Dispatch III

September 27, 2021

Fellow Vagabonds,

We’re on our way!

Cyn and I trundled out of our Cork Factory apartment at 6:30 am through Pittsburgh’s old Strip District, former home to fruits and vegetables and many rail cars, now home to denizen robots, self-driving cars, art galleries and a very interesting mix of newly arrived apartment dwellers. It was a cool, perfectly clear morning, 55 degrees as we walked the mile or so to Pittsburgh’s Union Station, one pack on our back, the other bouncing behind working their tiny rollers. The city’s skyline glittered against the predawn, cloudless sky, and patiently awaited Train 42, The Pennsylvanian, soon to head to New York.

The day before we had tested and jiggered all that we felt we needed and wedged it into our two small suitcases. The fits were tight. This was not a one-or-two-week vacation we were preparing for.  We were running a marathon and that meant EVERYTHING would have to fit in those bags because it was all we had to live with. It didn’t matter if we needed light or cold fall clothing in Vermont or Maine or Nova Scotia, or a wardrobe for snow squalls and bitter winds in South Dakota, Montana and Wyoming, or threads that could somehow provide for the hot breezes along Mexico’s Baja Peninsula, like the Girl and Boy Scouts, we had to be prepared! Or as prepared as possible. Everything from gloves and scarves to toiletries, notebooks, power cords and iPad/computers went in. The clothes were mostly of the backpacking variety. Eddie Bauer “Ascent” pants (highly recommended - light, tough, six pockets), Patagonia jackets (super thin, but warm), Under Armour long underwear and shirts. Suits for me, or high fashion shoes and dresses for Cyn were out of the question. It was all about warm layers to be used in the way the thin sleeves of onions make the vegetable.

We managed to get everything in. (We have the pictures to prove it.) But did we get the RIGHT things in? Couldn’t tell you, though the journey will surely let us know.

IT ALL FIT. EVEN MY LEATHER BOMBER JACKET, WHICH WAS PROBABLY A MISTAKE, BUT I HAD TO TAKE IT. WE DIDN’T REVEAL CYNDY’S WARDROBE - AHEM, YOU KNOW, LINGERIE.

By 7 am we were at the station’s escalators. Having lost the beautiful Union Station of yesteryear to The Pennsylvanian apartments, Pittsburgh has been handed an abominable train depot that would shame a 1970’s Greyhound Bus station. But it functions, and so we crowded among the hundred or so other railroaders awaiting our turn to walk the escalator and head to the seven trains that awaited.

The newly renovated AmTrak seats were a pleasant surprise, clean and bound in gray leather. This is where trains beat planes all to pieces. Broad seats, all the room even a 6 ft 2 inch Homo sapiens like me could need; big windows with an ever changing view. Soon we would have some good coffee and a light breakfast on our roomy tray tables, but for now we tossed our bags above our seats and thought, “Sonovabitch! We are finally on our way. Champagne?

At 7:30 sharp the Pennsylvanian rocked slowly out of Union Station back through the Strip, and gathered speed as we headed toward our old house in Shadyside, no more than a few blocks away from the rails we were riding. We often heard that train whistle when we were waking up in the morning. There’s something about that sound that beckons, a message that says, “Come along and see what sights and sounds and stories and surprises I can show you.” We were ready.

One hundred and twenty years ago, Shadyside was the first station created for commuters from Pittsburgh’s newest suburb. That’s why you see so many large homes of a certain age build in the neighborhood. It connected East Liberty which quickly became nearly as large as downtown Pittsburgh in its heyday. When Frank Lloyd Wright was asked how to fix downtown Pittsburgh, he reportedly said, “Move it to East Liberty.” In no time we passed the East Liberty station on Highland Ave, now long gone, and headed into Homewood on the left and Westinghouse Park on the right, where the remnants of George Westinghouse’s mansion and laboratory sit. Some of the lab still exists, even after the mansion was demolished, and so does the tunnel that led to a siding where Westinghouse kept his private train at the ready for trips to his factories or for moving and shaking the corridors of New York, Washington and Chicago. Westinghouse’s fertile brain changed the world more than once with his 300+ patented inventions, game-changers like the air brake, natural gas, commercial radio, rail signaling, AC current. And that’s the short list.

Pittsburgh was the throbbing heart of American manufacturing in those days; Silicon Valley before there WAS a Silicon Valley; a cash cow that made the likes of Andrew Carnegie, H.J. Heinz, the Mellon brothers, H.C. Frick, Captain Hunt (Alcoa) and uncounted others wealthier than the wealthiest European princes. Historian David McCullough called Pittsburgh America’s quintessential city, and it is those roots that have enabled it today to rise out of the ashes of a decimated steel industry to become a 21st century innovation hub for banking, medicine, computer technology, energy, robotics and, ironically, environmental science (because early on Pittsburgh needed to address the destruction of the region’s water and air).

From there we moved quickly past Wilkinsburg, and Braddock, one of the last places where steel mills are still operating, through McKeesport to Greensburg and into the Laurel Highlands and Latrobe, the birthplaces of Arnold Palmer and Fred Rogers. At Johnstown we took some time to remember the more than 2000 people killed in the Great Johnstown Flood of 1889 when one afternoon the people of that town watched a wall of debris and water 60 feet high moving faster than the mouth of the Mississippi River obliterate everything in its path. It was the deadliest human disaster in American history at that time. Since then only the Galveston Hurricane of 1890 and the horror of 911 have taken more lives.

Several more miles up the mountain we passed the famous horseshoe curve, considered on of the great engineering marvels of railroading. The turn bends a complete 180 degrees. It’s so tight the end of the train can see its front.

The rest of the day was leisurely, and the countryside beautiful. We passed through the countryside, and small towns, along the Conemaugh and Juniata rivers writing, napping, talking. There was only the slightest tinge of fall in some trees in the highlands, harbingers of the fall foliage that would await us later in Vermont and Maine. We crossed the broad Susquehanna and heaved into Harrisburg long enough to stretch before heading to Philadelphia, where we picked up a sandwich and an electric locomotive that pulled the train onto AmTrak’s Northeast Corridor and New York City. Heading north we shot through New Jersey, waved to Newark and rumbled under the big tunnel that led us beneath the mighty Hudson River (talking about engineering feats!) to Moynihan Penn Station, where travelers and New Yorkers of every strip clash morning to night.

In no time we walked to our hotel a block away, saluted to the Empire State Building nearby and gave one another an extra high five as we shut the door behind us and grinned like a couple of school kids.

Wishing you all the very best as we continue our explorations. You can stay in touch on Facebook (Author Chip Walter & Writer Chip Walter, and Cyndy Mosites), LinkedIn, Instagram (chiperoo) and Twitter (@chipwalter) if you care to. Send us your ideas and thoughts! Occasionally I’ll send along one of these newsletters as I scribble notes for the book I’m working on.

In the meantime, crack on!

Best,

Chip & Cyn

 This is a series about Cyndy and Chip’s Vagabond Adventure - our journey to travel all seven continents, all seven seas and 100+ countries without traveling by jet. COVID has forced us to begin in the United States, not a bad start. This dispatch is about the day we began the trip. What will the world be like following a global pandemic? What fascinating people will we meet? What cultures, places, languages and music will broaden us? Our goal is to find out.