Shannon and I ran away to Washington D.C. this weekend for a well-deserved bit of rest and relaxation (pictures to come), and we both were able to take the new Acela Express train back to New York (her yesterday, me tonight). Looking out the window, I didn’t think that we could be going that much faster than the normal train, but getting a glimpse at the engineer’s control screen and seeing 115 MPH in big, bold letters made me happy. Zoom zoom!

(I also realized that, in the current air travel atmosphere, you’d be nuts to take the airline shuttles along the Northeast corridor; the train takes three hours, the stations are all right in the hearts of the big cities, you don’t have to get to the train station 90 minutes early, and the seats are way more comfortable.)