A Journey from the Glitz to the Bay

I left Los Angeles at 7:30am this morning on an early train from Union Station in downtown LA. Was originally planning to leave at 9, but got there earlier than expected and Amtrak was flexible about letting me take an earlier ticket. It turned out to be a really special gift; the earlier train took the train route all the way to San Luis Obispo, CA instead of just to Santa Barbara and then along the freeways.
The scenery, at first, was irritatingly metropolitan. The commuters on the train were gradually weeded out through towns like Glendale, Burbank and Moorpark. After Moorpark, the train went through a short tunnel and seemed to emerge in a different world. Suddenly I was in a mini Mediterranean area going towards Santa Barbara, with wine fields extending from the tracks and then incredibly spectacular Pacific blue ocean on the other side. After Santa Barbara we had to wait a whole hour for the next stop on the train, appropriately called "Surf" (yes, it's really a town called Surf, and it is right by the ocean.) The weather seemed to not know what to do with itself as the train sped north by west. First it was sunny, and then there was thick omnious fog coming off the sea.
But then, the fog suddenly lifted and revealed an unparalleled seascape with bold cliffs and wide sandy beaches like a mini version of Big Sur farther north along the coast. At the exact same time, I was listening to Daft Punk on my IPod. A song came on that I had not heard before (called "Voyager") and the title, funky beat and adventurous electronics perfectly matched the feeling of the moment: adventure and spontaneous exploration on the absolute edge of the American coastline in the sunshine. So I kept playing the song on repeat for at least ten minutes as the scenery continued to be spectactularly dramatic. I even filmed some of it on my new video camera (and will definitely use the Daft Punk song to underscore it...!).
The woman sitting in front of me pointed out the alternate-launch site for the NASA space shuttles in a place called Lompoc, CA, located right next to the train tracks and in the middle of a working air force base. Of course there were no official signs pointing that out!
The coastal scenery shifted to inland wine country and mountains again by the time we reached San Luis Obispo. I found the transition to an Amtrak bus to be easy, and significantly nicer than its Greyhound counterpart, as I continued another six hours up the coast to SF.
It's wonderful to be back in the city by the bay that has captured my imagination since the first visit here six months ago. At the time I would have never anticipated that I'd have the chance to come back so soon, but am very grateful for the experience of being here again and plan to make the most of it, in the sun and in the city with a cool breeze on my back.