The Auto Train Adventure

On a sleepless night in June
I realized why I couldn't sleep.

I had left Ithaca, NY upon
graduation from Cornell University
six months earlier, packed my car full of half of my worldly possessions, and made the 1,200 mile I-95 drive to St. Petersburg, FL. There, I set up a place to recover from my experience with the educational system (Pre-K to B.A.).

St. Petersburg was not a completely random choice: it is close to Tampa, FL where I visited my grandparents as a youngster, the weather is sunny for much of the year, and it is on a tiny peninsula of Florida with a bay on one side and the Gulf of Mexico on the other. I like being near the water and the beach; the sun and heat of the summer appeared to be a welcome change from the cold of the Ithaca winter.

Gradually I saw things falling into place: after my initial culture shock and scary moments where I thought I had lost the capacity to make friends, I bought a small amount of furniture, some power tools, and kept up a regular work schedule of telecommuting to my assortment of internet jobs.

I only had half of my worldly possessions though, so as time ticked by I thought of the storage locker holding some of my dear material possessions that would have to be moved by June 30th, 2009, the expiration date of my storage unit lease in Ithaca.

In early May, I started to rack my brains for ideas on how to move a carload of items from Ithaca to St. Petersburg without incurring significant cost or time. There were numerous possibilities involving permutations of involving friends or family, air travel, UPS shipping services, long distance car travel, and more.

One of the simpler options appeared to be Amtrak's auto train - a service running from near Orlando, FL to near Washington, D.C. where passengers ride the train and their cars come along for the ride. Having a car with me on the journey would allow me to visit relatives in Connecticut along with the trip to Ithaca, and the additional personal value of seeing relatives could serve to offset some of the trip cost.

So, I paid for my ticket that sleepless night around 2:00 AM. The round trip cost was $505.70, which included $350 for the car's journey and $155.70 for my coach seat with a AAA discount. With this, I fell soundly asleep.

See pictures of the northbound journey...