Category: Travel Stories

This is about a January 2-12, 2026 trip on the Celebrity Ascent from/to Fort Lauderdale via the following ports:

• Tortola, British Virgin Islands
• St. Johns, Antigua
• Barbados
• St. Lucia
• St. Kitts

TL;DR: It’s a big ship, but you feel like family. The officers and staff are warm and friendly. The food is much better than on Royal Caribbean. The ship orchestra and the house band (Blue Jays with Jessica Gabrielle) were superb.

The Machine

Celebrity Ascent was completed in 2023 by Chantiers de l’Atlantique at a cost of $1.2 billion and holds about 3,300 passengers on a typical cruise, plus 1,400 crew. She’s notable for having a “Magic Carpet” that can slide up and down the ship, serving as a restaurant or bar most of the time, but also an embarkation platform for the ship’s tenders at ports where there isn’t a pier.

I don’t think she’ll win any beauty contests, but Ascent is very functional! In St. Lucia:

Note that there is no place on board to land a helicopter. If someone gets sick and needs to be evacuated, only the Coast Guard or one of the private contractors that the Europeans like to use can extract someone from the ship with a hoist.

Despite the potential of Starlink, Internet service actually provisioned was too slow for work (see Celebrity Starlink Wi-Fi Internet (3 Mbps at $1,000 per month)).

With 73,000 hp of Wärtsilä diesel power (five engines total), I’m not sure that Greta Thunberg will want to be a customer. That said, the hull design is 22 percent more fuel efficient than older ships. How is it possible to advance the art of naval architecture, already relatively mature during the Second Punic War (2,250 years ago)? The efficiency doesn’t come from an improved hull shape, but from pushing air out at the bow and, thus, enabling the ship to ride on a cushion of air rather than clawing at the draggy water. Prof. Dr. ChatGPT, Ph.D. Naval Arch. explains:

Modern cruise ships sometimes use air lubrication systems (ALS) that pump compressed air through tiny openings in the hull—usually along the flat bottom.

1. Reduced Skin-Friction Drag

• Water is ~800× denser and far more viscous than air.
• Replacing direct water–steel contact with air–water contact drastically lowers friction.
• Skin friction accounts for 50–80% of total resistance at cruise speeds.

2. Lower Fuel Consumption

Typical real-world savings:

• 5–10% fuel reduction on large ships
• Sometimes higher on wide, flat-bottomed hulls (like cruise ships)

Many modern ships include air lubrication, including vessels from:

• Mitsubishi Heavy Industries
• Wärtsilä
• Silverstream Technologies

Some notable cruise lines have retrofitted ALS systems to existing ships to improve efficiency.

Air-bubble (air-lubrication) systems have a longer history than most people realize—they date back over half a century, but only became practical for cruise ships fairly recently.

Air lubrication always worked—but it needed:

• Cheap, efficient electrical power onboard
• Sophisticated control software
• Environmental pressure (fuel cost + emissions)
• Better hull designs to keep the air where it belongs

Cruise ships finally ticked all the boxes.

The Stateroom

Booking about three weeks before departure we got literally the last room available on the ship, other than an inside cabin. We had a Concierge Class 285-square-foot stateroom including the veranda, which ends up becoming part of the room because of the top glass panel’s ability to slide vertically. It’s a clever design. Our room was laid out like the photo below, except that we had the two halves of the bed split with a night table in between. We could have used outlets on both sides of the bed, but found an outlet on only one side. The bathroom felt spacious.

The in-room HVAC doesn’t dehumidify as much as one would expect, nor does it bring significant fresh air into the room when the veranda window is sealed. Humidity without the window open would range from 50-65% (how do they avoid mold?) and CO2 levels in the middle of the night would go over 1,300 ppm (a real nightmare for Greta Thunberg!). Data from an Airthings Wave Enhance:

(I’ve seen CO2 go to 1,000 ppm in some hotels in humid environments, such as Miami. The ASHRAE standard is 800-1,000 ppm. CO2 by itself isn’t harmful (up to 5,000 ppm is tolerated in submarines), but is an indication of how much fresh air is coming in. Atmospheric CO2 is about 430 ppm. In my old Harvard Square condo (crummy 1880s construction) with just one person in the bedroom (me), the CO2 level reached 700 ppm in the middle of the night.)

The Passengers

Typical passengers seemed to be the same kinds of folks who would move into the The Villages (the most active over-55 active community in the U.S.?). Here are a couple of brothers who were, I think, traveling with their parents (flamingo suits from Amazon):

Exercise on Board

There is a beautiful and never-crowded gym on Deck 15 looking straight out at the sea in front of the ship:

Ascent lacks the “walking/jogging track all the way around Deck 5” that was a conventional exercise solution on older ships and instead has a bizarre serpentine track on (crowded) Decks 15 and 16 that is also used by people getting to and from lounge chairs. The lack of the conventional all-around-the-ship track was my biggest disappointment, which I guess means that everything else was at least pretty good!

Here’s the track. Notice that it isn’t shaded, unlike the typical round-the-ship track, and it is surrounded by clutter and people. (The Magic Carpet is in the background in its higher position.)

Food

The food is a significant step-up from what’s offered on Royal Caribbean, the parent company of which acquired Celebrity in 1997. This is good and bad, I guess, I lost weight during every Royal cruise and gained some weight on this Celebrity trip.

One important source of weight gain was that, unlike almost anyone in the U.S. and certainly unlike anyone on Royal, the baker for Ascent was able to make a high quality croissant. These were hard to resist at breakfast. (Fortunately, they were just as bad as Royal at making donuts! The worst Dunkin’ does a better job.) Then at about half the other meals in the buffet they had addictive bread pudding. There was always an option for Indian food at the buffet (4 or 5 dishes plus bread) and typically at least two or three other Asian choices.

A friend who owns some superb restaurants did the Retreat class on Celebrity and said that the dedicated restaurant for those elite passengers exceeded his expectations. We hit the specialty steak restaurant on Ascent and were somewhat disappointed. They can’t have a gas grill on board for safety reasons and, apparently, don’t know how to use induction and a cast iron pan. The steaks are, therefore, rather soggy. We ate in the main dining room and buffet restaurants after that.

The Pool

There’s an indoor solarium pool for Alaska and European cruises. Here’s the outdoor pool (big enough for water aerobics and kids to goof around; not really big enough to swim for exercise (though it emptied out towards sunset so maybe one could)):

Still open and empty because everyone is dressing for dinner?

There are some hot tubs, but they’re not quite hot enough (i.e., you could comfortably sit in one for an hour):

The Spa

If you’re doing an Alaska cruise it probably would make sense to pay for Aqua Class, which includes access to these heated loungers looking out at the sea (not all that appealing on a Caribbean cruise!). The SEA Thermal Suite:

Sports under the Stars

Our cruise coincided with NFL playoffs and people enjoyed the big screen experience in the “Rooftop Garden”:

Entertainment

The resident musicians, singers, and dancers were all great. I personally wish that cruise lines would do full plays or musicals rather than assemble songs from disparate sources and string them together, but apparently I’m a minority of one and attention spans dictate that shows last for just 45 minutes. Some of the guest stars were fantastic, notably Stephen Barry, an Irish singer with a fun attitude. Steve Valentine did a mind-bending Vegas-quality magic show. The technical aspects of the theater were up to Broadway standards or beyond.

Some of my favorite shows were ones where the ship’s orchestra got together with one of the singers from a smaller group and just played music. I’m more of a classical music fan, but the high level of talent live was compelling.

For Kids

There is a small Camp at Sea for kid kids, which some of the youngsters on board seemed to like. My 16-year-old companion rejected the Teen Club, finding only boys playing videogames.

Unlike on Royal Caribbean, there weren’t many under-18s on board. That said, I never saw a child or teen who seemed bored or unhappy. They were loving the food, the scenery, the pool, etc.

The Bridge

The bridge is worth seeing. It’s a masterpiece of ergonomics. Apparently, the captain takes direct control of the Azipods when docking. I had expected a joystick and a computer to figure out what to do with the bow thrusters and the Azipods, but that’s not how it is done.

The Dancers (Bear+Woman)

Art imitates life (“Based on May 2024 surveys, approximately 31% to 37% of women in the US and UK indicated they would prefer to be alone in the woods with a bear over a strange man, with higher rates among younger women (up to 53% for 18-29 year olds in the UK).”):

Conclusion

The whole trip cost about $8,000 including all of the extras, such as Internet and a couple of shore excursions, but no drinks package and only a few extra-cost drinks. We could have done it for less if we’d booked farther ahead or chosen a more basic room. It worked out to $800 per day for great scenery, fun entertainment, more food than I should have eaten, and an introduction to five islands, three of which were entirely new to me and the other two that I hadn’t visited for more than 20 years.

I will remember the warmth of the Celebrity crew. Everyone seemed genuinely interested in welcoming and taking care of us.

[For the cruise haters: We could have flown to a Caribbean from FLL, stayed in a hotel, picked restaurants, and flown back, for about the same price (or 50 percent more for the same level of luxury?). The boat ride itself has value to me, however. I love to be on deck when arriving or departing. It’s a different kind of understanding of how the Caribbean is put together geographically and culturally than one might get from being airdropped by Airbus A320.]

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We recently took a cruise on the Celebrity Ascent to five Caribbean islands: Tortola, Antigua (annoying/aggressive vendors at the pier), Barbados, St. Lucia (nicer than I remember from 35 years ago, but statistically much more dangerous), and St. Kitts (minus Nevis). St. Kitts turned out to be our favorite among the above. Orientation map:

Basseterre:

(Norwegian Epic at left and Marella Discovery nursing her calf at right.)

The drivers tend to be colorful:

Our official Celebrity shore excursion consisted of a 22 people on a 22-passenger minibus whose driver went by “WhatsApp” and doubled as a guide. He showed us around downtown and then took us north towards Brimstone Hill Fortress National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Roughly once per minute he honked the minibus horn, not due to Maskachusetts-style road rage but because we were passing someone he knew. He would add a straight-arm wave that looked a lot like the purported Nazi salute of Elon Musk (neither, in fact, a Nazi salute according to Wikipedia, which requires the palm to be down). With a population for both islands of around 55,000, one is never far from a friend or acquaintance on St. Kitts and Nevis. (Our cheerful driver was never that far from an ex-girlfriend either. He had five children with three different females, each of whom had kicked him to the curb. “I live with my Daddy now,” he said, without apparent disappointment.)

Brimstone Hill Fortress is a great example of the wastefulness of military spending. The British spent 100 years building the fortress and it fell after one month to a French siege. Note that the Kittitians follow the same pricing program for their national park that the hated dictator Donald Trump has imposed for U.S. National Parks, i.e., foreigners must pay a higher rate:

Maybe the British troops were easily defeated because they were always on their phones?

If the guns of the day had been of Iowa-class quality they could have shelled Sint Eustatius (still part of the Netherlands):

Immigration has It’s sobering to think how short-lived the sugar industry was on St. Kitts and similar islands, considering the destruction to native peoples and cultures that resulted from the immigration of Europeans and Africans (involuntary, mostly, for the latter).

The victors get to design and print the stamps:

Our driver explained that as St. Kitts became wealthier, the native-born didn’t want to work in the cane fields. “We imported labor from Trinidad,” he said, “but it turned out not to make economic sense because they remitted most of their wages back home. So we shut down the sugar industry.” (Of course, in the U.S. it makes perfect economic sense to bring in migrants who will remit their wages back to Somalia!)

We eventually worked our way down towards the southern portion of the island, home to a Marriott and a new luxurious Park Hyatt that our driver says is now the best hotel. One can see the Atlantic to the left and the Caribbean to the right.

A few scenes of downtown:

The handset was missing from this old phone booth. If the U.S.-European war over Greenland destroys most of the Earth and all printed and electronic records how would a future archaeologist determine the function of the miniature red house?

What would a basic room at the Park Hyatt cost for January 25-31?

Burdened with kids? A one-bedroom villa is $4,105 per night. I guess the average American will have to keep toiling at his/her/zir/their job to support the Somali day cares rather than enjoy life on St. Kitts during the peak winter season!

St. Kitts also might be a no-go zone for Massachusetts elites. I didn’t see a rainbow flag on any of the churches nor on any house and it’s tough to stay healthy because smoking “essential” marijuana is prohibited at the portside food court.

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Despite the epic length of Minneapolis in December, I neglected to include a few photos. Here are official posters within the Skyway from the local government:

(Unless the person in the vaccine promotion photo is at least 75, he/she/ze/they isn’t eligible for both flu (age minimum: 65) and COVID-19 (age minimum: 75) shots in the Science-driven UK NHS system.)

What kind of person can drink a “Homie” Coke without being guilty of cultural appropriation?

The smartest folks in Minnesota says that Somalis “[contribute] $8 billion to the Minnesota economy” (presumably annually):

Vang: Somalis don’t contribute anything? How about $8 billion to the Minnesota economy. https://t.co/srVSXEj9LB

— The Minnesota Star Tribune (@StarTribune) December 10, 2025

This could be true if $8 billion in federal welfare funds flow into Minnesota because 80 percent of Somalis in Minnesota are entitled to welfare:

But if this is a contribution in the conventional (non-welfare) sense, why isn’t there any other country in the world that will pay us to send them Somalis whom we have chosen to deport? Or that will set up a migrant recruiting booth in Mogadishu? Other countries don’t want to become $8 billion richer every year?

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Having heard that politicians and bureaucrats in Minneapolis were handing out $1 billion to anyone who asked nicely, no matter how ridiculous the stated reasons, (NYT) I decided to head there in early December. Sadly, I didn’t find Tim Walz as easy a mark as Haji Osman Salad, Sharmarke Issa, and Khadra Abdi did, nor as easy a mark as 27-year-old Abdifitah Mohamud Mohamed did, and, therefore, I was compelled to slave away in a downtown office tower for three days. This is what I left behind (Palm Beach climbing out of PBI):

I arrived into a city where people need to be reminded to wear “bottoms” in the -7 degree temps:

(Shout-out to the folks who made the light rail system actually go into the airport and scheduled trains for every 15 minutes, even on a Sunday evening! (I love public transit almost as much as Ayatollah Mamdani and agree with him that it should be free! (so as to declutter our road system, designed for a country of 150 million people and now overwhelmed by a country of 350 million-ish))

The view from the office building where I worked included the Federal Courthouse and, just behind it, a marijuana store. In between, apparently, there used to be a strip club:

The fabulous Skyway system allows for a lot of urban trekking without ever being exposed to the harsh elements. This connects private and government buildings throughout the town at the 2nd floor level.

Senator Amy Klobuchar says that the hemp industry (a.k.a., marijuana, cannabis, or weed) is a cornerstone of the Minnesota economy (second only to diverting federal funds into the hands of young fraudsters?):

MN’s hemp industry powers farmers, small businesses, and thousands of jobs.

I stood with our farmers and business leaders to oppose last-minute federal overreach that would harm Minnesota’s economy and hurt consumers. pic.twitter.com/I2eMKgxTSx

— Amy Klobuchar (@amyklobuchar) November 25, 2025

Consistent with Senator Klobuchar’s promotion, I was able to find marijuana for sale right within the Skyway system.

The only depiction of a heterosexual family that I found within the entire Skyway system:

(I asked Grok to analyze the above image, without saying anything about the races of the people in it: “Specifically for Black husband/white wife unions, studies show they have about twice the divorce rate of white husband/white wife couples by year 10, or a 44% higher likelihood overall compared to the national average.” ChatGPT and Gemini refused to speculate on this subject.)

I had to try the cuisine for which Minneapolis is best-known, i.e., Goat Biryani (“Tasty Halal goat meat served over aromatic biryani rice, topped with sautéed vegetables, raisins, and fresh herbs for a rich and satisfying meal.”) I also got a “Sambusa”, not to be confused with an Indian samosa, and they threw in a banana for reasons that were never explained:

This was at Mama Safia’s, a restaurant that was torched in the peaceful protests of 2020. NPR:

After dinner, it was time to visit LITT Pinball Bar.

In my peregrinations on the Skyway, I stumbled into a government building:

Note that the government takes the official position that it should spend taxpayer dollars on “disparity reduction”:

If Person A works 0 hours per week and Person B works 80 hours per week, it is the government’s job to try to make sure that they both have equal quality housing. If Person A played Xbox for all of K-12 and Person B studied then the government is required to spend money on getting A and B similar jobs (“Employment”).

To listen to public officials and local media in Minneapolis, the city is an integrated “community” of Somalis, white people with the federal checkbook, et al. That was the opposite of my experience. I never saw a Somali or Somali-American eating lunch with a white person in any of the dozens of Skyway restaurants that I looked into. I was the only non-Somali in the Somali restaurant. Everyone in the pinball bar was white. The Somali-American at the front desk of the office tower where I was working had so little connection to what went in the building that he couldn’t tell me if the tenant I was visiting was in his building or not, much less on which floor (the tenant occupies two entire floors of the building; the front desk guy had been on the job for 1.5 months). The two Somali Uber drivers that I had were unable to follow directions in English from the Uber app and took numerous wrong turns (this worked against their financial interest since Uber didn’t give them more money than the original quote). (By contrast, Uber drivers from Egypt and Ethiopia were able to follow the route. I never had a native-born Uber driver. My drivers were Mehad, Waleed, Hassan, and Abdihakim.) Consistent with Minnesota Compass data, in which two-thirds of Somali households had reported income of less than 200% of official poverty, I never interacted with a Somali in a job that would have disqualified him or her from taxpayer-funded housing, health care, food, and smartphone. (That’s not to say that a non-dependent Somali household doesn’t exist in Minnesota; the chart below shows that 19% of Somali immigrant households don’t receive what is no longer called “welfare”. Also, keep in mind that “native households on welfare” below would include some households headed by children of immigrants.)

Speaking of people who are eligible for welfare… the public library is on the Skyway system and it is a magnificent building that also seems to double as a homeless shelter:

The library doesn’t celebrate excellence in writing, but rather diversity in writing:

To my delight, there was a magazine on how progressives who mouth land acknowledgments can put their words into action and actually give their land back to Native Americans:

For a city that claims to welcome Islamic migrants, the religion of Rainbow Flagism is surprisingly prominent. A “Be Proud At Your Library” rainbow library card is available, for example:

Within this vast array of Rainbow Flagism books, Has the Gay Movement Failed? from University of California Press was a standout:

He revisits the early gay movement and its progressive vision for society and puts the left on notice as failing time and again to embrace the queer potential for social transformation. Acknowledging the elimination of some of the most discriminatory policies that plagued earlier generations, he takes note of the cost—the sidelining of radical goals on the way to achieving more normative inclusion.

Rainbow Flagism is, of course, not the only religion covered by the library. Patrons can prepare for Kamala Harris’s favorite holiday with some featured books:

The library heavily features books on fascism, a timely subject now that the U.S. is under the boot of a fascist dictatorship (one that, nonetheless, the people who alert us to the fascism won’t flee; instead of moving to Canada, Mexico, Europe, or Asia, millions of Americans say that (1) the U.S. is governed by a fascist dictatorship, and (2) they are taking zero steps to get out of the U.S. and into a non-fascist democracy).

A couple of items for sale at MSP that relate to the handing out of $1 billion in taxpayer dollars that Americans outside of Minnesota had to pay:

A Follower of Science at the airport who chose to wear a respirator over a full beard:

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I want our kids to appreciate Playstation 9 when they’re adults and, thus, I take them to art museums whenever we travel. The Rhode Island School of Design Museum is a decent-sized crowd-free museum in which the art can actually be appreciated. We learned that the ubiquitous Dale Chihuly is a RISD graduate and former teacher:

We also learned about queer knitting and queer resistance:

And that one could get academic credit for taking a course titled “Queer People/Places/Things”:

At the subscription library Providence Athenaeum we found a database #Resisting computerized management:

One lonely storefront clung to the five-year-old theory that Black Lives Matter:

All of the other churches and shops that we found with social justice messages were consistent with Is LGBTQIA the most popular social justice cause because it does not require giving money?

An Episcopal church associates the sacred Rainbow Flag with a quote from Jesus: “Love one another, as I have loved you.” Is the implication that Jesus went to the bathhouse regularly? If not, how is a practitioner of Rainbow Flagism loving his 25 or 50 new friends the way that Jesus loved people?

A United Church of Christ:

The First Baptist Church mixes Rainbow Flagism with cautionary words about the dictator in the White House: “Speech Remains Free When We Pay Attention”. The folks who supported forced vaccination and forced masking celebrate #BodilyFreedomForever:

Rainbow-first retail was on display in the 25-year-old Providence Place mall, now in receivership.

My favorite store, however, was Craftland (downtown; featured in the New York Times, as noted below):

(They admit that the land they’re on is stolen, but won’t pay rent to the Native Americans who are the rightful owners?)

And, of course, it all comes back to Queers for Palestine:

A few more photos of this shop’s windows:

Related:

• A visit to Providence, Rhode Island (Part 1)

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I visited Providence, Rhode Island to check in with a professor at Brown and to torture our 10-year-old with some art museums.

The highlight of the visit was the massive liberation of previously sequestered carbon on Saturday, September 27 via Waterfire.

Here is some of the wood set up and also one of Elizabeth Warren’s cousins paddling in a dugout canoe:

While there we learned that cherished American liberty has been replaced by the cruel tyrannical rule of a king. Also, there is no urgency about protesting the situation and we can endure three additional weeks of tyranny before holding a “No Kings” march:

It’s important to “fight Trumps fascism”, but only one day out of every 14:

While living under fascism don’t forget to also help support Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad by feeding every Gazan fighters’ kids:

The RISD Museum’s Charity, circa 1550, reminds us that we will never run out of resources if we promise to fund an unlimited number of other people’s children:

The officials who work in the State House want to remind you to (1) use all of your federal EBT/SNAP benefits, and (2) adopt a pit bull.

The 10-year-old caught a break when we spent the afternoon at the Electromagnetic Pinball Museum, about 12 minutes north in Pawtucket. It’s an all-white group of people embedded in an all-Black neighborhood of, I think, Cape Verdean migrants enjoying a comprehensive welfare lifestyle. Here’s a thoughtful exploration of AANHPI cultural heritage and also a machine with an Elizabeth Warren theme:

What’s on the mind of Brown students? Free Palestine and Boycott Israel; Fight Against Fascism; organize a bbq restricted to students with one skin color; go on vacation with fellow students of one skin color.

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Amtrak is spending $2.5 billion of your tax dollars on “NextGen” Acela train sets. Here’s a report on an August 2025 trip via OldGen Acela.

My $275 first class ticket from New York to Boston entitled me to use the Metropolitan Lounge at New York’s Penn Station, now named after Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a liberal in his time and a reactionary conservative by the standards of today’s Democratic Party. In his 1965 report, for example, he seems to be engaging in victim-blaming:

The percent of nonwhite families headed by a female is more than double the percent for whites. Fatherless nonwhite families increased by a sixth between 1950 and 1960, but held constant for white families. It has been estimated that only a minority of Negro children reach the age of 18 having lived all their lives with both of their parents. …The Breakdown of the Negro Family Has Led to a Startling Increase in Welfare Dependency.

(Little did he imagine that white Americans would be incented to catch up to their Black brothers, sisters, and binary-resisters by the Family Support Act of 1988, which required states to set up child support formulae such that family court lawsuits would have a guaranteed minimum profit.)

Here’s the view from the lounge’s balcony:

The interior of the lounge, which offers free sandwiches, salads, chips, non-alcoholic drinks, etc.:

Due to the lack of crowding and the friendliness of the employees, this lounge is 20X nicer than what the airline lounges have become. Working WiFi was provided for those who want to sit with their laptops.

Separately, the lounge has a good view of the main hall’s video wall in which the New York City government promises to hire, and then retain forever (“strong labor protections”), anyone fired by the federal government for laziness and/or incompetence:

My initial Facebook post about the trip:

Just leaving Penn Station on time via Acela. Great crew on AMTRAK. The train itself bucks and bumps so much that they should have announcements in Mandarin to reassure our Chinese brothers and sisters that a derailment isn’t imminent (high-speed rail in China is perfectly smooth even above 200 mph). Maybe the idea is that everyone will be too plastered to notice?

The food in the lounge, though simpler, was generally superior.

Some hard-working guys:

My follow-up comments to the Facebook post, not in quote style for readability…

Cars and trucks were blowing past us on I-95, but now I think we’re matching their speed.

We’re in the middle of a one-hour run to New Haven. The iPhone reports a blistering speed.

we’ve cut back to a speed where we won’t have to adjust our watches for time dilation under Mileva Marić’s theory of special relativity (popularized by her husband).

Wifi doesn’t work. AMTRAK needs to adopt Starlink! [The new $2.5 billion cars won’t have Starlink, but “5G” (same idea as what the old cars have and that didn’t work for my trip.]

Our AI overlords have access to data showing that I’m on a train track and moving at 30-60 mph. Also it is time to point out that an AirTag is moving with me on the same track. Maybe this would be a useful warning for someone who owned a private rail car attached to the back of an AMTRAK train?

Approaching Westerly, CT at left lane pickup truck speed on I-95 in South Florida.

15 minutes before Providence we hit 150 mph:

Arrived on time at South Station, just under four hours after leaving Penn Station. Perfect no-waiting connection to the Red Line. Got to the Harvard Square apartment at almost exactly the same as Google Maps had predicted for leaving Penn Station at 6:30 pm by car.

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