The Upgrade: A Cautionary Tale of a Life Without Reservations Read Online Free PDF

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    After New Orleans, I’d hop on the Sunset Limited service and head west to Los Angeles. March was off-season on the railroads too, so I’d booked a one-month rail pass for $470, which would allow me unlimited travel throughout the whole of the US, and some of Canada, for thirty days. I’d only have to spend five nights on the train rather than in a hotel before the pass paid for itself.
    In fact, I’d become so intoxicated by the idea of seeing America by rail that, by the time I landed in New York, I’d planned a journey that lasted for the whole month of March. A huge circular route that would take me from Los Angeles to San Francisco to Salt Lake City (Mormons!) to Denver to Chicago to Pittsburgh to Washington, DC, and back to New York. Almost half that time would be spent on the train: a traveling hotel for less than $30 a night.

    As we began our descent into JFK, passing low over Long Island and the tightly packed houses with backyard swimming pools that seem to cluster on the approach to every airport in America, I remember feeling happy, and strangely organized. Like a schoolboy beginning a fresh exercise book, I had neatly copied my two-month travel and accommodation plan onto the first page of a brand new Moleskine notebook.
    As the year progressed, I was planning to use the book to plan each successive stage and to track how well I was keeping to my $100-a-day accommodation budget for the year. The numbers looked good: assuming I didn’t stray too far from my plan, February and March were going to come in well under budget, giving me plenty of flexibility for accommodation costs in April, May and into the peak season.
    Which was good, as I was past the point of no return: the last thing I’d done before going through to departures was to drop the key to my apartment in the mail to my (former) landlady along with a letter, politely but firmly telling her where to stick her rent hike. Now I had no ties, no fixed abode, and no responsibilities beyond a nightly hotel budget and the travel plan scribbled in my little black notebook.
    The final plan I’d made, in the cab to the hotel, was to cut down on drinking for a while. London had given my liver a thrashing. I’d read online that one of the signs of liver failure was a yellowing of the eyeballs and horizontal white lines across the fingernails. The fact that I’d looked up those symptoms in the first place, let alone that I was now checking for them every morning, suggested a month on the wagon might not be a bad thing.
    Instead of boozing, I’d drink orange juice and eat salads and go for long walks around the city. I’d get healthy again. Oh yes, I remember that all very clearly. The airport, the flight, the planning, the cab, the plan to stop drinking. I remember checking into the hotel and putting my bag in my room. I remember having a shower and changing my
shirt. I remember deciding to head out for a walk to orientate myself—to get a feel for where the local dry-cleaners and restaurants and bars could be found. I remember—ah, here we go, yes—I remember finding an Irish pub that looked friendly—Something O’Something’s—there was a plastic leprechaun, I definitely remember that—and I remember noticing the pretty brunette with the ponytail, wearing a CUNY sweatshirt and sitting on her own.
    She was reading Down and Out in Paris and London , which I remember I’d used as my opening line. “I’ve always found the Rough Guides to be more reliable than Orwell …” I shook my head, hoping it would hasten the return, if not of my memory then at least of the rest of my vision.
    I had a dim recollection of a bottle of wine and a conversation about how she was studying Contemporary World Literature. I’m sure I found a way—after we’d drunk, I think, shots of sambuca—to mention that I was a soon-to-be-published author, but at the same time to shrug it off like it was no big deal. I’m pretty sure we left the Irish bar and went