If you were my friend in elementary school, and you came over to my house, your would find, in the middle of our living room, the most elaborate model train track. I can still remember now, connecting the wooden tracks together, piece by piece, and running the miniature trains along the continuous circuit, through all of its turns, forks, bridges, and loops. But most of all, I remember how my three younger brothers and I laughed when the trains fell off course and landed on their side.

I’m riding the Amtrak for the first time.

I was born in the US, in Crystal City, actually. But I moved pretty soon afterward with my grandparents to my father’s hometown in China. I had my first experience on an airplane at less than one year old. In fact, my first word was “fei”, the Chinese word for “fly”. I would always clap my hands and exclaim, “fei! fei!” anytime an airplane passed by.

Despite the fact I first verbalized the action of airplanes, I really prefer trains. After my trans-pacific flight with my grandparents, we took an overnight train ride from Beijing to Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province, followed by a five hour bus before finally arriving in Jianli, the small town from which my dad was the first ever to travel to the US. It must have been then that I fell in love with trains. I returned to Jianli every few years or so, and my favorite part of the 48 hour journey is when I was rocked and lulled to sleep by the motion of the train.

I gradually forgot my romance with trains. The toy trains were packed away and I stopped visiting Jianli since the death of my great-grandma. But I must’ve subconsciously remembered, because in college when I couldn’t sleep or was stressed out by pending exams, I could listen to train sounds from a white noise iPhone app and feel instantly relaxed. Recently I bugged my youngest brother to visit Chinatown with me. He was reluctant, but while we were on the metro he suddenly remembered how my mom would take him to ride the metro back and forth, back and forth, just because he liked to sit on the train.

Now I remember. Although I have ridden the train in China and the bullet train of Japan, I have never taken the Amtrak. I usually take the Megabus because it’s much cheaper, but this time I came on business so someone else paid for my ticket. Unfortunately for my wallet, I don’t think I will be able to revert back to Megabus. The leg space, the comfort, the view, the rhythm. Yes, I will be a train-person for life.

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Update: I am now in the cafe car and the food options suck. $5 for a frozen pizza? Man. This is not at all like the trains in the movies that serve gourmet food. Oh well, at least they serve food, that’s already a 1 up on Megabus.

View from the train on the way to DC. I guess its the Delaware River?