God I love sleep!! I woke up a few times but overall slept great. I still need more. I need to catch up, after all! I’m a sleep vampire. I feed off of it. Davin complains about it.
I would have done some catch up sleep but it was impossible. At 7:00am, an attendant came on the P.A. system to say, “GOOD MORNING EVERYBODY!! IT’S SEVEN A.M. AND WE ARE SERVING BREAKFAST. WE’VE BEEN PACKED SINCE 6:30AM, SO IF YOU WANT BREAKFAST SEND ONE PERSON FROM YOUR PARTY TO THE DINING CAR TO GET ON OUR WAITING LIST!” Then, every 15 or so minutes something like, “BARRY PARTY OF 4 YOUR TABLE’S READY!” “PETER PARTY OF TWO COME ON DOWN TO THE DINING CAR!” etc.
It really made an impression on people. I heard at least four passengers at breakfast discussing this woman at breakfast. “Doesn’t she know you can just speak into it normally?” “You’d think someone would have told her by now that you don’t have to yell into it!” “No way I could sleep with all that racket!”
I’m getting ahead of myself though, let’s rewind. I want to tell you about one thing that does wake you up sometimes when you are sleeping on the train. What really wakes you up, and kind of freaks you out, is when a Freight Train passes by. Those guys are always really hauling ass. When they pass by in the opposite direction, it sometimes creates a WHOOSHing wind tunnel and our train vibrates violently as though it’s going to fall apart! The train is, of course, moving and rocking all the time. It’s can be compared to turbulence but it’s pretty much constant. There are parts of the tracks that are miraculously smooth though. Although, turbulence scares the crap out of me, the rocking of the train doesn’t bother me at all. I theorize that my feelings are different based on the fact that, when on a train I’m about 10 feet above the ground, versus 30,000 feet above when you are on a plane. Also, I do not understand it, but, for some reason, the train movement does not make you nauseous. I consider myself an ideal guinea pig since I get easily car sick and sea sick, but I’ve never been train sick. I don’t have to worry about the cruise ship either. The Queen Mary 2 is just so massive compared to the waves and, in addition, she has really badass stabilizers. A voyage on the QM2 isn’t comparable to a ride on a ferry where I would need Dramamine to avoid being incapacitated.
Moving on, I’ve got to say that I love the train whistle! It sounds all the time to alert people and vehicles who might be ahead. I think it is a wonderfully soothing sound. When you are far enough away, of course! We are about 5 cars back from the front engine. It also inspires the imagination, since trains are now considered something of a relic of the past. I feel like I can touch the people and lifestyle of the 1800s. Though this modern train ride doesn’t have any similarities with that past other than the sounds and the shaking. The train whistle is, hands down, one of my favorite sounds. The clackety-clack of the train rolling over the tracks is another wonderful sound.
Since the attendant did such a good job waking us up, Davin and I both made it to breakfast. This was a first for us. We never made it to breakfast on the train on our 2010 expedition. We both had the pancakes. Davin regretted it, and I didn’t much like them. Typical restaurant style pancakes, as expected.
For lunch I had the Beef Hamburger, and Davin had Panko Breaded Chicken with mashed potatoes. His lunch looked good, so I’ll have it tomorrow. I had a brief conversation with our Train Car Attendant Rene. He told me that the menu on the train is only changed once every six months. The crew eats the same food as the passengers, and the crew is on the train for 6 days straight. There are four choices of entrée for each meal. And the crew eats the same food every day for six months, minus the two days they get to stay home between trips. Rene told me that he had no idea what he would eat today because he is so sick of all the options. But, he told me that I should try the salmon for dinner, so I will. Rene also gave me one of the posters on the train that advertises the South West Chief. I think it’s SO cool! But, now I have a poster. I’m one day in to the trip and have acquired something difficult to travel with! >.< Maybe Natalie can mail it home for me…
This morning we were in Arizona and New Mexico. The scenery was desert scrub with some beautiful rock formations and mesas. The light tan sand was covered by sparse patches of green scrub vegetation overlooked by looming rocks in various hues of red. By midday we were headed North of Albuquerque, New Mexico and the train climbed into a mountainous area where we saw massive grey rock mountains covered (mostly) by pine trees. In the late afternoon, we descended to low lands with other types of trees which were varieties that obviously require more natural water. Sadly that is the extent of my botanical knowledge. The trees faded away to become grassy plains as far as the eye could see with not a single tree in sight. We also encountered dark clouds and saw a thunderstorm in the distance. When we arrived in Las Vegas, New Mexico it was raining, but we passed through the rain quickly and returned to a dry landscape with a gloomy cloud-filled sky in all directions.
I spent the rest of the afternoon organizing My Writing files and rereading old things I’d written. Davin wasn’t feeling that well since he didn’t get enough sleep last night. So, he spent the majority of his time watching episodes of Sliders. We had dinner at 7:15pm. We both had the salmon with rice. It was very good.
Our companion at dinner this evening was a very confident 40-50 year old businessman who was very full of himself. He spent the whole meal regaling us with stories of crazy things that had happened to him. First he told us how he was sold to his adoptive parents for a cigarette. This event saved him from growing up the son of a homeless ‘bag lady’. He later met his real mother and was amazed at how drugs and the hard, free lifestyle wore her down. She died at 54 in a shack on a lake, which he said was real success for her. His 15 year old son had recently been rescued by helicopter from Ventura county (?). He had gone off-roading and a storm came through. His 17 year old daughter is a world traveler and has been to Sweden by herself, etc. He sets up events for a living (tents, sounds etc.) and commutes to Kansas once a month. His first trip to Kansas he broke down and left his truck parked at the side of the road. Then he hitchhiked into the heart of Kansas. Two years later he was contacted by highway patrol to have it removed. And he told us the story of when he was the landlord of a warehouse in Kansas which he rented to a young man to use as the base of operations for his stove building company. This young man would take old ‘classic’ stoves, pull them apart, and revitalize them and paint them any color the client requested. He sold a stove to Oprah Winfrey for $25,000, but he also was embezzling money and creating a sort of Ponzi scheme. This became big news for Kansas. The landlord, our dinner companion, didn’t have a gripe with the guy until he stopped paying rent. At which point the landlord went to his warehouse property at 3:00AM, drilled out the locks, boarded up all the doors and windows with plywood, strung fish wire up and down the stairs, and then waited there with a shotgun and his dog for the tenant to arrive. The funny part is that the tenant came and when he realized what the landlord was doing he called the police. The police came and knew the tenant from the news of his embezzling, so the police did not like him. They told him that the embezzlement case was a civil matter that they could do nothing about, and that this landlord unlawfully kicking the tenant out was also a civil matter, so the tenant could go ahead and sue the landlord. And the police left. So the landlord got his property back under his control. A movie is now being made about this Tenant’s Ponzi scheme which is titled Salvation 2014. The tenant went on to become an airplane Repo man who travels to foreign countries and repossess planes. He shows up with paperwork, hires a pilot on the spot with cash, and is often supposedly shot at by the former owners. Crazy stuff. We didn’t talk at all at dinner, we just listened to this guy’s crazy stories.
After dinner I called Mom and Scott and Davin and I both went to bed at 11:30pm Central Time.
