Lancaster to JFK Airport by Five Trains

 

Often, the cheapest direct flights to Europe fly from JFK Airport in Queens on the very eastern edge of NYC.  But that cheap fare and direct flight come with all the hassle and expense of getting to JFK.

The trip is cheaper for me and everyone else over 65 years old, than those not eligible for senior discounts.  

The five trains senior fares:

Amtrak Lancaster to Philadelphia:  $10.40

SEPTA Philadelphia to Trenton:  Free

NJ Transit Trenton to NYC:  $7.50

LIRR NYC to Jamaica Station: $5

JFK AirTrain to terminals: $8.50

Total:  $31.40 

The same five trains adult fares:

Amtrak Lancaster to Philadelphia:  $20

SEPTA Philadelphia to Trenton:  $9.25

NJ Transit Trenton to NYC:  $15

LIRR NYC to Jamaica Station: $5

JFK AirTrain to terminals: $8.50

Total: $57.75

Amtrak direct from Lancaster (or Philadelphia) to NYC is at least $45 often more than $70, today was $120.  Not the cheap way to go.  

How many direct flights go from JFK? Here is the FlightsFrom map.

Wherever you are going, have a great trip.

Apocalypse Now? Or Later...

Why are so many people obsessed with the End Times, the Apocalypse, with Biblical Prophecy, with the End of the World? It seems crazy. In some cases it definitely is crazy. Is it more crazy than those who believe a secular apocalypse is coming? Those who see a future destroyed by an environmental disaster, a nuclear holocaust, or a global pandemic are just as sincere in their belief of impending doom.  

And yet....

In a very real sense, each of us will have a small apocalypse happen to us. We all die.  

At the point of our own death, we are at Apocalypse Now. Whatever the afterlife is, we are in it the moment we are dead.  Whatever end awaits the world we inhabit now is irrelevant to those who are dead. So those worried about either a secular or a prophetic apocalypse will stop worrying once this life ends. 

There is a grandeur to apocalyptic belief.  The Greek root of the word is revelation in the sense of revealed knowledge known only to the special ones able to understand. Knowledge of the future delights us, makes us  feel special, even though no one really knows the future--read predictions from any era of human history for a catalogue of complete ignorance.  

But living through a real disaster, a foretaste of apocalypse, is never grand.  Accounts of survivors of disasters and war talk about the narrow focus that allowed them to survive. I have read several accounts of survivors of the firebombing of Tokyo in March 1945.  People survived who stayed low, made sure they could breathe and kept some sort of barrier between themselves and the conflagration. 

The near-death experiences I had are funny in remembering how very narrow my mental focus was. After a 75mph motorcycle crash in 1980, I looked at my knees torn open so I could see the ligaments and told the guy who ran to help me, "I have to get up and walk around or I'll be stiff tomorrow." He convinced me to wait for the ambulance. But I was right, I was very stiff, the next day, and for months.

The religious people obsessing about the Apocalypse are not going to like it when it comes to their planet. 

Stopping pandemic, climate disaster and nuclear war require good people who care about the world to take power and influence from the worst people.  Power shapes policy. Fighting for good government everywhere will slow secular disasters. Preserving and strengthening democratic governments allows people to fight for good causes.  For tyrants, a good cause is what they want. 

Taking power is a messy business. Those in power in democracies have to work with others, make compromises, and choose the lesser of two evils over and over again.  But good government is much better than any kind of Apocalypse.

Meditating in a Train

On a sunny morning, I sat near the end of a train to Philadelphia and meditated.  I was sitting on the north side of the train looking across the aisle through the south window.  Eastern Lancaster County farm country spread out in my field of vision framed by the horizontal window and the tall seat backs on the opposite side of the train car.  

In the guided meditation we were told to see life as a river flowing past.  From my framed perspective a very green world flowed past. Sometimes that world was nearly still, as when a field of young corn spread far out from the window with a red barn and white farmhouse a half-mile away at the far end of the field. 

A moment later the train passed between two embankments.  The trees and shrubs near the track were a multi-hued blur of many greens and browns and yellows.  Then the train passed over a bridge and the view was of the tops of trees in the creek valley below.

The view I saw, like a river, was in one way almost eternal.  The passengers on the first trains to Philadelphia from Lancaster more than a century ago saw trees and farm fields and barns and horses and fences spreading on either side of the train. 

And yet, those farmers and horses passed away generations ago. The trees along the tracks and at the edge of the farm fields are different trees than those lining the tracks in the 19th Century.  As with a river, things that appear the same are very different just under the surface.  Since 1994, I have made the trip to and from Philadelphia thousands of times.  Most of that time I would have thought nothing changed along those tracks.  But both the landscape and I have changed over those 30 years. 

As I write, 25,970 days of my life are behind me. The river of life keeps flowing in my life and in the world outside the window. The world changes, I change. My senses only connect with the world and my own physical life in the current moment. All the rest is memory and anticipation.  

I know life can change radically in a moment, and yet as long as I am alive, there will be a continuity, like a river, flowing.