I carry no phone An aspiring Luddite In a wired world. Mastodon Verification Link	Jeff Berry is an early adopter of the Internet and the Web, a late adopter of Twitter, and declines to adopt Facebook. With the death of Google+, he migrated to the Fediverse. He admins a medievalist Mastodon instance. He hates cell-phones.

It is four in the afternoon and the Hudson river shines in the late day sun. Smoke rises from the power plant on the far side, a low-hanging cloud. A castle looms up on an island in the river. The pictures I take are blurry but the battlements are sharp against the sky in my memory. The train hums along, a gentle and relaxing motion accompanying the sound.

It is Christmas Eve and we are celebrating in our tiny sleeper compartment on the train to Chicago. As the castle disappears behind us, I open a small bottle of wine and we toast the occasion, my wife and I. We have a pair of Christmas crackers, gifts from a friend, and we pop the first, the sound echoing loudly in our little world. The paper crown goes to my wife and the orange keychain with a measuring tape goes into our bag. The second cracker is as loud as the first, and now we are both regal. The prize is a flashlight which rolls under the seat and I contort myself to find it. We read the jokes to each other. They are awful but we laugh anyway.

The car attendant comes by to check on us and take our dinner reservation. She is fascinated by our paper crowns and we explain the Christmas crackers to her. After she leaves, we lock the door and pull the curtains. On to the presents! My wife receives an old book about Oxford and a CD and I receive a banner. The latter two are tucked away, neither being appropriate for a sleeper car, but we spend a few moments browsing through the book, looking at places we know and reading the quotes from various authors who were as enamoured of Oxford as we. Then we fall silent, gazing out the window at the steadily darkening sky.

Companionable silence is not for everyone, nor always for us, but something about the dark room, looking out over the dark river at the lights beginning to shimmer on the far side discourages idle chat. We point out things to each other, to be sure, and speak when we have something to say, but long moments stretch between short syllables.

We want to eat early, before we arrive at Albany, and so make our way to the dining car. It is brightly lit, and our plan to watch the sights as we dine is foiled by physics. Still, the train is sparsely loaded at the moment, and we have a table to ourselves for what will turn out to be the only time the entire round-trip. In the lazily bustling car, the conversation flows more easily. Soon, though, we return to our sleeper and again find ourselves absorbed in the changing scenery outside the window.

This is one of the great things about train travel: you feel as though you are travelling. In an airplane, there is little sense of motion. Often you are above the clouds, and there is nothing to see below you. Air travel is about the destination, not the journey, to the point where the journey itself is marginalized. One is packed into uncomfortable chairs, in dimly glowing chambers that only faintly seem to move and left there to stew for hours until emerging, staggering and squinting like a prisoner released from a dungeon who finds the world has changed during his incarceration.

Contrast this with the train. At every moment, the world outside alters incrementally. Even at night, at dark of the moon, the lights of cities, towns and hamlets can be seen. The train rocks and sways so that you can never forget that you are in motion; time and distance are linked. Your chair is not luxurious, perhaps, but it is comfortable and there is no need for a tv screen to be embedded in the back of the chair in front of you, for your window is larger and the real world is higher resolution than any airline tv. To be fair, there are fewer explosions outside your window than in the movies you see at thirty-thousand feet. At least, one sincerely hopes there are fewer, zero being the ideal number.

A knock at the door is our attendant. Amused by our crowns, she has returned with cardboard "Junior Conductor" hats for us. Giddy with our evening thus far, we put them on and take some pictures, before removing them and preparing for out first night on the train. By the time we leave Albany our luggage is stowed overhead, the upper berth has been prepared and all that remains is to prepare the lower berth and perform our evening ablutions.

First, though, a nightcap. A small measure of whiskey is poured into our plastic cups, not before they have been rinsed! We toast the night, our trip, and each other. When the whiskey is gone, the seats are pulled down to make the lower berth, and, with a kiss, we bid each other good night. I ascend to the upper bunk, leaving my wife the lower.

The motion of the train is soothing and soon I am sound asleep. I awake some time later, for something has changed. In a moment, I identify the change: we have pulled into a station and train is no longer moving. Satisfied I subside, but it is not until the train leaves the station that I once again begin to drift off.

Tomorrow we shall be in Chicago, the day after in Denver. Now, however, I can feel my wife's presence in the bunk beneath me, I am warm and comfortable, and the miles are rolling by outside my window. This, I think, is the way to travel. This, I think, was a fine Christmas Eve indeed.