I took a duffel bag and a guitar out to San Francisco, from Maryland, by train. It took four days, slightly longer than it should have because we were delayed for hours in the desert when our driver realized he had already worked over his maximum daily number of hours (we had to wait for a replacement driver to arrive).

It's funny how, after four days, even a cramped window seat on a cross-country train begins to feel a bit like home. You get to know a few people, you remember in the dark where to find the bathroom and the dining car, and you bed down in the same place every night.

Nothing beats passing through Ruby Canyon on a clattering, smoky train at sundown.

Now it's been a little over a year since then, since I moved here to San Francisco, and I realize that, as the tired old saying goes, sometimes the journey is the destination.