Empire building with GoFundMe

I want to take you with me on a cross country trip.

I have been enamored of rail travel ever since my first Amtrak journey to Baltimore as a child of eight years old. I was a young history buff who knew only of the heyday of passenger rail in books. That summer trip to visit family created in me a desire to take the rails wherever and whenever I could.

When I graduated from college, I finally fulfilled that childhood dream - a celebration trip to New York and I have frequented Amtrak since then.

I have been on short jaunts to nearby Winter Park in my home state of Florida. I have taken a four-day journey to Los Angeles from Jacksonville aboard the Sunset Limited.

What has tied together my various ramblings on the rails, whether it be summering in Maine or conventioneering in Kansas City, I most enjoyed using social media to share my impressions of this vast country.

It gives me a sense of joy to know that I have friends and relatives who tell me that they live vicariously through my postings on Instagram, Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter and the like. This means a lot to me as I hope to make my trips as enjoyable for others as they are for me - albeit virtually. This, I suppose, is one of the benefits of being a teacher. My summers are a chance to relax and be an artist of sorts, with my craft being an Amtrak artist (so to speak). With a Klout score that hovers around 70, I am in the top ten percent of Internet 'influencers.' I am hoping to be a positive influence :-)

Having been to three corners of the nation via train, I have wanted to visit the Northwest. My grandmother tells tales of taking the Great Northern railroad as a child. I would like to experience that this upcoming summer. And this is where I bring you with me. I originally applied for an Amtrak residency that was established for writers who wanted to hone their railroad writing. I did not receive such an opportunity, but I wanted to create an opportunity for myself.



My aim is to document every step of my trip from Jacksonville, Florida to Seattle and back via Amtrak's Empire Builder. I might even venture into Vancouver if the time is right. My goal is to raise $3,000 to cover my transportation and lodging along the way.

UPDATE: I am working on my proposed itinerary for my trip and here are my plans: With my bags, camera, tablet and smart phone packed, I depart the Jacksonville Amtrak station on the evening of June 29. I arrive in Washington, D.C. the next morning and spend the day enjoying the nation's capital until I leave in the afternoon for Chicago. I hope to return to Florida House before I leave D.C! The next morning, it's Chicago and a museum or a skyscraper (I still call it the Sears Tower - LOL) and then on the train for Seattle after lunch. The next stretch of the trip will be two days venturing into parts of the nation that I only dreamed of seeing. This is where I think that my best work will be - on the old frontier aboard the Empire Builder.

When I arrive in Seattle, my aim is to stay in a hostel and partake in a very happy Fourth of July. Thankfully, I am not tethered to finite rolls of film and will be giddy with sharing and oversharing this epic experience. I will stay in the Evergreen State until I depart Seattle on July 5 at 1:40PM. The return trip will consist of getting into Chicago on July 7th, arriving in Washington on July 8 and back to Jax on July 9. The return trip? Mostly afterglow :-)

Please donate to my GoFundMe account here. Thank you! I promise that you will be glad that you invested in my journey!

Reunion and retreat. Thanks JD Peeps!

The best thing about my junior high school years is that I am here in Bath, Maine for a week.

Twenty-five years ago, I met a snarky, sweet and pretty girl in my ninth grade art class in Orange Park, Florida.

Not only did we have an art class in common, we shared an English class. We joked about substitute teachers whom we referred to as feminine hygiene products, we passed notes when our peers were discussing 'Alas, Babylon' and we rocked out to the Hoyle Dempsey morning show on the WAPE-FM.

We shared so many laughs in our freshman year. We were not typical freshmen because we were on top of the heap. The junior high school pecking order led directly up to the ninth graders who knew not very much of the coming sophomore slump.

Then, she was gone. I sorely missed my art buddy whose sense of humor made me openly wonder if we were long-long siblings. Just as she opened my eyes and ears to the Red Hot Chili Peppers, she was gone.

This was the heavy price that I paid for being a Navy brat. I knew that whatever bonds that I formed would be torn asunder by Uncle Sam's dictates that my friends' parents would be stationed to any random duty station if to point out that my socialization and friendships took a back seat to our national security.

Tenth grade for me was a letdown without her. She must have made a mark in our town because rumors came and went around our Sunshine State suburb that she was dead. Whatever the truth was about this mysterious friend, I thought fondly of the nearly 180 days that we sat in tiny desks with the kind of dialogue that now permeates the typical teen sitcom that populates American television.

Although she was gone, she was the template for all of my future friendships. When I joined my church youth group, when I started an underground newspaper, when I eventually went away to college. The ones who drew me the closest were the ones who seemed to step right out of Spy Magazine.

Or the Village Voice

Then along came MySpace.

Seeing that I halfway feared that I would have to conjure up a seance to reunite with her, I decided to search her through social networking.

It almost did not happen because I was reluctant to join MySpace. After all, what were the odds of finding people with whom I wanted to connect? Once I got on, I began making connections with folks who were unseen in years.

On a whim, I looked her up. I found her. I sent her a message.

As far from Maine as she was, she and I crossed the span of decades to reconnect. I could hardly wait to make the trip of the East coast to see her again. Thanks to Amtrak's USA Rail Pass, I embarked on a journey to rediscover myself.

Much like I thought that she had left this mortal coil, there was a younger me that I thought had surely been exterminated by adulthood and broken dreams. I saw life as a never ending trail of disillusion and failure as I did not quite measure up to what was expected of me.

The creativity, imagination and zeal that drove the freshman me became liabilities for a middle aged teacher who found himself demanding the kind of conformity and compliance of students that would have surely earned himself the 'douche' tag from a younger me.

But I digress. The train trip that I took was a shot in the dark that I was going to find a Pine State paradise. Unlike most gambles where I leave with a lighter wallet, I found my visit to be a tonic for the soul.

It was not just the salty breeze and the New England charm, it was a long lost sister whose reunion also reunited me with myself. Not only did I drink a lot of Moxie, I found my mojo again. The spirit of a fourteen-year-old boy returned to remind me that there is plenty of fun to be had in life.

As I write this entry, I am thankful for spending time with her and her family. They are the most gracious hosts and their town is a getaway. The ties that we restored have also restored me. That is why I love summering up here. I dedicate this blog entry to M.C. and her wonderful family.

As the next school year begins for this middle school teacher, I already am dreaming of my return to this Down East Shangri-La.