
Busking by USA Rail Pass: Oakland to Los Angeles to Albuquerque
When a fellow student at Open Studio commented that I could stop by her place in Albuquerque on my way to the Midwest on the Southwest Chief, I phoned 1-800-USA-RAIL and changed my reservation to allow a 24-hour stopover at her place (Amtrak phone agents are extremely helpful and can help if you’re having trouble...

I can shovel like a man
Hole-digging can be a contemplative exercise. Or so I thought. I was taking my time digging the hole, feeling rather zen about it, when the foreman came and roughly grabbed the shovel from me, then began muscling dirt out of the ground. In five minutes he’d done double what had taken me 15. That’s when...