The house smells of hickory and vinegar this morning, with a pork shoulder slowly roasting in the oven, after searing and smoking on the small Weber grill in the backyard. Thanks to the instructions from Michael Ruhlman, making Eastern North Carolina barbecue at home is simple.

Once the meat was in the oven, I sat on the front porch to read more of the Sunday NYTimes. The Travel pages, my go-to section, included a Q&A on shopping the markets of Provence — Erin and I did that in June — and also a long essay about Amtrak's California Zephyr train that goes between Chicago and the San Francisco area.

Riding the Zephyr

When I was 11 or 12, living in Idaho, my family drove south to Winnemucca, Nevada, where we parked the station wagon on a side street, and boarded the Zephyr for a trip west. I spent much of that ride in the observation car, watching the desert and mountains and valleys roll by. I fondly remembered that train trip when Erin and I were whizzing through France on the TGV this summer. I love trains.

On that earlier trip, my family visited relatives in San Jose. They lived in a geodesic dome. We went to San Francisco one day, and I enjoyed the waterfront but was frightened by the homeless veteran ranting in the middle of the street.

We took the train back east, and disembarked at the Winnemmucca station in the middle of the night, to find that someone had siphoned the gas from the station wagon. I helped my dad push the car down the hill, while my mother steered and my four brothers slept in the back. We eventually found a gas station, filled up, and drove four hours to our home in Caldwell.