The trip to the reunion has begun! We loaded us and the car into the Amtrak auto train on Sunday in Sanford, ready for our 17 hour journey to Washington DC, the sidetrip on the way to Buffalo. We were greeted with smiling faces, good humor and free wine tastings. There was a reason...
We began our adventure with views of scrubby Florida outside the windows, and bumpy rails to remind us we weren't on a plane. Our rooms were the luxury compartments on the train; a type of sofa (that would make into a bed), a side chair that was comfortable only to the suitcase, a sink the size of a cottage cheese container, and the toilet/shower room. Imagine a small toilet inches from all four walls surrounding it. And, above the toilet paper...a hand held shower sprayer. What else could you ask for? Well....
We ate our dinner at the late seating, 9pm - all that was available. A nice stroll after dinner was not really possible, so we all went back to our rooms which had been converted to beds while we ate. Imagine opening a door to find wall to wall mattress, with slightly smaller wall to wall mattress above it, joined by a steel ladder. Hmm, how inviting. I decided to ignore the lack of space and climb over to the toilet/shower to try out the shower. Any shower prep had to be done outside of the showering space. Then I stepped in, closed the shower curtain, and sat on the toilet seat - as suggested in the showering instructions on the wall. After all, this wasnt altogether intuitive. I turned on hot water and voila! it was spraying from the hand held sprayer. Then to dry, one had to step gingerly back into the mattress filled room to dry off. We decided the top bunk was way too treacherous and crawled into the lower bunk, to go to sleep.
Soon, Mark was crawling over me to get out and breathe. The air circulation was poor with all the mattresses and closed space, and he was having hot flashes. So he got dressed and walked the halls. This process was repeated about 4 times through the night - taking his clothes off, crawling into either top or bottom bunk, getting too hot, crawling out, putting clothes back on, walking the corridors. This wasnt helped by the jerky motion of the train as it rolled across ancient tracks in need of alignment. A couple of times we thought that me might have been knocked off the tracks - only to hit more misaligned tracks. Around 5am, I found Mark finally still, sitting up and resting his head against the window. I think he slept about an hour this way.
The porter announced at 7am that it was time to get up for breakfast. Since we'd not really slept, it was a matter of just climbing off the mattress and putting yesterday's clothes back on...again for Mark.
Breakfast was cereal, milk and banana with coffee or tea. Not what one anticipates after a sleepless night. Then we arrive 1 1/2 hours late to our destination. Happy to get off the captive train, we finally step outside to freedom. Freedom of movement, freedom from jerky moves, freedom from all-encompassing mattresses and from tiny showers.
Excitement mounted as we anticipated the car's dismount from the train. Finally it emerged, equally pleased with its freedom. Humans and car alike, spirited out of the Amtrak station on to the next adventure - Mount Vernon.
No comments:
Post a Comment