Soapbox idol speech: The libertarian case for trains and urbanization

Why do so many libertarians hate trains? It’s like hating guns or free beer. Dagney Taggert would like to have a word.  So, let’s talk about why trains and urbanization are wicked awesome.

First off, did you know a double-tracked rail line can move as many people as an 8-lane highway? That’s right! That’d be like squeezing Chris Christie and Lizzo into a smart car—ridiculously efficient and a bit hard to believe, but it’s true!

We live in a car-centric society. Sure, cars are great, but let’s be real: being stuck in traffic is the opposite of freedom. If freedom means yelling at Masshole drivers and crying over gas prices, I’ll take a train ticket please.

Now, trains—especially those powered by overhead wires from clean, cheap nuclear energy—are a sustainable alternative. Pollution from cars? Forget it! It’s a property rights violation! Over 50 thousand Americans die every year from respiratory illnesses caused by pollution alone. Trains can help reduce that, and guess what? They’re safer and faster.

Urbanization isn’t just for hipsters. It’s about creating ‘third places’ where people can mingle. You know, like the libertarian version of Cheers or PorcFest.

Contrary to popular belief, our car obsession isn’t a free market triumph. It’s because of restrictive rules that make other transportation options nearly impossible. And don’t get me started on zoning laws—they’re like the fun police or the Federal Reserve. They ruining everything.

I dream of a New Hampshire with greater supply of housing and walkable towns. This isn’t a leftist conspiracy. Towns like Portsmouth and Peterborough are popular because they developed without these silly restrictions. Picture hopping on a train in Nashua, heading to the White Mountains for a ski trip, and not worrying about getting into an accident in a snowstorm. You can read a book, sip coffee, and enjoy the ride.

Trains can be privately operated, but to make this viable, our socialized highways and roads need to be privatized too. Look at France—their entire highway system is privately operated and funded. Who knew we could learn something from the French?

Cars and trains complement each other. A highly developed society needs a mix of transportation options. And let’s face it, automating trains is way easier than automating cars, Elon Musk!

So here’s my call to action, libertarians, let’s start by privatizing parts of our road system. Let’s create a New Hampshire where multiple robust and private transportation options make us truly free and happy. And who doesn’t want that? Probably the same people that think Bernie Sanders should run PorcFest next year.

Total eclipse of the heart

Total Eclipse on Back Lake

Totality was an experience like none other.  At the beginning of the month, I rented a cabin with friends at Tall Timber Lodge in Pittsburg, NH, at the tippy top of the state, where New Hampshire, Quebec, and Maine all meet.  We spent the weekend driving around Northern NH and the Eastern Townships of Quebec (Estrie), which I will describe more after I talk about the eclipse.

In the late morning of the eclipse, people began assembling outside by Back Lake, the small lake next to Tall Timber.  The property faces the lake to the South, so we had an excellent front row seat to the eclipse.  Multiple amateur astronomers had telescopes with solar filters set up.  The head of the NH Astronomical Society was also there and was happily talking away about eclipses.

At around 14:30, the partial eclipse started, which was about an hour before totality.  We put our eclipse glasses on and began to see the sun get chomped away bit-by-bit by the moon.  We posed for some photos with the glasses, because of course if there wasn’t a picture, did it really happen?

About 30 min prior to totality, the light started to get noticeably flat, the air got cooler, and I put my jacket back on.  T-minus 20 minutes is when things started to get noticeably eerie.  The light got even flatter and even dimmer.  It was as if I was wearing yellow filtered glasses.  The shadows got very strange. A friend brought a cheese grater and you could even see crescent-shaped shadows from the holes of the grater rather than something more circular. Wild! The energy and build-up at this point was thru the roof. My heart was beating fast at this point.

Then it happened.  Within 20 seconds, the light switch was turned out, the sun disappeared behind the shadow of the moon, and the corona haze of the sun dazzled around the outline of the moon.  As an added treat, there was even a red speck visible with the naked eye, which I was later told was a solar flare. 

The shadow bands were arguably the wildest effect.  If you have a white sheet or a white background on the ground you can make out wild wavy rapidly moving shadows from the sun’s corona.  This is extremely difficult to capture with a camera. The added bonus was that we were standing directly next to frozen lake, so the entire lake started to shimmer with shadow bands.  Incredible! I’ll never forget it.

I won’t forget the drive too. It took 10 hours to drive about 160 miles, including a two hour stop. Oh well. The eclipse was still worth it.

Hefeweizen at Schilling Brewery

The weekend leading up to the eclipse on that Monday was a fun time too. We stopped at Schilling Brewery in Littleton, which is perched next to the Ammonoosuc River in downtown Littleton, which is getting nicer every year. The brewery proudly does not serve any IPAs, but rather an excellent selection of German and European style beers. Good smash burgers too. Poutine was also on the menu, which was foreshadowing our venture into Québec.

Littleton is still only two-thirds the way up NH, it was still another hour plus drive through Coös County to our destination. The road meanders next to the Connecticut River up to Colebrook and then abruptly ascends further into the wilderness next to a small mountain stream. For the next 15 miles: no cell phone reception, no houses, just trees and French Canadian radio stations.

After bushwhacking 15 miles, we arrived in the town center of Pittsburg. Don’t blink or else you’ll miss it, as I once heard someone joke. Pittsburg is an outpost town and the result of a survey dispute.  For many years, in the 1800s the town declared itself to be its own independent county, the Indian Stream Republic, before formally deciding to join New Hampshire.

Pittsburgh Center

Tall Timber Lodge is located on Back Lake, a couple miles outside the center of town. In season, which is Summer and Winter, they have a restaurant and cabins for rent. Early spring is their down season, so we were on our own for food. I’m told Tall Timber is a big destination for snowmobilers.

On Sunday, we drove across the border to Magog, Québec, which is a bit more cosmopolitan than the region on other side of the border. We loaded up on artisan cheese, espresso, and croissants. We also stopped at Bleu Lavande and Abbaye de Saint-Benoît-du-Lac, a beautiful modern cathedral nested above Lake Memphrémagog. The monks at the abby famously produce cheese and cider.

Abbaye de Saint-Benoît-du-Lac

For dinner, we ate at the micro-brasserie la Memphré in downtown Magog. The appetizers included bread and a warm compote of cheese and caramelized onions. Delicious. I rounded out the meal with a glass of wine and more bread and fondue made with cheese from the abby. Bread and cheese are my comfort foods.

Oh Magog

Afterwards, we made our way back into the woods of Pittsburg and prepared for the eclipse day ahead. Great weekend!

PorcFest XX in review

Franconia Notch timelapse

I zipped thru Franconia Notch last week descending into the Great North Woods. The weather, scenery, and culture largely change in New Hampshire as you pass thru the Notch. Some would say it’s like entering into Shangri-La. More accurately during the second-to-last week of June, it’s like entering Galt’s Gulch.

Last week marked my second PorcFest, so I was no longer a newbie to this festival. Many of the regulars assumed that I had been more times, which is probably a sign that I’m becoming a familiar face amongst the porcupines in New Hampshire.

For those who don’t know, PorcFest is the Porcupine Freedom Festival at Roger’s Campground in Lancaster, NH. It’s basically Burning Man for liberty-minded people in the White Mountains, or as I’ve also heard it described: “Woodstock for rational people”.

What I like the most about PorcFest is that everyone is pursuing their own ideal experience, which maximizes the amount of happy campers.

Last year, I felt more compelled to stick with the few people that I knew, but this year I felt like I could freewheel and choose more of my own adventure. I ended up meeting more people this way and I never felt alone. Of course I did merge back into my core friend group throughout the course of a day and often at the hub that I was camping at. The beauty of freedom and individuality becomes more apparent when its concentrated in a single village like PorcFest.

David Friedman (son of Milton Friedman)

Other than some of the events hosted at the hub that I camped at, which already received enough publicity in the media, some of my favorite events and speakers were: RFK Jr, David Friedman, Comedy night, Matt and Terry Kibbe’s talk on Georgian wine, and Ian Underwood’s lecture on the Croydon affair.

Radical Expression Dance Party

The festival is very freeform and decentralized, so there are many smaller events that are organized at individual “hubs”, which are campsites. This is the single best organizational feature of the festival. The second best feature is that all the events from all the hubs get put on a giant calendar so that you can prioritize your time.

The festival comes alive at night

All walks of life attend the festival from families to dead-heads and from gay men to evangelical Christians. Despite the stark differences, we overwhelmingly get along peacefully in the closest thing to Galt’s Gulch that has ever existed.

Looking south at the Mt Washington and Presidential Range

It almost brought tears to my eyes seeing the mountains tower above the valley in the distance. I can’t believe how lucky I am to have been born in such a scenic and free place. Roger’s Campground faces right at the north side of the Presidential Range, so you’re staring right at the most prominent peaks in the East. Even while taking an outdoor shower at the PorcShowers you could see amazing views of the mountains. I grew up in the very southern part of New Hampshire, so prior to PorcFest, I never had an excuse to spend significant time in the Great North Woods.

True freedom shouldn’t have to exist for only one week out of the year, but its miles further than what is being achieved (or really just failing) in other locales. Will I be back to PorcFest? That’s an unequivocal yes.

Switzerland or New Hampshire?

My first ski pass

I have early childhood memories, from around age 3, of riding up the J-bar with my father at Pats Peak in Henniker, NH. I really started learning to ski when I was 7 years old, when my parents put me in ski lessons at Mt Sunapee. In upper elementary school, the entire class would take ski lessons every Monday night under the lights at Pats Peak. In middle school, my family would take many ski vacations in Northern New England. In College, our ski club would go each weekend to a different mountain in Vermont and New York.

When I started working in New Jersey, I didn’t have good access to mountains. I would really only ski one or two times a season usually when I would visit family in New England. One time a co-worker took me to Blue Mountain in the Poconos in Pennsylvania. It wasn’t much bigger than the bunny hill at Pats Peak. The first time I ever skied out west was during an extended business trip to Colorado when I skied at Breckenridge. I was there for 2 months in the winter, so I skied nearly every weekend. A-basin was my favorite.

Winter of 21/22, I had just moved back to New England, so I skied a handful of times with friends and family. This most recent winter, I decided to finally break down and buy a ski pass. I chose an Epic Northeast Pass, which gave me access to about half of the ski areas in Northern New England. The other half are on the Ikon Pass, and a few stragglers on on the Indy Pass book.

I have to say it makes skiing much more pleasurable not feeling obligated to ski all day to get my money’s worth. I skied 16 days this season, which is a new personal record. Many of those days were just a few quick ski runs. I liked doing the ski pass enough to purchase a pass for next season. Maybe a trip out west is on the horizon for next season.

New Hampshire travel guide and drone scenery

Excellent travel guide and drone scenery produced by Tampa Aerial Media in 2020. I’ll forgive them, since the drone scenes are excellent, but I want to note a couple corrections. US Rte 3 continues to the Québec border crossing in Pittsburg, NH —NOT Maine. The Memorial Bridge in Portsmouth, NH, rebuilt in 2013, is not the original bridge, which was built in 1923.

The Mountain Division

North Conway Depot was designed by Bostonian Architect Nathaniel J Bradlee

The Maine Central Railroad’s Mountain Division thru Crawford Notch, New Hampshire, is the crown jewel of the historic mainline railroads in New England. The road snakes into the White Mountains to Crawfords Station, about 25 miles north from North Conway. An inactive right-of-way continues another 45 miles from Crawfords to St Johnsbury, VT.

Other than the grand scenery, the significance of this line was that it once served as the primary route for freight traveling from Maine to points west of Chicago via Canada. After the consolidation of the Boston & Maine and Maine Central railroads in the 1980s, the preferred route for freight was the St Lawrence and Atlantic Railroad via Gorham and Berlin, NH, which has more gentle grades.

Nowadays, the glory of the Mountain Division can still be experienced aboard the Conway Scenic Railroad‘s Mountaineer train, which my parents and I had the pleasure of doing the week before Thanksgiving this year, during my interim between jobs. This was the Conway Scenic Mountaineer’s final excursion of the 2021 season and the neat thing about the ride late in the year is the ability to see the snow-capped peaks without foliage blocking the views.

Drew’s reflection onboard Conway Scenic’s Mountaineer on the Maine Central’s Mountain Division in Crawford Notch, New Hampshire

Trip highlights

  • North Conway Depot – The mountain backdrop with Cathedral Ledge and the atypical architecture for New England make this a photo destination unto itself. This is was designed by Bostonian architect Nathaniel J Bradlee and is considered a unique blend of Victorian and Imperial Russian architecture. Bradlee was an accomplished architect and designed many of the brownstones in Boston’s South End.

  • Frankenstein Trestle – It’s a long curved trestle. A lot of bystanders take pictures of the traversing trains and I’ve spotted several great drone shots on Instagram of trains on this trestle. Honestly, it’s not the most scenic part of the ride, but it must have been quite the engineering feat when the railroad was built in the mid-1800s.

  • Mt Washington views from Crawford Notch – Nothing short of amazing. I’ve been on many trains thru the Swiss Alps and the views along here are in the same league.

  • Crawfords Station – Another fine example of Bradlee’s work, although slightly more standard Victorian. There are many excellent photos ops of the station with Crawford Notch in the background.

  • AMC Highlands Center – Probably Appalachian Mountain Club’s most modern lodging facility. It has a gift shop, restrooms, a cafe, and many scenic vistas. This is walking distance from Crawfords Station.

One of the big themes of the guided narration during the train ride was mortality. Both the aspect of inhabiting an avalanche-prone valley and operating a railroad in the wilderness a century ago were dangerous prospects. The conductor memorialized many lives lost trying to tame the savage elements of the White Mountains. Along the railroad itself, there were numerous accidents, including a particularly bad train boiler explosion. It’s no wonder that the American Indians demurred from inhabiting much of the rugged terrain and were also reluctant to ascend the high peaks.

Conway Scenic trains reversing direction at Crawfords Station

This was a long ride, sitting at about 5 hours round trip. It’s unfortunate that the tracks in the low country leading up to the notch aren’t in slightly better condition allowing for faster speeds, since the scenery is not quite as interesting as it is along the notch. However, the weather was as good as it possible could have been since Mt Washington’s summit is usually hidden in the clouds the vast majority of the year. Also fortunately, the seats are very comfortable and the large windows offer the audience world-class views. This was a wow.

Winter in New England

This was my first video to feature a plane. The preview image shows the scene where my father and I were flying the family plane, which we refer to as “The Demon”, around the Bretton Woods side of Mount Washington in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Mount Washington is most prominent mountain on the East Coast, even more topographically prominent than nearly all mountains in Colorado, including Pikes Peak.

As I’ve gotten more comfortable with my drone, I’ve gotten better at capturing scenes with the drone far away from where I’m standing with the controller. (With visual observers, of course, in case the FAA is reading my blog). The scene with the kite ski was filmed while I’ll sat comfortably in my porch. The lighthouse scene in Portsmouth, NH was filmed all the way across the harbor in New Castle at Fort Stark.

In addition to being a drone pilot, I’m also a private pilot, so I’ll be sure to feature more aviation content as time goes on. I’ll also go into more depth on the technical aspects of my drone in future posts.