After 3 years, I&#39;m finally ready to share a project I&#39;ve been working on, Photosaaya. Photosaaya is my online service for hosting photography collections taken on higher-end cameras. It was built out of frustration with existing platforms, their overzealousness with social engagement, and their apathy towards serving photos in high quality. What&#39;s it like? <a href="https://kyle.photosaaya.com/collection/san-diego">Check out my San Diego collection and see</a>!
I started Photosaaya back in 2017 after trying to build a new and performant home for my photography work on my site. I looked around at the different tools available at the time, and didn&#39;t find any of them allowed elegantly grouping photos into collections, didn&#39;t allow UI customizations (like custom CSS), and didn&#39;t offer compelling value for the monthly fee. I didn&#39;t want to be another handle on a social network. My initial goals were static-site performance (if that term is new to you, it means very fast, because no processing is needed from the server), blurry-photo placeholders to fill the page while the real photos loaded, data waste reduction (avoid downloading photos until you scroll to them to prevent using too much mobile data) and global reach (I spend a lot of time in India and love being able to load collections equally as fast as I can from San Diego). I also wanted a pretty minimal design around the collections, with the ability to set custom HTML and CSS for the header and footer.
Nowadays, web technology has made building a project like Photosaaya much easier, and the hosting is virtually free! Because of this and all the content complications that photography hosting services have to deal with, there&#39;s no plan to ever open Photosaaya to the public.
Currently, Photosaaya is hosting <a href="http://kyle.photosaaya.com">my personal photography work</a>, <a href="http://hotchkiss.photosaaya.com">photography of my family</a>, and <a href="http://sayheer.photosaaya.com">my wife&#39;s photography work</a>.
<h2 id="features--functionality">Features &amp; Functionality</h2>
<ul>
<li>High quality photograph hosting. Using JPEGs straight from the camera (no compression!), photos are served at significantly higher quality than other networks would. It costs more, but that&#39;s the point!</li>
<li>Performant LQIP (Low Quality Image Previews). The Blurhash library is the finest implmentation of LQIPs available online. I highly recommend it.</li>
<li>Fast global performance. I&#39;m an American who&#39;s spent a lot of time staying in India. I want my photography to load as quickly on spotty 4G networks in India as they do in urban USA. Special shoutout to Vercel hosting for this.</li>
<li>Support for custom HTML headers/footers. And custom CSS. Photo collections need to blend in with a photographers existing web presence. And be very minimalistic on branding.</li>
</ul>
<h2 id="whats-next">What&#39;s next?</h2>
<ul>
<li>Zoom functionality for photos. Currently photos in collections can&#39;t be clicked on or zoomed in on yet. Still brainstorming elegant ways to resolve this.</li>
<li>Password protection for collections, and private collections. Ideally Photosaaya could help with sharing photography work with clients without making it public.</li>
<li>Support for custom domains. Currently my site is kyle.photosaaya.com. I&#39;d eventually like to move it towards photography.kylehotchkiss.com</li>
<li>Roadtrips. More than building more functionality, I want to add new collections to my current Photosaaya galleries! The pandemic hasn&#39;t given me many chances to take my camera out.</li>
</ul>
<hr>
The camera in the banner above belongs to Mr. Chand in Jaipur. He&#39;ll take and develop your photo with a camera from the 1800s for about $5. Pay him a visit if you&#39;re ever in town. He&#39;s usually a few hundred feet to the right side of Hawa Mahal.

Announcing Photosaaya

Two weeks ago, my friend texts me a link to a Craigslist boat in a Roanoke listing. His comment was simple. &quot;We need this.&quot; It was listed at $450. Here&#39;s was the attached picture:
<img src="https://d2k0cvel4hlco.cloudfront.net/images/embedded/boat-1.jpg" alt="">
Two weeks later, we drive down to Roanoke after work. Into a weird industrial part, with a rail yard and what sounded like a dozen angry guard dogs. Including one which sounded like it was dying. The perfect location. Our beloved boat listing stood before us. A clearly forgotten vessel waiting to be loved again. It was rotting, full of soil and old tires, and pretty much exactly what we expected. The guy who was trying to sell it to us was nowhere to be found for a few minutes, but he eventually came out.
He came outside and tried to pitch the boat to us. It couldn&#39;t have been too hard of a sell, we were two young guys snickering at the boat and it was sitting in a junkyard. We just wanted to make sure the cylinders weren&#39;t frozen. So we hooked up the starter and the guy who was selling the boat sprayed some carb cleaner into a not-air-intake part of the engine (??) and it spun a little! With that, we decided to buy the boat. The steering was entirely frozen. So we paid $400.
After we bought the boat, we realized the trailer wiring was not working and there were no lightbulbs. So we replaced those. $20 on the boat as soon as buying it! We also went through 2 cans of Fix-a-Flat with the entirely depleted tire. After some drama with the trailer tongue connector piece involving a dead drill and a Dremel, we were able to hook up our hot mess of a ship to the car and head out. For the first time in either 2 or 12 years (we really know nothing about this boat), we head out.
We decide to celebrate accomplishing our goal of buying a boat by going to Sheetz to get some deep fried foods, and to air up the tires better. We get the tires inflated, only to find the previously Fix-a-Flat&#39;d tire has gaping holes and cracks that we tried to patch to no avail. We figured upon losing some pressure, it&#39;d be okay again. Which was true, for a few minutes. About 5 miles down the road, and after checking the tire a few times, we thought it would be okay to continue the 40 mile drive back home on pitch-black 460. It was good fun. Until I look out the window and the tire is completely flat. So we pull off at a closed down gas station and I quickly burn through 9 dollars more of Fix-a-Flat. The tire lets it out pretty quickly but looks not totally flat, so after much contemplation and a rejected plea for help from AAA, we continue on still. We have work the next day after all.
I look back 10 minutes later and the tire is once again gone. So we pull off at gas station number 3 and my friend sees the reflection of the tire in the mirror, and sees that with motion, it lifts up a little bit. Ambitiously, we called it okay, and turned back onto 460. In what seems like the cruelest twist of irony, we turn a little hard and he says &quot;We probably shouldn&#39;t turn like that with that tire!&quot;. Fate, being cruel to us that night, had me look in the mirror a mile later at a tire barely even touching the wheel. We pulled off again, knowing there was likely nothing we could do with the trailer at that point. The sidewall of the tire had exploded off and was laying on the highway somewhere. So we did what any Virginians would do in this situation. Left our boat on the side of the highway, missing a tire and precariously sitting on a half-tilted jack, and drove away into the night.
The next day, we drove back to our boat with a new tire on the rim and re-installed it. We trailed back up, still 30 miles away from home, and got it back to it&#39;s new home (my friends backyard) with no new drama. Perfection! We knew at this point, the trailer probably was most of the value of our purchase.
Now being Saturday, we got to pour some time into our ship, which I&#39;ve cleverly named &quot;Hot Mess&quot;. We began work on hosing it out, trying to get the soil and disgusting carpets into the trash can. We tore out a lot of old wood, a bunch of cross foam, a bunch more rotting wood, and the seats. At this point, the floor has begun collapsing in (it was just fiberglassed plywood, which was never treated, so that&#39;s not a good thing to build boats with). We were okay with that. Our &quot;cleaner&quot; boat was starting to look like a canvas with potential.
As evening sprung upon us, we knew we had to do one big thing to see if this boat was worth any more money. We had to see if the engine would do anything. We figured out the flywheel had hooks for rope starts the night before, so we could start the boat with just a rope and a stick if we could figure out how to get fuel into the motor. The boat didn&#39;t come with a gas tank. The old fuel line worked, but the pressurization bulb was quite stuck. We contemplated for quite a bit if we should throw money at the problem or just clean out the old line. I blurted out something about Carb Cleaner and we saved $2, and the old fuel line. We hooked up the line from a gas tank to the engine and pressurized it. We then prepped the engine to try to get it started...
Our first start was with the choke on. This engine was ancient (35 years old) and we had no idea if the spark plugs were even working. But instead of fretting, we just tried to start it once. My friend pulls the cord, and the first thing we hear is a tiny little sputter. Woah! We prime the fuel line a few more times and pull again. 5 sputters! And some exhaust rises! It was a thrill. But the engine still wasn&#39;t keeping running. So we turned off the choke, made sure the water cooling holes were submerged, and pulled one last time. The engine roared to life. It was monstrous (turns out we left the high idle control up very high)! The engine was a force of nature, and I (like always) run the other direction, expecting this thing to explode. My friend turns the high idle knob back down to something normal (off) and we just stood there, cheering and astounded that this boat we paid $400 for is not only running, but it&#39;s running really, really well. It was great smelling two-stroke exhaust again. Here&#39;s a video of it purring away:
<iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/156122228" width="847" height="476" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen></iframe>

So that&#39;s it. Sometimes, if you look hard enough, one persons yard junk can not only become yours, but also become one of your treasures and a fun new project to enjoy.

We found a $400 boat on Craigslist. Some friends and I thought it'd be funny to see what happened. Until we started it, and it ran great...

A $400 Craigslist boat

&quot;Kyle, life in Nepal is not easy&quot; said my Nepali friend, Lila. He just may have been right. I was in a field, digging a hole for a tent pole with a stick. The cause was noble - to build tents for victims of landslides induced by the recent Nepali earthquakes. Even Nepal&#39;s governments reaction to the quake has waned and Lila takes the issue of his people suffering personally. So then in our second day in Nepal, we become literal tentmakers.
So I will start by answering your biggest concern - yes, there are piles of rubble everywhere. Not a single building I entered was free from cracks in the wall. I even woke up to an earthquake inside of a tin shed-house built to replace a destroyed home. But I would not be able to live with myself if that&#39;s all I had to say about Nepal. I went with the dream to make the real Nepal known the best I could, and with 2 weeks, I did my very best.
I had the feeling that people haven&#39;t given up.
In fact, you could even catch a few minutes of sleep on a bus, and totally forget that this country was torn 2 short months back. The drivers still speed past you. The street people still shove their products in your face. The saris are still a rainbow of color in nation of many muted colors. And the kids, did they ever stop smiling?
I had the privilege of visiting Nepal last year so I knew that things weren&#39;t roses and daisies to start here. The streets are the trash cans, people store leaky kerosene bottles in their bathrooms, and construction materials lay scattered across the actual roads people drive on. And this is the nicer parts of town! The more typical communities have issues with sewage (well, they don&#39;t use toilets so maybe that&#39;s not the word), rabid dogs roaming the streets, and more air pollution than very worst hellhole of a New Jersey industrial park you could imagine. So if you came to Kathmandu for a second time without having heard of the quakes to start, you&#39;d likely not think too much of everything falling apart - it already was to start with. The piles of rubble in KTM were not overwhelming, but the feeling of walking across the fallen homes in Sindhupalchowk was eerie. As we helped the villagers remove some stones from the piles that were formally their homes, the only thought across my head was &quot;did they get the bodies out?&quot;.
One day, a man came up to us crying saying that he had lost much of his family to the earthquake. That the bills were overwhelming. That it was all his fault. It was a strange place to listen. He clearly thought we could help him but I&#39;m not certain there was anything we could do in that moment. There were many others we could ask similar questions to. &quot;Where were you during the quake?&quot; &quot;How has the earthquake impacted your friends and family?&quot; &quot;Have you felt the aftershocks?&quot; None of us were very equipped to handle PTSD but asked out of genuine curiosity, which I hope was okay. A christian man we met later in our trip had a lot to share. He lost most of his home in the earthquake, because it was built of stone. He told us how he moved into his poultry farm, which means they had to sell their livestock. The man was an evangelist, meaning he now has literally nothing and has no way to provide for his family. It&#39;s not pitiful - he took great care of them before the quake. We handed him some cash, hoping and praying it will get them at least a place to rest their head for now.
One of the hardest hit industries after the quake was tourism. Nepal normally averages about 800,000 people a year, but expect a shortage of 400,000 this year. 400,000 tourists in a country where 30% of the GDP is tourism. I often wondered if this knowledge helped them put up with a rather chaotic group of white people who couldn&#39;t keep quiet in a bus. This place really is remarkable and I slept in plenty of buildings damaged by the quake, many of them &quot;dangerous&quot; but if millions of people have lived here successfully for thousands of years, it&#39;s quite possible the messaging regarding &quot;danger&quot; could be better regarded as &quot;discomfort&quot;.
People here don&#39;t seem to mind our idea of discomfort though. They have so little media feeding them what the western world is like. The only real American brands I&#39;ve seen in this culture are Apple, Coca-Cola, and Ford. But they don&#39;t even seem ingrained so much as American as just nice things. Nepalis are incredibly proud of their heritage. I have heard plenty of &quot;You are rich, we are poor, give us money&quot; but only from people while they work. I don&#39;t think it&#39;s very good to judge a people group based on what they like when they work - it&#39;s better to figure out how they are at home to see how people really are. The things we found most uncomfortable here are really just the toilets, air quality, and the constant desire of some Nepalis to put more rice than is humanly edible on a plate than all watch as we struggle to eat it. &quot;It means you have big love for them when you clean your plate&quot; my friend Lila instructed us.
I really hate the attitude so many &quot;aid agencies&quot; carry with them. I am white, you are not, let me be your hero. I am your only solution. Let me spoon feed you. Ugh. That attitude is a cancer. Nepal doesn&#39;t need heroes. It has plenty of men and women who care deeply about their own people, reaching out to the hardest mountains and furthest huts. Nepal needs friends. They need somebody to believe in them.
Truthfully, I have never seen a people run so far with what they&#39;ve been given. Coming back home to the US after two weeks in Nepal, I was just nearly disgusted with how little effort people put forward when their potential with resources is so huge. I&#39;m left thinking of the schoolchildren in Nepal I spent a few minutes with. Reciting American history to me. American history that I cannot fathom a normal American child reciting. These children get one day off a week from school, a day they spend studying for the next. The middle school girl doing trig next to me was just inspiring. And did I mention the english comprehension amongst even uneducated people in Kathmandu surpasses the english comprehension amongst the ebonics crowd in the USA? Or what about the people in their tin shacks, who permanently lost homes and shared the shack with 5 other families, and they still were studying for their next exams? What does &quot;third world&quot; really mean, anyways? It certainly can&#39;t mean lazy or undetermined. It doesn&#39;t mean stupid. It might mean just a little bit corrupt. But I think it really comes down to how much people are given to start with. And I learned that what you&#39;re given doesn&#39;t have to influence who you are.
I had a feeling that Nepal hadn&#39;t given up. And I was right.
This is the Nepal I want the world to know.

'Kyle, life in Nepal is not easy' said my Nepali friend, Lila. He just may have been right. I was in a field, digging a hole for a tent pole with a stick...

This is the Nepal I want the world to know

Tuesday night was insane.
I know I don&#39;t write much here these days. My life has been interesting recently but I usually just tweet and call it a day. But early Tuesday morning, on a rural stretch of highway between Charlottesville and Lynchburg, Virginia, somebody tried to kill me.
<img src="https://d2k0cvel4hlco.cloudfront.net/images/embedded/car-1.jpg" alt="">
Let me start with some background. I recently purchased a car that got crazy good gas milage. More than twice what the explorer got. So I&#39;ve been driving just for the fun of it lately. I recently drove it on a 3,300 mile trip to Nova Scotia. It was a long time on the road! So my scheme for this past weekend was to head to San Diego for a friends wedding, and I really wanted to give Virgin America a whirl. I&#39;m a brat. I know. So I had to drive to DC to get on the plane. 3 hour drive north, not really a big deal for me. So I got back a little later than expected and was anticipating arriving home at about 2:45am. It was a foggy mess and I felt sick, but I just wanted to get to bed, so I just tried to not think about it.
Slightly south of Charlottesville, the car in front of me pulled off to the left and started to slow down a lot. They didn&#39;t use their turn signal and there wasn&#39;t a turn to be made, so it looked strange. He then got behind me. On these types of roads, deer and bears are quite common so when people get tired, getting behind another car is wise because you don&#39;t have to spend as much energy watching for animals trying to cross the road. This guy stuck behind me for roughly 5 miles, and he was pretty close behind me, which was strange and I started to notice a bit of aggression.
So I finally get behind a truck I want to pass. He jolts into the right lane with me. I was starting to get scared then. I pass the truck, get back into the left lane. He quickly fills the tiny amount of space between the truck and I. The truck honks. I knew he was following me now. I stumble for my phone, and call 911 and tell the officer on the line. They half help me, and hang up. He&#39;s still following me really close. I get a call from the police a few minutes later, where we tried to coordinate meeting up somewhere. I was a few miles north of where we planned to meet and thought it was much closer than it was.
<img src="https://d2k0cvel4hlco.cloudfront.net/images/embedded/car-2.jpg" alt="">
A few more minutes pass, still being followed.
Now the car is following me close. I can&#39;t even see his headlights. This is a rural road with no other cars, why is he following me, I thought? I was shaking. I tried to call 911 again, but could only get 91911 in my phone. I remembered that. Things started to get dicey when I tried accelerating to see if he&#39;d back off. He didn&#39;t. He gets beside me like he wants to pass me. Phew, I thought. He&#39;s just angry. I thought it was over. So I slowed down a little to see if he&#39;s speed off. He didn&#39;t. He slowed down too. Then I tried speeding up a bit. He did too. I completely expected him to open his window and shoot me now. I was ready for it.
I tried to accelerate past him, and he dashes past me and gets in front of me. I tried switching lanes but he was watching me, and didn&#39;t let me go past. Somehow I tried again to get past him, and was going 70-90mph at the time on a curvy part of the road so I didn&#39;t push it. At some point then, he rammed me off the road. And sped off. My car runs towards the side, flips once or twice. I can&#39;t remember. I only remember being on the edge of the road asking God to spare me. When the car was upside down for a split second, I was thinking that when I would land an instant later, I would be dead.
<img src="https://d2k0cvel4hlco.cloudfront.net/images/embedded/car-3.jpg" alt="">
I wasn&#39;t. I was sitting still. However fast I was going to still in an instant. No brakes. I was right side up. I just remember audibly saying &quot;Thank you, God.&quot; A few seconds later, I then was haunted again thinking he would come back with a gun to finish me. My car didn&#39;t deploy the airbags, but managed to call 911 for me. I can&#39;t remember a word we said. They had no idea where I was. Neither did I. Thankfully another family came up and called 911 for me. They said hi and we talked. They were really shocked I was talking. The first thing I did was ask them to take a picture with my camera and all. Then I tried to make some phone calls. It was 2am, and I was a little out of it. They all looked at me funny when I told them that I was pushed off the road. They then casually mentioned another car being off the side of the road, and I got scared again. I told them that he was dangerous. I then remember trying to get out of the car to hide in the woods from him. They told me to sit still, and I asked them if they had a gun in case he tried to come after us. They again gave me a funny look.
A few minutes later, the police arrive. They walk past with a short black man in a blue striped shirt. I don&#39;t know if it was the guy or somebody else he rammed off the road. They kept mentioning mental disorders. Oddly, the police officer knowing I was fully conscious and talking, never asked me what happened. Weird.
The ambulance arrived and they made me crawl out of the car. But then they suddenly decided to treat me like I had a neck injury, and wouldn&#39;t let me take images of my car despite the fact I walked to the backboard. They strapped me down and I spent the next 45 minutes on the longest ambulance ride I could have expected. I walked out of the hospital at 7am with a broken hand and a few scratches.
<img src="https://d2k0cvel4hlco.cloudfront.net/images/embedded/car-4.jpg" alt="">
The next part of this is very spiritual, and if you&#39;re not into that sort of thing, you&#39;re probably going to write me off for this next part. I quite frankly don&#39;t care if you do. Just skip it if you don&#39;t care.
God saved my life - in the literal sense - that night. Simple physics and chance say I should absolutely dead right now. You can see the pictures. Thankfully the roll cage was stiff enough to take whatever happened. The only inference I could make as my friend and I looked upon the carcass of a car in the lot was that my steering wheel broke when the car smashed into the ground. If my hands were over the wheel and not under, I expect I wouldn&#39;t have any.
I have heard stories of this kind of crap happening in India and Nepal. People getting into these crazy situations. I believe that somebody was trying to kill me for a reason (They kept saying mental episode... we often call those a disorder in the west, but his ability to drive - coherently aggressively -- seems to refute this). I know this because of a circumstance my friends were in Nepal when they were chased by people trying to kill them. As many of you know, I run a little ministry with some friends called Illuminate Nations. A lot of weird things have happened to us this past year. Great discouragement to average people, but we believe that there is an enemy who would quite frankly be happier if we all were dead.
<img src="https://d2k0cvel4hlco.cloudfront.net/images/embedded/car-5.jpg" alt="">
All this goes to show two things. Spirtual warfare is quite real, quite violent, and quite serious. And two. That God can be glorified in the most insane situations. Because He was Tuesday night.
Update, June 2015: Since the accident, my hand has healed and a new car was basically given to me. All charges against the man were dropped as authorities did not believe the story enough to even call me or ask me details

The story of an absolutely insane drive that lead to an insane car accident and its aftermath.

A Collision

Now that I have experience with Amtrak&#39;s overnight routes, I wanted to clear up how the whole experience was for me, as a younger guy. Unlike most of the other writings you&#39;ll find, I&#39;m a fairly normal 20 year-old who travelled alone. I don&#39;t have a particular soft spot for dressing up the Amtrak experience or anything. Overnight travel on trains isn&#39;t for everybody - or most people,
really. I love seeing new things myself and don&#39;t care much for being locked in
the same place for a while. That&#39;s pretty normal, but most people don&#39;t like the
time associated with travel and choose methods that are quick, but not nearly as
comfortable or scenic as the train, like air travel. The scenery and my lack of
experience in the middle and southwest parts of the USA enticed me to give three
days of my life away towards seeing it all. The train is actually slower than
driving for long distances from Virginia since it wraps to the Northern part of
the country to go west. It was neat seeing Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Chicago for
the first time though. There was snow on the ground of most of the country when
I rode, so that really made traveling through these flats a treat. Seeing the
southwest unfold was the great part of the trip though - that&#39;s the part that
made it worthwhile. The desert may sound boring but seeing the glow of the sun
out there in the end of December had a nice warmth to it! My trip ended on a
commuter train down the west coast that hugged the Pacific coast more than the 5
does! Here&#39;s my quick description of what was good and bad: ## The Great The
best part of the trip, hands down, was the view across the country. Sure, you
can fly across America in 3.5 hours, but you miss a lot of really special
landscape. Seeing the little towns and cities that give America its personality
really was a privilege. Going through the backyards of many folks home gave a
small, quick glimpse into their lives. The landscape transforms in literally 90
seconds over in the Southwest from flat to dry to mountains to eternal desert.
The train cuts through many parts of the country that aren&#39;t around roads and
can&#39;t be seen while driving. Some of them so remote, that you have to be on the
train to see them! There are several other routes you can take as well; one
leading through the North to the Northwest, another leading through the Rockies,
and the last running through Texas. Most people take the route through the
Rockies, called the California Zephyr, but I rode the Southwest Chief - a
decision I do not regret. ## The Good The train is a really comfortable way to
travel. Getting on the Capitol Limited to Chicago, I was surprised by the sheer
size of the coach seats. Seriously! It was a class unrivaled by any domestic
airline or regional rail service. The seats basically turn into La-Z-Boy
recliners because of how much they can recline. They have lifting leg rests and
the lot too. Being that I spent three days in one of these, I have no complaints
whatsoever. As far as the ride goes, it is comfortable for the most part. Going
through the mountains in Pennsylvania was the worst part in the whole country.
The train rocks side-to-side the whole time, but it&#39;s really comfortable and
helps you sleep a little bit better. Some of the tracks aren&#39;t welded, but they
just make a gentle click-clack sound that never bothered me, they also aren&#39;t as
bumpy as I thought. Another neat thing about the train is meeting people. Being
stuck in the same vehicle with about 300 - 400 people overnight, you&#39;re bound to
at least small talk with some of them. I met some interesting folks and we
talked a little bit (I only talked to a guy my age for a couple hours at the
most). The older folks aren&#39;t as bad as I imagined, they keep to themselves. A
lot of younger people meet up in the Observation car and play card games and
drink. Like the bar, I guess? Since some of the people on the train are really
weird, meeting people was nice, but not the best part by any means. Amtrak&#39;s
overnight routes usually have a Observation car with lots of windows and places
to sit. People are pretty social in this car and like to enjoy the view with
each other. It was packed when I rode and a really neat place to just hang out.
When it&#39;s light out, it offers a nice panoramic view of the countryside (under
FRA regulations, which means there are still beams between the windows, so it&#39;s
not perfect). The observation car sits right about the Cafe car, so snacks were
plenty close by. Amtrak staff were surprisingly great - literally. I&#39;m used to
the extremely rude staff on the Northeast Regional and the ghetto staff at
Washington Union Station. I was surprised to walk onto the train to a kind,
helpful coach-car attendant. The staff on the overnight trains aren&#39;t busy every
second of the day and will sit down and chat with some people. They even joke
around with some of the passengers. I expected them to slack and goof, but
that&#39;s not what I found at all. I can&#39;t speak for the sleeping car attendants;
but everybody else was great and made my three days pleasant. The amazing thing
about overnight trains was how close it was to on-time for traveling near 2,000
miles. An hour or two from the scheduled time is pretty incredible given the
weather and Amtrak&#39;s usage of freight tracks. The train arrived into Chicago an
hour late and the train into Los Angeles arrived almost 2 hours early. Chances
are on-time performance isn&#39;t your biggest priority when you spend two days on
the same vehicle, but Amtrak does very well. Food and drinks were always nearby
on the train, through the Cafe car or through the Dining car. The cafe car had
plenty of snacks and drinks - including alcohol - to keep you satisfied. I
packed my own snacks and didn&#39;t attend to the Cafe car too much, but getting a
drink other than water was nice. Speaking of water, there are water dispensers
on each of the coach cars, so if you&#39;re thirsty, you&#39;re not too far from water.
The dining car is a nice experience. The food wasn&#39;t bad but it wasn&#39;t great
either. You are seated with other folks if you&#39;re alone, but eating with
strangers was fun. The menu isn&#39;t super-expansive, but it has something for most
people. I won&#39;t comment on the prices just yet though - they&#39;re in the Bad
section of this review. Being a twenty-something, being connected to some sort
of cell tower was quite important to me. There is no Wifi on overnight routes,
because there is no infrastructure to actually provide internet to the train for
a feasible amount of time. But even with my Sprint iPhone, I could tether into
usable internet for about 1/3 of my trip. It looks like a small number, but it&#39;s
incredible given that at least 75% of traveling is done away from areas covered
in towers. In the flat states, the towers could be 30+ miles away, so the
internet wasn&#39;t always fast enough to even load Wikipedia, but Twitter worked
well. If you&#39;re curious on the specifics, you can make the whole trip on a 1 or
2GB tethering plan. The internet works best in cities and next to highways (some
of which are followed well into New Mexico and Arizona). Don&#39;t expect 3/4G by
any means, but 2G is good enough for Twitter, blogging, and reading the news.
Again, I was on Sprint, so I roam free and often, but I&#39;m uncertain of Verizon&#39;s
or AT&amp;T&#39;s approach towards this. ## The Bad The first bad thing about rail
travel is recycled air. At first I was completely clueless on why they would
make people deal with it, but after entering a 9◦ Flagstaff, it was pretty clear
that heating air 60◦ is a waste of Diesel compared to reheating cabin air. It
was only bad because people haven&#39;t showered and some idiots attempted to smoke
in the bathrooms. They received a nice shouting from Amtrak attendants, however.
It didn&#39;t really stink other than the occasional brake dust, which is strong
enough to wake you up, but that isn&#39;t an issue unless you&#39;re on a curvy route.
There are several opportunities to walk off the train to smoke, which I took for
fresh air, but since everybody is smoking outside anyways, it wasn&#39;t much help.
The air is kept moving the entire time, so if anything did happen to smell bad,
it would disappear in good time. I know you&#39;re wondering about the bathrooms -
they&#39;re not an issue at all, since they were downstairs. I recommend packing
several cough drops just in case stale air gives you a sore throat. While on the
subject of fresh air, another bad thing about overnight travel are the restrooms
and how to stay sanitized. The restrooms were very tiny, to the point where I
wondered if larger individuals could use them. There are handicapped restrooms
on some cars, but not all of them. The restrooms didn&#39;t smell horrible, but they
were bearable at best. There are plenty of them if one is dirty though. Not
going to dwell on that though - staying fresh on the train is a challenge, but
doable. Some cars have dedicated changing rooms, which are marked as female only
and they look at you real funny if you use them, since they don&#39;t like. Other
cars have changing areas in the restroom and the handicapped restroom to change
and freshen up in. There are no shower facilities in Coach class, so staying
fresh is a matter of deodorant, baby wipes, and learning to wash your hair in
train sinks/bathrooms. It was a challenge for me, but I got it after a while. It
was hardest to rinse and dry off given my lack of towels. It&#39;s probably polite
to clean up after destroying the sink while washing hair as well. Changing
wasn&#39;t too bad in the changing area/handicapped restroom as well. But like I
said, since the actual dressing/lounge room has a female logo on it and doesn&#39;t
lock, best just stay out of there as a guy. Oh yeah, brush your teeth too. There
is no excuse not to here. Food prices on the train were a nightmare. Expect to
pay 3-to-4 star prices on food that wasn&#39;t that great. The cafe car was no
better. I guess prices are supply/demand thing, so expect to pay if you want to
eat hot food. It wasn&#39;t really clear if you&#39;re supposed to tip either, I did
because I didn&#39;t want to be a terrible person, but I certainly didn&#39;t tip 15%.
Train stations are a lot of fun, much more easy and enjoyable than airports, but
since the TSA isn&#39;t groping you to get to gates, there are crazies and homeless
in them. Washington Union Station has plenty of homeless sleeping in gate
waiting areas and they look pretty scary. I&#39;m surprised the Amtrak police don&#39;t
throw them out. The Washington Union Station staff are also a joke. Some of the
rudest human beings you&#39;ll experience. The Chicago station was cleaner, but once
the crazy women walked off the street into the station and looked people in the
eyes, telling them that they &quot;hated god,&quot; I made my way out as soon as possible.
Sleeping on the train was quite the experience. Sheer exhaustion got me to sleep
well enough. They dim down the cabin lights, but getting to sleep in an upright
position, next to a stranger, was not fun. The train isn&#39;t what I&#39;d call bumpy,
but passing another train at 120mph while they are blowing their horn could
knock me out of a real bed. Sleeping was done in 2-hour segments for me. Music
helped, a lot. I can&#39;t speak for sleeper-car passengers, but coach was hard to
fall asleep in. Dealing with luggage on the train was a pain. Not because there
wasn&#39;t room - there was more than you can imagine - but because you don&#39;t want
to leave your valuables behind with strangers ever. I had to carry my backpack
to the bathroom each and every time and I had to carry it every time I switched
cars. I hard somebodies purse got stolen, so this is your fair warning that if
you carry nice things, take them with you everywhere. But fear not for
suitcases, if they&#39;re in-sight, people aren&#39;t going to dig through them or
snatch them. People were still decent. I recommend a cheap TSA lock for bigger
bags that may have to be stored downstairs. Don&#39;t make it conspicuous though.
The few points above could have been best summarized as overnight travel on
trains is better with a partner. A friend would have been nice to travel with.
Having a partner makes the whole luggage and sleeping arrangements more
bearable. If you&#39;re a couple, cuddling to sleep would make it so much better for
both of y&#39;all. Plus you&#39;re guaranteed a friend in the observation car, diner
car, and have somebody to play cards with and all. So if you travel alone,
expect weird seatmates who sleep weird and to watch your belongings well. ## The
Ugly I&#39;m kind of disappointed I have to write this part, but some stuff that
went down on my trip leads me to not recommend taking the overnight train as a
family. The train has a bar and plenty of individuals were enjoying it - mostly
young people traveling alone. People weren&#39;t crazy-drunk, but they were a little
&quot;happier&quot; than I anticipated. I caught a little bit of underage drinking, but
they would probably be drinking at home if not here. There were plenty of
cuss-words flying around too. I also have to formally recommend not taking the
train alone if you&#39;re a young female. If you don&#39;t heed this, expect to be hit
on and not have a good place to run to. And for the purposes of protecting your
family, yes, there were couples engaging in inappropriate acts near public
places. ## Final Words Overnight train travel was a great experience for me, but
don&#39;t expect people&#39;s best around your children - but for better and for worse,
if you&#39;re thinking about taking the train across the USA, I will formally
recommend you do so. Reading this, I hope you can form a good picture of what
you do and don&#39;t need, and can decide the best arrangements for travel. If you
think this is for you, pack light and enjoy your ride!
Edit (5/6/2016): if this post helped you decide to travel across USA on train, please tweet me
<a href="https://twitter.com/kylehotchkiss">@kylehotchkiss</a> and share your experience. This post seems to rank pretty high in Google for overnight reviews and I&#39;d like to embed some tweets here with others experiences as well.

Amtrak Overnight - A review

That weird series of characters and numbers up there is me. Well, it&#39;s not me, it&#39;s my radio callsign. That is the reward after a one hour test, a year of studying, and three years of dreaming. It allows me to use rather powerful radios just for fun. A lot of people would call me a &quot;ham.&quot; Dear lord, please never call me that. I think that&#39;s an obnoxious term for somebody who uses nice radios. I would prefer if you just keep calling me Kyle Hotchkiss.
The practicality of having a radio licence is really amazing. Everything from emergency communications that are much more versatile than satellite phones, to talking to people hundreds of miles away, to being allowed to build communication systems from scratch. I pushed my hardest towards getting the licence more for developing radio systems for high altitude ballooning systems, but I&#39;m pretty excited about just seeing what the limits on the equipment I have are. Of course, there are regulations and lots of rules to follow, but haven&#39;t you ever heard creativity is best expressed when limits are imposed on it?