I'm Back on Track from my Amtrak Attack

Traveling by rail via Amtrak. SoCal 2015 vacay.

I used to think that riding a bus was an adventure. That is until my recent west coast rail trip. The return home from central California via Amtrak’s Coast Starlight to Portland was fraught with near calamity and a good measure of delay.

We set out well enough from Fresno, transferring to the Starlight in Martinez on schedule. All went as planned until just before we crossed over the Sacramento River. There the train ran over a five gallon propane tank somehow left on the tracks and we stopped dead in them. (Well, not literally.) No announcement was made about the delay or the potential hazard, but I managed to get this information from a porter. Whether this was an intentional terrorist act was not discussed.

While the container didn’t explode, tank goodness, it had managed to get wedged somewhere in the works and needed expert removal. I can envision the vessel dragging under a wheel, sparks flying along the tracks before the conductor says to the engineer, “Ya think that thing might blow?” About an hour later, after the fire department made it on the scene, we were again rolling along.

Incident number two came along a while later, not long after we picked up (cue Psycho music) “the family.” The family came complete with two inept parents and a screeching toddler from hell. It was immediately clear who had the control in the familial unit. This went on all the way to Albany. No attempt to truly reign-in the child was made. Between “the family,” the pot smoker in the john, the guffawing fat lady, the loud phone-talker, and the “incidents” I got very little sleep. But I digress.

Again the train made an unscheduled, mystery stop in the wilderness. We were told it was a structural inspection. Why and why then we were not told. I began to become somewhat concerned and the demon-child was getting on my nerves. We were now an hour and a half behind schedule and I’d been on this train for nearly twenty-four hours. I desperately yearned to be free of these huddled masses and be home to the freshness of the open sea. But…

Delay three came just after “the family” got off the train at Albany. Somewhere in the vast pastures of the Willamette Valley the train plowed through a flock of marauding sheep and had to stop for yet another inspection. I was getting a very baaaaad feeling about this trip.

I pictured the conductor alongside the tracks, “Well Larry, it looks like we’ve picked up a stowaway.”

“Yup,” says the porter.

“You jus’ gunna stand there Larry?” asks the conductor, “Or you gunna pry that thang outta there?”

Needless to say we were now behind by two hours and I was hungry. Once underway, as if on cue, the dinner menu was announced. The chef came on the PA system with the bonus offering of roast lamb and the porter was seen knitting a sweater.

As I wrote this we were one hour outside Portland and I’m I hoping nothing else would go wrong, but this is Amtrak and a lot can happen in an hour. I did have a concern: I had checked my luggage and was sure that was a mistake (he said sheepishly).

I'm home now and back at work. Disneyland was a blast and the creative batteries are recharged. I should be able to get some writing done.