I never would have made it out on time without the help of friends. Meyers picked me up in his Saturn wagon and even that wasn't big enough for the 6 big boxes and 4 carry-ons I'd been up all night and day packing, so he drove ahead and I hailed a cab and cried a little to myself in back with one 60-lb box in the trunk as I rode down Park saying goodbye to the only place I've ever lived that I never wanted to leave. There was some confusion getting my baggage on board so Michael, Molly, John, and I hugged goodbye in the bowels of Penn amid indestructible orange pallets and hydraulic hand-operated forklifts--not at all the old movie railway farewell I'd envisioned. I stood alone in that empty place until my savior Jose corrected the mistake of the surly redcap I'd overtipped in a misguided attempt to ingratiate myself and after giving Jose all I could afford (which was less than he deserved) I was on my way, the first to board the Chicago-bound train on Track 8. I would have a sleeper from Chicago to Seattle but the first night I had a seat in coach so I spent most of my time in the lounge, where red-eyed Ira offered to buy back the Amtrak travel kit toothbrush I'd just purchased, which made me wonder if I'd been the first to use it. All you need is a paper towel and some salt, he explained, a tip from his traveling thee-ate-er days. I'd paid for it with an Eisenhower bicentennial dollar which he bit and slipped --something special-- into his pocket, the side-to-side motion of the train his excuse for staggering.