Emergency Rations: Lessons From a 16-Hour Amtrak Ride

I have this theory about successful budget transit: that the key to surviving a cross-country Greyhound ride, or a bargain-basement flight with three changes (all in small regional airports without so much as a Starbucks, naturally) is to never, ever be caught without a snack. After all, the only thing worse than being forced to buy, and eat, that simultaneously-stale-and-soggy packaged tuna sandwich at the truck stop is not having the option of eating anything at all. Right?

I first started packing what I think of as my “emergency rations” on a trip to India several years ago. The granola bars I’d stuffed into every corner of my backpack were handy on long train rides—and after I (inevitably) got sick, they became invaluable, my sole source of nutrition until I could stand to contemplate curry again. That success led to more advanced efforts: I can still remember the looks I got from other passengers when I boarded a Halifax-Montreal overnight train with an enormous Tupperware full of cold stir fry under my arm. But my habit of packing lunch didn’t evolve into a full-blown theory until one fateful Amtrak ride, from New York to Montreal, around this time last year.

The ride was supposed to last 10 hours, but the train was—unsurprisingly—delayed, repaired, and then delayed some more. I’d packed a sandwich for lunch, but by around 4 p.m. I was hungry again. I checked out the snack car: did I really want to pay $5 for a frozen-and-then-microwaved turkey sandwich? No, I did not. I held out, but by 6 p.m.—our scheduled arrival time—I was starving, and we were still nowhere near Montreal. I resigned myself to the microwaved turkey and headed back to the snack car—just in time to learn that they were sold out. Of everything. I was trapped on a snowbound, jam-packed train in the Adirondacks, and there was no food to be had.

We rolled into Montreal just before midnight, a full six hours late, and I made a mad dash for the Greyhound station, catching the last bus to Ottawa (and narrowly avoiding a cold night on a bench at the station) with minutes to spare. When I finally got home, 21 hours after I’d left a friend’s house that morning, I vowed never to be caught hungry again. Since then, I’ve made oatmeal in a styrofoam coffee cup, hauled a tub of hummus along 1900 miles of the I-10, and shamelessly lied about the peanut butter in my suitcase to the good folks at Barbados customs.

Here are a few of my “emergency rations” stand-bys:

Granola bars and dried fruit: These are my building blocks. They’re lightweight, easy to pack, and pretty well impossible to destroy.

Just-add-water soups: Your standard Cup-a-Soup works just fine, but I like to track down those packets of powdered miso soup, in the imports aisle, for the protein and the deliciousness.

Hummus and baby carrots: There aren’t many dairy-free dips out there, but hummus is one. Sure, warm hummus isn’t ideal, but it won’t kill you. Baby carrots stand up to rough treatment, too.

Peanut butter and jam: You can never go wrong with a PB&J. Just don’t forget a plastic bag or two, in case of jam leakage.

Sports drinks and Power bars: Widely available, these are my meal-replacements-of-last-resort. They’re not great, but hey, they beat a soda and a chocolate bar for dinner, right? Thanks to the health food craze, alternatives like V8 are now popping up in more vending machines, too.

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