Okay, maybe this rule only applies to me. And my sister. Who celebrated a very snowy birthday last weekend with lots of yummy eats.

We met up in New York for some sisterly birthday celebrations, which entailed walking, talking, and eating. All day long.

Most of the day was spent tooling around Soho and the Village, but my sister absolutely insisted that we go uptown for Absolute Bagels. I’m not one to turn down a good bagel, so I agreed.  

We split a plain bagel topped with Tofutti (non-dairy “cream cheese”), which turned out to be tasty and not a bad compromise for you lactose intolerant folks out there. If you’re around Broadway and 108th (or go to Columbia University), I, in all of my intimate knowledge of the bagelries of New York, recommend Absolute Bagels. Personally I’m just gonna buy some Tofutti next time I make homemade bagels.

I had wanted to take my sister to Crumb for some birthday cupcakes, but they were closed. (For being the city that never sleeps, New York sure feels pretty drowsy on Sunday evenings). We were saved by finding a Magnolia Bakery stand in the dining concourse at Grand Central.  

I bought us each two cupcakes. The birthday girl tried red velvet with whipped vanilla frosting and a pretty purple-topped white cupcake.

I went with the Hummingbird (banana and pecan cupcake with cream cheese frosting) and a chocolate cupcake with vanilla frosting.  

I am a true lover of cream cheese frosting, so the Hummingbird was the winner of the cupcake competition. It was like a moist slice of banana bread covered with cake frosting! So good.

We shared, just like Mom always told us. Even so we ended up with leftovers when we parted ways in Grand Central. Yum!

By the end of this post you will note that, even though I spent the day in fabulous New York with my fabulous sister, I have pictures of neither. To this I say: a beloved sister and a pretty city are forever; cupcakes and bagels are fleeting.

At any rate, here’s a charming photo of the two of us from yesteryear:

This is a little dark, but I love how you can see the outline of the little boy’s glasses. And this is really what riding the Zephyr is like: incredible scenery, visible without even straining your eyes or craning your neck.

I was in the last car from Denver to San Francisco. My favorite thing to do was stand and watch us leave train tracks behind.

I like this picture because you can see the rest of the train ahead of my car.

Earth and sky in Colorado.

The river we followed for most of the trip out of Colorado.

The river was full of people rafting, camping, fishing, and swimming. I felt like a spy watching them on their vacations.

The dining car, where I ate dinner as we rolled through Utah.

The china was not real, as I thought. But I did score free desert!

Unlike the trips to Chicago and Denver, the trip to San Francisco was full of tunnels through the many mountains.

Donner Lake, home of the infamous Donner Party tragedy. The lake is gorgeous, though, and very large. There were housing all along the edge of it. Despite the creepiness factor, I think it would be a really nice place to spend a week.

In the observation car I’m joined by an enthusiastic teenage boy who talks so quickly I can barely eavesdrop on his conversation with this girl who’s coming back from Lollapalooza in Chicago. I’m not that uncool — when I finally found out Lollapalooza was in Chicago the same weekend I was scheduled to be there, I kicked myself for not managing to get the earlier, cheaper tickets.

…Well, maybe I am old. They are now discussing the joys of crowd-surfacing. Um. Please put me back on the ground. Thank you. They don’t listen to the radio — so not hipster. Because you absolutely never hear Zeppelin on the radio. Like, ever. Also, Junior over here apparently missed his smoking break — we’re not talking Camels — because he was playing his guitar. Damn! These two are highly entertaining.

“Once I sewed my hand together,” says he.

“I have the back of my neck pierced,” says she.

Earlier I made friends with a grumpy middle-aged woman in my car and we commiserated about how unnecessarily insistent the train people had been. Over the loudspeaker they kept telling us to make room for more passengers because the train was fully booked. This was really pissing the woman off. “It’s like, we know how to ride a train, you know!”

One the train from Colorado to California I had dinner in the dining car, and they sat my little single self with a couple and their mother. (I say “their” mother because they both kept referring to her as “Mother.” This is confusing for me. The man and woman were clearly married — wedding rings, grumpy remarks to each other, and all. However, are you siblings as well? Do you share a mother? Is this matrimonial match even legal? I was tempted to join the fun and ask if you would please pass the butter, thank you, Mother, but I controlled myself.)

For the second half of the Zephyr, my seat buddy is Travis from Pittsburgh. He’s friendly and keeps to himself. He’s listening to indie-sounding music with giant headphones perched over his shaggy black hair while reading Love in the Time of Cholera and I’m seriously wondering if I’m sitting next to John Cusack from High Fidelity.

I listened to two men, one with a British accent and the other from Germany, discuss travel in America and Europe. I listened to a novice train rider from Buffalo talk to a seasoned traveler from somewhere in Utah. It surprises me how many people are taking the train most of the route. Back home, it seems that you take the train for three hours from Albany to New York, or you go out to Buffalo, or maybe even Philly, but you are never just on the train for days. Turns out many people had made this trip before. My dining compadres were from Utah were just taking the train out for a day or two to Granby, CO, just to get away. “It’s such a pretty trip.”

The views really are stunning, so it’s not surprising that some people are riding the train just for the purpose of seeing America. What better way to do it?

Now the loudspeaker is announcing that the assistant conductor will shortly be having story time in the observation car for the children on the train. I can’t help but smile to myself. We traveling Americans, we wanderers, we certainly are a friendly bunch.

The Zephyr, despite challenging my notions of gravity and the stability of my stomach, is quite a lovely train, far superior to the Lake Shore Limited that I took from Albany to Chicago. It’s double-decker and the seats are more spacious, with footrests included! (Thank heavens, because my footrestless ovenight on the Lake Shore left me cranky and with the stiff hip of a senior citizen). The obervation car is quite sunny and spacious, with big picture windows and smaller windows on the ceiling so that you hardly need any of those gross yellow train lights at all. So environmentally friendly! How green of you, Amtrak.

There is also an actual dining car, just like in North by Northwest or The Lady Vanishes. You have to make reservations and there are tablecloths and real china on the table! It’s enchanting to me! You’d think I’d never been anywhere at all, but I am amazed and don’t care. I may even splurge and have a fancy-pants train dinner on the 30+ hour ride between Colorado and California.   

For now, though, I sit in the observation car typing away the time. I have been thoroughly enjoying reading books without the pending pressure of a paper deadline, but I’m getting slightly depressed by the novel I brought along (Family Pictures by Sue Miller. Decent read, but a little somber for my present tastes), so I started my Sherlock Holmes short stories. I’ve never read Sherlock Holmes, but I did recognize the first mystery from an episode of Wishbone, so clearly I am off to a good start (or I was a really terrible English major). However, the aforementioned lurching through the fields of Illinois has made reading a disagreeable activity currently, so I turned to something else I haven’t done for my own pleasure since college: writing. Which leads to my one complaint about the Zephyr: the utter lack of electrical outlets. Due to a sketchy computer battery, my options include staring out the window for the entire 18 hour trip (echoes from my childhood of Sunday drives with my mother — “Why aren’t you looking at the scenery? That’s what the trip is for! When I was a kid I loved this!”), getting sick all over poor Dr. Watson, or sitting outside of the toilets in the sketchy downstairs area where I found a lone outlet.

It doesn’t really matter, honestly. Yes, being computer-less can be frustrating, but whatever. I admit I am thoroughly taken in by the romance and adventure of it all. With my sweatpants and rumpled hair, I do not look quite as put-together as Eva Marie Saint, but that’s all right (I was never going to anyway). Traveling by rail is the last relaxed method of transportation in this country. Driving is decidedly the most dangerous, no argument there. You try to ride your bike and all you hear are stories of people getting hit by cars. And everyone is familiar withe stress of air travel, worst of which is the encouraged suspicion among passengers, as if 9/11 happened because no one was paying enough attention.

On a train, you chuck your baggage in a rack downstairs with a blind understanding that it will be there the next morning — and it is! You can leave your laptop sitting there with your friendly fellow passenger and it will still be there when you return from the smelly train bathroom. I enjoy the freedom of a train. A 9-hour flight to Europe will drive you batty when you’re strapped to your airplane seat, but the train offers options, rooms for heaven’s sake. And views to rival any mode of transportation.