2000-09-06 - 12:48pm

On the internal soundtrack: "Dance With Me, Henry", by Rosemary Clooney, I believe.

I'm sneezing a lot this morning. Allergies. Ugh.

Uh-oh. I feel a rant coming on.

On his way home this weekend, my brother took an Amtrak train to New York. The engine of said train died en route, so that BD and his fellow passengers had to change trains in the middle of nowhere.

This, on top of 5-hour delays due to flooding a few weeks ago.

On top of my 6-hour trip to Philadelphia last January because the computer center wasn't functioning properly and the track traffic lights weren't working.

That, and it's cheaper to fly from National to NYC than it is to buy unreserved coach Amtrak seats.

If I want to take a train from Washington, DC to Trenton, NJ, why is Amtrak my only option?

True, there are a limited number of tracks, but those tracks are owned by people who would probably rent the usage of the tracks if a good enough offer were made. So why is there an Amtrak monopoly on city-to-city passenger rail? At the very least, the Washington-to-New-York market should have several profitable private companies running trains. But they don't. Why not?

From what I've been reading, up until the late 1980s, Conrail was a publicly-owned business. It operated, consistently, at a loss, just like Amtrak. Since it was sold to a private company, however, Conrail has been operating, consistently, at a profit. Why should Amtrak be any different?

Check out this article at The Cato Institute. "Toward a Competitive Future For Amtrak", down near the bottom, is particularly interesting.

A particularly interesting point the article makes: Opponents to Amtrak privatization say that the rail service is necessary to provide transportation to low-income folks. Well, Cato has news for you: the majority of Amtrak passengers make $40,000 or more a year. The poor folks are driving cars or taking Greyhound. Greyhound, of course, is a profitable privately-owned organization. So much for government helping out the poor folks.

This is one of the biggest problems I have with government. It seems that people want the government to "help" people. Helping people is an nice thing to do. I have no problem with people wanting to help. Where I disagree is in the matter of who should be doing the helping. It isn't the government. I have yet to hear of ANYTHING the government can do more efficiently than a private business, including churches and volunteer organizations. In the case of transportation, Greyhound is doing far more to help low-income people get from place to place than a government-owned Amtrak ever will.

So, Amtrak woes aside, we had a very nice Labor Day weekend. On Friday we ate dinner at Tempo, which was really good, except the restuarant smelled moldy. Well, it's been a wet summer. The food was great. Too many choices. They grow their herbs just outside the restaurant and everything tasted very fresh. I had veal and rabbit ravioli in an amazing sage and rosemary sauce. Mmmmmmm.

We arrived just as they were opening the place, at 5:30. We wanted to avoid crowds, plus we usually eat early. We were hungry. Then the other people started arriving. They all had gray hair. There wasn't another person in the place under the age of 50. Not only that, but Poindexter and I look younger than our 30 and 28 years. So Poindexter and I were giggling like mad all through dinner about what old farts we are.

Yes, we're old farts. We've accepted it, and moved on. You can poke fun at us all you want, but we have just as much fun as anyone else, just earlier in the day and at less expense. Being easily amused is a valuable trait to have.

I think I committed a faux pas. When they brought the dessert tray out, they fussed over telling me what all the desserts were, and I decided I wanted a creme caramel. I just picked it up myself. Poindexter laughed at me and told me I was supposed to let the waiter do it. Well, nobody told me that. So there.

The restaurant is all floor-to-ceiling windows in the front. A group of young boys wandered by, saw a potential audience, and began dancing around and making funny faces. Poindexter lost it, laughing quite loudly, as did one of the waiters. But NOT ONE of the other clientele cracked a smile. What the hell was wrong with those people? In fact, some even looked disapproving. Some people have no sense of fun at all.

Other than that, we didn't do anything. So it was a lovely, lovely vacation.

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