Sven's NYC-Cross Country Adventure

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

So yesterday my friend called me up and said she wants to move out of New York City before it gets cold.

She also wants to drive back from NY. Apparently she has some sort of in for those services that drive cars places for people that move. You apparently just call them in the morning and they tell what cars they have headed out and where they are going. You choose one and go. You gotta pay for gas, but otherwise it’s free. She’s a smart girl, and she’s checked it out and says it’s totally legit and works out pretty well.

So now I’ve got train tickets (ended up being cheaper than flying on such short notice- plus, trains are cool!) on Monday. I’ll get into New York on Wednesday night (whee!). She gets kicked out of her house on the Sunday, but I know some people whos houses I can most likely crash at if I need/want to stay there longer.

Then it’s the long drive back home. We won’t really have any way of knowing where we’re going or how long we’ll be in any one place. We’re also both nearly flat broke and only have a few hundred dollars at the most to spend. The plan is lots of camping, some youth hostels, and a whole lotta peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. But, we’ll see America in the meantime, and it’s a (smallish) step up from hitchhiking.

It seems like a very ill concieved plan with lots of chances for stuff to go wrong, us all to go broke, and most likely stranded. But the tickets are paid for so I gotta do it! I’m so excited!

Sadly I think cybercafes are out of my budget, so I’ll probably have to wait until I get back to tell you all about it. I’ve traveled a fair amount so I’m fairly familiar with the wanderer’s life, but I’ve never done anything this poorly funded and spontanious.

Any advice- especially money saving advice? Any good guidebooks? What do you think the weather is going to be like…umm…everywhere in America for the next month or so? Any advice to camping rookies? Any ideas for portable, non-cooking, very cheap, vegetarian food that isn’t peanut butter and jelly sandwiches?

And finally, any chance of seeing any of my favorite Dopers in New York?

2

Dude - your g/f calls you yesterday (the hottest day of the year in NYC) to tell you she wants to move outta town before it gets too cold?!?

They’re called diveaway cars.

[quote]
Then it’s the long drive back home. We won’t really have any way of knowing where we’re going or how long we’ll be in any one place.

[quote]

Oh, yes you will. Most driveaways (if not all) give you an alloted time within which to return the vehicle. It pretty much allows for driving from point A to point B with time for rest stops. Certainly no time for camping/seeing the country, etc.

Yes. Spend as little time in NYC as possible.

Good luck.

3

Once again with better coding. heh.

Dude - your g/f calls you yesterday (the hottest day of the year in NYC) to tell you she wants to move outta town before it gets too cold?!?

**

They’re called diveaway cars.
**

Oh, yes you will. Most driveaways (if not all) give you an alloted time within which to return the vehicle. It pretty much allows for driving from point A to point B with time for rest stops. Certainly no time for camping/seeing the country, etc.

**

Yes. Spend as little time in NYC as possible.
Good luck!

4

Oh man, that sounds like sooo much fun. I wish I were going with you!

About US guidebooks – I looked at both Let’s Go and Lonely Planet for my recent trip to Alaska, and decided to go with Let’s Go because it was updated more recently and the hosteling situation in the US changes fast. (Check www.hostels.com for even more recent information.) I think LP might be a better choice in terms of specific destination information if a new edition has just come out, though. Rough Guides are a nuisance because they don’t give exact prices for things, only ranges, but if you can get one for free at the library it might be a useful supplement.

While it’s not exactly non-cooking, I’ve found curry-in-a-pouch to be a really useful traveling food – lightweight, tasty, and all you need is boiling water or a microwave.

5

Hm. Food wise, if you feel like investing some money straight off the bat and not worrying about running out of rations for a while, you can buy a whole case of ramen while you’re in NY and take it along with you. Of course I mean the kind of ramen where you just add hot water, not the kind you actually have to cook.

New York is often expensive, but if your friend has lived here for a while and money’s tight for her, I’m sure she knows the best money-saving places to go.

6

Yeah, the plan in New York is to eat cheap food at home, and spend most of our time just walking around looking at the city. I think I can get away with only spending money on subway tickets and maybe one or two really special things. I know I’ll be back one day with money to do all the rest of the stuff.

With the cars, we plan to take many smaller trips, and kind of hopscotch it across the nation- maybe bridging some gaps by bus or what have you.

Okay, I gotta go out and buy a guidebook and food for the train today. Tommorow I back. Oh my goodness!

7

Well, send a note and maybe we can go out for a nice vegetarian dinner, my treat.

8

You might want to take another look at those tickets, sven. I’m assuming that you’re taking the California Zephyr from Emeryville to Chicago. If you leave Monday morning you won’t get into Chicago until Wednesday afternoon, then your connecting train will get to New York on Thursday afternoon or evening (depending on which route you take). There’s no way you can take a train from CA to NY in less than three full days.

And yes, trains are cool. I’ve taken Amtrak coast-to-coast several times, and always had fun meeting people, enjoying the scenery, and just taking time to feel the breadth of the continent. I see from your later post that you’re taking your own food – good move there, since you’ll save quite a bit compared to buying food (snack car or sit-down meal) on the train.

If you can, try to position yourself on the upper deck of the lounge car as much as possible, since the windows are much larger than in the regular coaches. Especially going through the canyons in the Rockies (between Grand Junction and Denver), since you’ll want to be looking up as much as possible, and only the lounge car has windows that wrap around onto the roof (IIRC). The conductors can sometimes be a pain about the lounge car being for cafe patrons only, in which case you can buy one cheap beverage from the cafe (to give you the correct-looking paraphernalia) and sneakily refill it from your own stash.

If you’re taking the Lake Shore Limited from Chicago to NYC, try to get a right-side window seat (looking forward). That will give you the best views as you go down the Hudson River from Albany to NYC, since the train goes down the east bank.

Have a great trip – but verify your days of travel first! If you really are due into NYC on Wednesday evening, then you’ve got your departure day wrong and your train leaves about 13 hours after the time of this post, so you’d better get packing!!!

9

Yeah. I get in the 28th, thats what I meant =). I’ve been looking at several possible dates, and they must have all got mixed up when I wrote the post.

Amazingly, my tickets only cost $160.00. Granted, thats for three days of showerless coach, but I’ve psent more than my share of nights on trains, so I’m not too worried.

10

$160 is pretty good for last-minute one-way, I think. If you (or any other Doper) plan to do it again in the future, Amtrak often sells tickets on eBay. Here is a current auction: round trip NYC <-> Oakland for $149, valid any dates September 5 -> October 15 2003, with up to 3 stopovers permitted. Of course it could go higher than $149 (it’s an auction not a Buy It Now), but past auctions seemed to have often only received one bid.

If I had the time I’d do it myself in a heartbeat…

As far as personal hygiene on the train is concerned, the disabled-accessible bathroom(s) on the lower level is/are very roomy (of course) and it’s easy to take a “basin bath” and change clothes. I’ve been in much funkier scenarios than that while traveling, as I’m sure you have.

11

And if you do this you can wave out the window to my parents just a little south of Rhinebeck on the Hudson. Their new condo is right on the west bank of the river and you can see the trains going up and down the other side!

I never would have thought you could take the train across the country for less than flying. Sounds like quite the adventure.