In 1984, when Andrew Bader was 5, his parents took him on a cross-country train from California to New York. It was a special trip, one of the last experiences Bader shared with both parents before they split up. Decades later, in 2021, Bader decided to reenact a portion of the trip with his father and 6-year-old son. The plan was for the three generations of Baders to take Amtrak’s Coast Starlight train from the San Francisco Bay Area to Seattle, a 22-hour journey, and then catch a Seattle Mariners game at T-Mobile Park.
“I got from my father a love for baseball, and I was trying to connect that between generations,” said Bader, a Bay Area public school teacher. If all went well, he hoped to repeat the trip every summer, as a new family tradition.
Bader bought the Amtrak tickets in early May 2021, with a plan to travel in late July. But in early July, he found out that a wildfire had damaged a bridge on the train’s path, i... Read more
