The very next day after recovery sucks. No motivation whatsoever, spaghetti legs and marshmallow mind. Ugh. Camped in the middle of nowhere cuz was done for the day.

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A little rant about trains

You might have already noticed that sometimes I treat my Strava activities as an opportunity to make a commentary about various topics. Today’s is on trains in USA (not really).

Whitefish, were we stayed couple of days ago, is a railway city converted into tourist hub for both summer and winter activities. Our camp alongside with multi-million dollar mansions was tightly packed next to the water frontline. So were the railroad tracks. As a result you could expect a diesel powered (!!!) train passing by every couple of hours. I wish I could include a sound sample of this thing. It’s loud. Like really loud. And long. At least 1 min until it passes through. Not only the entire ground shakes from all the weight it’s carrying (coal!!!) but also the diesel engine itself is at least 80dB. Why trains are not running on electricity here will be a topic of my next rant…

Now picture this - trains like that are passing by every single night at 3:45 and 4:00am. Everything in my tent and inside the aforementioned mansion is rattling. My sleep is interrupted and rage floods my brain. Good nights sleep is over as I struggle to fall back asleep.

As this post was forming in my head at 4am I arrived at a greater realization. It’s not about train itself. It’s about loosing personal freedoms and corporate greed. You see in EU we have a bunch of legislative rules which can be smirked upon. Like the famous curvature of a banana. But some are there to protect the citizens from companies trying to cut corners and costs anywhere they can. For example flat phone and data rates across the entire EU - telecoms were making big bucks from roaming fees but not anymore. Every major highway or railroad crossing within EU has sound barriers to help reduce noise pollution. If it wasn’t enforced by the law not a single barrier would be there for one simple reason - it’s expensive. And that’s exactly the case in the States. Privately owned railroad companies have zero incentive to put up the barriers and all the lobbying force to prevent any piece of legislation to be passed. As a result, Americans traded their personal freedoms for the corporate ones. Politicians are not representing their electorate anymore but rather are a puppets in the hands of various interests.

Don’t get me wrong here, I am not saying that free market is bad and all corporations are evil. What I am saying is that unchecked power and wrong optimization metric (money) is not a way to go. Neither am I delusional that EU politicians are not being lobbied. I just hope there are some mechanisms to make them less susceptible to it.