The story of my train trip:

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And so it begins…

Slowly.

After a weekend of goodbyes including the Birthday Bash in Ann Arbor, time with Rob and Beth, plus my friends Andy and Carrie, I stayed up all Sunday night packing. Of course, I still forgot some things. Well, I didn’t forget things entirely. I just didn’t bring enough of some things that I should have. But I’ll be fine.

At some point, Sunday ended and Monday began. Around 3am, I think. That’s about when I started getting a bit frantic that I was running out of time and wasn’t going to get everything done. That turned out to be the case, but I cut my losses and made it to Dad’s house a bit after 5am. I was getting ready for a 7:10am train out of Toledo, so that still gave us enough time to get there.

Note: if riding Amtrak, call ahead to see if anything unusual has happened…like say a train derailment…before you leave for the station. *laugh* So you see where this is going, don’t you?

We got to the station around 6:40am and then they announced that a freight train had derailed east of Toledo, blocking tracks in both directions with hazardous materials. *sigh* They sent a bus to take people from Chicago to Cleveland, stopping at all the stations along the way. On the plus side, this gave us time to get breakfast at Denny’s!

Eventually, at about 9am, the charter (mini-)bus picked us up in Toledo. Most of the seats were filled when we got on, which made it really interesting when 5 additional people got on at a later stop! *grin* From that ride, I now know some of the secret, inner-workings of Amtrak. *bwahahaha* For all their routes, with the exception of the east coast corridor, Amtrak leases the tracks from a freight company. So, Amtrak customers are at their mercy. Thankfully, the Amtrak staff were very helpful and apologetic about the problems. Lunch was even provided for free. *burp*

It’s now nearly 7pm and the train is bumping along. Maybe around 8:15, we will be in Harrisburg, which puts us in Lancaster about 9pm. Not bad, considering that we were scheduled to be there at 7:45 and there have been all these problems! Nice people on the train. The 2 amish couples and their children that we picked up on the bus are on the train too. Young mothers and young babies, but very cute (kids) and friendly (their parents).

I’m definitely not traveling light! My big backpack is stuffed full of stuff, a suitcase on wheels is near capacity, my small backpack holds my laptop and some other goodies, plus I have another shoulder bag for books, camera, etc. I’ve managed fairly well so far but I wonder how it will work with my flight in 2 weeks… Well, by that point I should have finished at least 1 of the books to leave behind, eaten some of my snacks, and resituated things a bit.

Another bit of advice about riding Amtrak. Don’t both to pay extra for “business class” like I did. I thought that the advantages would be a reserved seat and maybe a bit of extra space. Nope. For some bizarre reason, the seats are significantly smaller in business class than in coach. Plus, there was no one sitting there, which would have been very boring. So, I stayed in coach. No big loss, though I may give Amtrak my opinion on the matter and on the delays.

We just pulled in somewhere. Definitely not in Harrisburg yet. Oh well, writing all this town is keeping me occupied for now. I’ve also read about 100 pages in a book and taken about a 2 hour nap. *ZZZ*

That’s all for now, unless something eventful happens. I think I’m going to eat dinner. *woo woo*