Trip Report: March 14 - 25, 2002
by Ted & Sylvia Blishak
CULTURAL TOUR OF THE PACIFIC COAST
SAN FRANCISCO TO EMERYVILLE
Day 11, Sunday, March 24, 2002
Sunday morning we thought we would try the dining room at the Renaissance Stanford Court Hotel, just down California Street from the Mark Hopkins. However, there was no breakfast buffet, but oatmeal at $7, juice at $5, and coffee at $3. This adds up to $15 quickly, so we went back to the Mark Hopkins and enjoyed another breakfast buffet.
We are to meet today with our old friend Linda, who as a professional consultant, was instrumental in our decision over fifteen years ago to specialize in rail travel, advertise all over North America, and make the move to our ranch outside Klamath Falls, where we have been happily selling train trips for nearly ten years.
Linda has an apartment on an upper floor of a building on Russian Hill, and as we lunch there, we have a view of San Francisco Bay, from the Golden Gate Bridge to Angel Island and Alcatraz. She has planned an outing to Point Reyes State Park and has her coffee table book on Pt. Reyes out on display. As I leaf through it, I find a aerial color photo of the narrow spit of cliffs which forms the point, with the sea on both sides. There is not a soul to be seen. I say, "I want to be there!"
Two and a half hours later, by car, we are at the park headquarters, where we find out that the visitor crush has become so great that private automobiles are no longer permitted to the point on weekends, until after 5:30pm. During the day a fleet of 39-passenger Marin Airporter buses transfers sightseers from the visitors center to the point. It is after 3pm, so we have missed the last bus out. We walk up a trail along the cliffs just west of the visitors center and decide that this is just a beautiful as being on the point itself. Lush green grass, the brilliant landmark of a California spring, with wild flowers in profusion cover the hill which overlooks the sea from cliffs over one hundred 
feet high. This location permits a view of the Farallon Islands and nearly to the Golden Gate. Signs warn visitors to stay away from the edge, and we do observe signs of land slipping as entire edges of the grassy cliff have split off and sunk 20 feet or more towards the beach. Did this just happen recently, or has it been this way for years? This beautiful but unstable landscape is very close to the San Andreas earthquake fault. We stay away from the edge.
We do not wait for the 5:30 opening of the road. We have a train to catch, and head back to Pt. Reyes Station to enjoy a home style-dinner at the Station House. After dinner, it's time to start our trip home to Klamath Falls. Linda attempts to drops us off at the Ferry Building in San Francisco. We are momentarily confused, as the Ferry Building is walled up and under renovation, but as we start to turn off the Embarcadero, we see an illuminated Amtrak sign at the back of a pier south of the Ferry Building, next to the Sinbad restaurant, and we discover here a waiting room complete with a manned check-in counter. We wish Amtrak had informed travel agents of this change of location, but this is one reason why we travel often to find out what conditions are really like for rail travelers.
The woman at the ticket counter is somewhat flustered as she phones someone to find out what time Coast Starlight #14 is due into Emeryville. It seems the train was running four hours late out of San Luis Obispo. This is quite a trick, since it only takes four hours and forty-three minutes to get from the originating city of Los Angeles, 221 miles to the south, to San Luis Obispo if the train is on schedule. Having encountered further delays north of San Luis, its projected arrival in Emeryville, instead of 10:05pm, is now 2:30am, barring further delays. Our connecting bus from San Francisco to Emeryville is scheduled to leave at 9:25pm. It is explained to us that the bus always leaves on time no matter how late the train is expected. The female bus driver hurries us onboard, as if we have a tight connection to keep.
None of the other passengers seem surprised or even annoyed, just quietly resigned.
We quickly review our options.
A. If we go back to the Fairmont until train time, can we depend upon getting a taxi across the Oakland Bay Bridge at 2am? And at what cost for a 25-minute ride including the bridge toll? No good.
B. If we take the bus now to Emeryville, might we get a room at the nearby Sheraton Four Points? Ted whips out his laptop and consults our reservations computer. $179.00 for the room, and a prior stay there last year proved that you would not want to walk there from the Amtrak station at night, or any time, as there are concrete walls at the end of the illuminated sidewalk preventing pedestrians from crossing the street. The only pedestrian path is under a dark underpass on a side street. And one cannot hire a taxi, as they won't take passengers such a short distance. No good.
C. If we were willing to fly, we'd have to stay overnight in San Francisco, depart the next morning, over-fly Klamath Falls to Portland, and make a connection back to Klamath Falls tomorrow morning. The cost of a last-minute one-way ticket would be prohibitive, and we'd most probably get home a few hours later than if we wait for the train. No way.
After considering the above possibilities for about five seconds, we elect to check our large suitcase. The agent consults the computer to make sure Amtrak hasn't discontinued checked baggage at Klamath Falls yet, and good news -- they haven't. Our portable office and backpacks contain everything we'll need until we get home. We board the bus with six other passengers. This is a very light load for the popular Coast Starlight; perhaps other passengers have called Amtrak before coming to the station and will either show up later or give up.
When we arrive at Emeryville I ask the agent there if they will keep the station open until the Starlight arrives, having read that station agents have been advised to lock up and go home rather than waiting for a late train. She assures me that of course they will stay open, and before long provides a pot of coffee for the waiting passengers, and promises pizza later. We help her arrange a couple of tables for these goodies. The pizza arrives at 11:45pm. I ask her if this happens often, and she replies, "This train is becoming a pain in the posterior!"
The ladies room in the station is in lamentable condition, and it appears that there is no longer sufficient staffing to clean it. Used paper towels overflow onto the floor, and the counters holding the washbasins are dirty. Sylvia spends some time with wet paper towels cleaning a section of the counter so that she can put down her toiletries case to brush her teeth. Ted finds that the men's room is in a similar condition, complete with vandalism and graffiti.
An ominous looking individual enters the station to use the men's room and help himself to a cup of coffee, leaving shortly after. Is it a street person, or could it be a cab driver? It is difficult to tell. Another individual, definitely an addled street person, enters to steal some pizza and is shooed away by the tiny but fiesty female agent, who then locks the doors. With Sylvia watching the door, Ted ventures out for a moment to purchase a newspaper, but the vending machine takes his money without dispensing anything.
We set up our two laptops and printer on a table that we move near a wall outlet, for our batteries would never last the four hours or more that we are doomed to wait here. We check our e-mail, answering queries from clients and new prospects alike, making Amtrak bookings and checking on air reservations for clients. (A very small percentage of our business is air tickets for clients flying from their homes to a departure point for a train trip or a cruise, but now that the airlines have completely eliminated commissions for travel agents, this business is even less interesting than it was when the airlines were paying a maximum of $10 commission for a one way ticket.) We are glad that we have work to do and the tools to do it with, for the prospect of waiting here for X hours with nothing to do would be appalling.
Three of the other travelers put their feet up, using their luggage as footstools, and read a book; most of the others fall asleep sitting up, which looks like a sure recipe for a stiff neck. We become too sleepy to work by 2:30am and pack up the laptops. We try sitting at the table with our heads resting on folded arms, the way we used to do in kindergarten at nap time. Somehow, it doesn't work like it did when we were five! We try sitting in chairs against the wall and lean our heads back against the wall with feet up, and manage to catch a few Zs in this semi-comfortable position. We walk around the waiting room to get the kinks out. We go into the washrooms to splash water on our faces, but Ted reports that the water in the men's room flows only intermittently, as it is an automatic valve.
A few more passengers have arrived; one couple attempts to pick up tickets at the counter which they had reserved directly with Amtrak.
Travel Tip: Travel is always a learning experience, and we now find out about one more reason to book Amtrak with your travel agent. Amtrak will charge your ticket to your credit card when you book via the web or by calling Amtrak; then arrange for you to pick up the actual ticket at the station. Then, like this young couple, you wisely phone Amtrak before going to the station to find out if the train will be on time. Jeff and Deanna are told the train is running more than four hours late. So you would, as they did, schedule your arrival at the station to minimize your wait.
So far so good. But when you arrive at the station at 1:30am and go to the counter, you learn that Amtrak's computer was expecting you to pick up your ticket by 10pm, 15 minutes before the advertised departure, so it cancelled your bedroom reservation as if you were a "no show" but didn't refund your credit card, since Amtrak's policy is not to refund the accommodation charge on a paid ticket unless cancelled 48 hours prior to travel.
So now the Amtrak agent must reinstate your reservation, which is difficult since the reservation computer shows that the train has already left Emeryville at 10:15pm and (quite understandably, from the computer's viewpoint) doesn't want to accept a future reservation for a train that's departure is past history. So, while the agent struggles to overcome this pre-programmed obstacle, she also discovers that in order to print your ticket, she will have to make an entirely new reservation and charge your credit card all over again! You are still standing at the counter when the train finally pulls in, and at the last minute your ticket, for which you have now paid twice, is printed out. There is no time to address the issue of the refund as you grab your ticket and your luggage and dash out to the platform to board the train.
Here's a different way to do it: when you pay a travel agent for your ticket, the agent's computer prints your ticket and notifies Amtrak's computer that you've bought your ticket and have it in hand. Then you show up at the station at a convenient time and board the train without the possibility of your ticketed reservation being cancelled.
Ted strolls around the confines of the waiting room at 1am and notices that the Arrivals and Departures monitor has been updated to display a 3:30am arrival. The Coast Starlight is now five and a half hours behind schedule. We speculate as to how much more time it can lose, but it is impossible to know. We are just sure that it most probably will not gain time, but rather lose more. Finally at 4am, our train is called just as it is rumbling into the station, nearly six hours late. The entire train passes the station before it stops with the last coach spotted outside the station entrance. We have a lengthy walk along the very narrow platform at Emeryville in order to reach the first sleeper, car 1432, where Deluxe Bedroom C is waiting for us. Our car attendant is taking a smoking break on the platform as he greets us, but he does agree to carry our bags on board after I ask him to. He also agreeably brings us pillowcases to our room when asked. He is tired, he was expecting to be asleep at 4am, not dealing with luggage and pillowcases.
We are tired too, and fall into bed as No. 14 pulls out of Emeryville at 4:15am, six hours down.
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