My Turn!

This time it's my turn to take the train!

I'm headed for Albuquerque on the Southwest Chief. Same route Kitty took home a few weeks ago. I'll get off at Albuquerque, though, and meet up with my friend, Diver.

She and I took one look at each other in kindergarten, decided we were the cutest kids we'd ever seen--we looked so much alike that our teachers mixed us up--and became best friends. We were very close all the way past high school, and then our paths diverged. She became a nurse and moved to Cleveland, then Florida. I became a theater person and minor league vagabond and moved to California.

We kept in touch. She came for a visit 13 years ago and we drove up the coast to San Francisco together. This year we decided it had been long enough, so we planned to meet up in New Mexico and explore it together.

I was so excited that I hardly slept on the train. Amongst the people in my car were a kooky guy that rambled in two different voices, a couple of brothers on their way to Chicago to get their mother to move to L.A. to be near them, and a woman on her way to a Sound Healing convention in Santa Fe.

I spent quite a bit of the evening in the observation car writing, and then talking with a woman who had lived in L.A. for 30 years and now lives north of Santa Fe. She and I both worked at Skylight theater in the 80s. She as a lighting designer, I as a lightboard operator. Not the same show, but that's pretty close! We had a great time watching the desert go by, glowing under a full moon, and chatting.

I think I'm in love with the train.