Chihuli Garden and Glass, Monorail to the Space Needle. 

Seattle itself is just another urban toilet. I'm sure there are reasons why every large conglomeration of humans turns into a foul, inhuman canyon full of visible wealth disparities and panhandling junkies. That vexed feeling of having to shut off your humanity and walk past your fellow human beings or be taken advantage of and grifted and lied to is incredibly frustrating. We do know how to solve this, but I guess that society has decided to give billionaires more tax breaks on their private jets instead.

Speaking of jets, we did not travel by air. This was a deliberate decision to cut our carbon emissions. If we had flown to and from Seattle, we would have emitted 133 grams of carbon for every kilometer traveled. By taking the train, we emited roughly 6 grams of carbon for every kilometer traveled. 

(Per Amtrak)

A friend of mine recently observed that it amazes him that people who are as liberally minded as any, seem to take air travel for granted, flying around the world to travel, or going to a conference here or there. 

Kiki and I agree. We decided to nix as much air travel as possible last summer when we were choking on orange air from the wildfire smoke from Canada. Climate change is getting real. Probably a drop in the ocean, but at least I can die smug and earn that epitaph I've always wanted, "I told them so.

We do recommend train travel. Granted, it is slower than an airplane. But it is a destination in itself. In an airplane, your life is basically horrible for a day as you lose all of your civil rights and are transported to a world of bad nerves, tension, tiny seats, narrow passages, hordes of the rude and thoughtless, wretched overpriced food, and all with the threat of losing vast sums of money or contending with the nightmare of "customer service." 

Road trips are a different kind of horror. Constant tailgating by bullying oversized trucks & SUVs, insane drivers of every kind, fatigue, traffic and the weather (especially crossing, as we would have had to, the Rockies in February) and where to stop next to pee, or sleep.

Comparatively, the train is pure luxury. It was not inexpensive to travel in an Amtrak "roomette" (a tiny private car with two comfy seats by day, and two little bunks by night, just wide enough to allow a single carry-on sized bag.) Still, the price included two nights of lodging and three really nice meals a day (lots of vegetarian options). No worries about traffic. No worries about the bathroom (right outside the door), no worries about the hell of the "security" pantomime at the airport. Granted, you don't see the best part of every town (as in this fine video that you'll be able to see if you have an Instagram account.) If you've got a long way to go, it's pretty good.

Our next big trip will be not this June, but next June, to run the half marathon at Glacier National Park.

The last month has seen us hemorrhage large sums of money. One of the purchases was the new canoe, a Sea Eagle TC16 inflatable canoe. This time for sure! 

Last summer, as you may remember if you are a regular visitor to this blog, I'd purchased what I thought was going to be the solution to my canoe car-topping problem: a PakCanoe. The car-topping problem is that a 17' Sauris River Quetico Kevlar canoe will not tie onto the roof of a 2022 Kia Niro plug-in hybrid. The PakCanoe turned out to be a pretty horrible boat. It took about 2.5 hours of wrestling to get it together, and it still didn't want to fit exactly (the keel was loose, and the portage yoke fell off, and it is literally held together with rubber bands). After a bit of an ordeal, I got my considerable sum of money back.

This time, I saw a deal on a used Sea Eagle, and decided to give it a go. This one takes 20 minutes to set up (with a hand-pump). It seems to be a solid boat. I figured out a way to attach a portage yoke. True - at 63 pounds it is pretty heavy, but Le Grenouille (or "The Frog" named after the infamous arms dealer in the televisions series NCIS) promises to be seaworthy and packable. Problem solved.

Finally, we bought a new (used) car today: a 2021 Nissan Leaf SL Plus. We will pick it up later this week. It's silver, zero emissions (will be powered mostly by our solar panels), 215 miles of range (plenty for the city car), and it has all sorts of fancy features we weren't sure we could get. Every current safety feature. Lots of "infotainment" that we will never use. It's comfortable. And it was a bargain. Back '21, when it was new, this car sold for $43,970. It's three years old now, has 28,474 miles on it, is a "certified used" car with a warranty and a clean CarFax, sold to us for $24,466 all in. After trading in Kiki's old car and figuring in the $4,000 tax credit she will get next year, along with the Minnesota clean vehicle rebate check from Minnesota we should get soon $600, it was $8,466 out of pocket. Not too bad. Paid for in cash. Engage smug mode.