author: Nicole J. LeBoeuf

I am now a virgin in one less way than before. I have been on a train.

The California Zephyr, in fact, on the Denver-Chicago leg. It was cool. I was worried, but eighteen hours in coach wasn't all that bad. See, they assign you to a car, and then you just pick a seat on that car (shoving your boarding pass into the shelf above your seat to mark your territory and incidentally prove that you belong on board). And in my car, the ratio of people to seats was greater than 2, so everyone got to stretch out across a pair. Seats come with plenty of leg room, the usual foot rest and seat-back tray table, and a cushioned leg rest that took me until this morning to discover and figure out.

Then there's the sightseer lounge car. Its top side has windows that curve right up to the roof, and side-viewing chairs with elbow tables and cupholders in the wall. Its bottom level is a diner with booth tables and a snack counter. Both levels have TVs at both ends of the car; I understand they showed Mr. & Mrs. Smith Tuesday evening, but I ended up not watching it. I stayed up journalling, and then I went right to sleep. It's amazing how comfy you can get on those chairs. I didn't wake up until 6:30 AM when we stopped in Omaha, Nebraska.

That's right. I've been to Omaha, whither lead all roads.

(Sorry. That might be an inside joke. Or, at the very least, a location joke: "You had to be there." Whatever.)

I never did make it to the actual diner car, but I gather that's where actual meals were served at actual tables, as opposed to microwaved eggy bagels and bagged sandwiches in the sightseer lounge car. I'll have to try that on the ride home. And I never took a look at the sleeper car, figuring I wouldn't be allowed. I hear it's made up of very narrow rooms that consist pretty much of a bed and nothing else. If I ever take the train all the way from Denver to New Orleans, I'll have to spring for one of them. It more than doubles the price of the ticket, though, and coach is relatively comfy. But I guess it's the lack of privacy that gets to a person after awhile. Three nights on the train is too long for many to go without a room of their own.

I wrote more than 2,000 NaNo-countable words on that train and, later, on the bus from Chicago to Madison. I know things about this novel now that, several years of chewing on the plot notwithstanding, I didn't know before. That Gwen's agent is Chinese and learned English as a second language, for instance. Or that her novel's main character, Brooke, dances at a strip club managed by a nutbar name of Mickey, and the bouncer there is named Ronnie. Or that the talemouse shows up in Gwen's book as Brooke's kindhearted landlord. Talemice get in via the more vaguely imagined parts of books; an exclusively off-stage character mentioned only by function, not name, might well be or become a talemouse. I've also learned that I've forgotten the original name I gave him, and the notebook where I wrote down and played Tarot with that name is not in Madison with me; it's at home. Bugger. For now he's "Mr. Rakash." And Gwen is "Gwen Halpurn-Smith".

We write to find things out. We don't always find out interesting things, but if we don't write we don't find out anything.

The Hospitality Suite was already open tonight, even though registration for the con hasn't yet begun. I saw Alma and Deck there, learned a lot about the relationship of Utah to the Church of Latter Day Saints, and drank a tiny amount of some very nice scotch. All in all, I consider that a successful night.

Tomorrow: Another 2000+ words! Con registration! Breakfast in downtown Madison, Wisconsin! Check back for all the excitement!