F#$% Trains and Cars

Day one:  Car, Train, Car, Sleep.

I cleverly leave St. Louis at 6:30, thinking that 4 hour drive, train leaves at midnight.  Plenty of time.  I can probably even go get a sammich someplace close by.  WRONG!  And this is going to demonstrate a theme of this trip.  Although I may seem smart, there is a clueless idiot always close to the surface just waiting to get out.

Stupid.

Eastern.

Time.

Zone.

I pull into Amtrak parking at 11:42 PM.  I run (I never run for anything) to make the train.  Get up to the platform in a rush, and get my seat assignment.

Train was further delayed 20 minutes waiting for a bus.

So it's dark, and this woman is spread out over her seat and my seat.  So, as gently as I can, wake her up and say you're in my seat.  It's like I punched her in the face.

I mean come one.  You didn't pay for two seats, there is the possibility that this could happen.  Furthermore she has 4 huge pieces of luggage stacked up next to her, no leg room.  We get it stowed over head, but she still has this f@#$ing air like this is somehow my fault.  Anyways, she switches rows to someone else who has been on since Chicago and they are Amtrak BFF's now.  Whatever, it's a seat.

The next 7 hours were miserable.  Its dark on a train at night.  Duh.  I have trouble sleeping in strange beds in the first place.  Add movement, especially the jerking side to side movement of a train, and there is no way I am sleeping.  I dozed for maybe 20-40 minutes sometime around 5AM.  Couldn't get into the book I brought either.

Dawn broke around Huntington WV, which is happy because then the train ride got better.  The highly contested seat is up front, which means no window.  Not a problem, spend the entire morning in the Cafe/Observation car.  I took a bunch of pics, but I only own a point and shoot and my phone.  In other words, nothing really came out great.

Here's some that are at least adequate.

Hopefully you can tell that the views were in fact spectacular.

A couple items that did not get captured digitally.

I saw a bald eagle.  I've seen them before up in Grafton, but always nesting.  First one I had ever seen in flight.  Saw that on the New River section of the rail route.

There's a statue of John Henry.  Immediately to the east of the Allegheny Tunnel.  I pointed it out and the conductor confirmed.  To get a photo from the train you really need to know it's coming.  Here's a photo from the interwebs instead.

At Staunton, the train really really fills up.  And observation car is full and loud and I am tired and grouchy.  I end up returning to my seat for the last hour.  In hindsight not a big deal, because I had just spent 6 hours looking at mountains from a train window.  What's 1 more?

Charlottesville station, I arrive and call Enterprise, they'll pick you up.  Confusion ensues as I almost take a taxi thinking they had sent it, but figured that out in time, but still an idiot.  Picked up, car rented, phone charged while waiting for it to finish the oil change, then I am introduced to Car Ramrod.

It didn't have that name yet, but it was a cute White 2012 VW Beetle. 

Onto Fredericksburg.  Why F-Burg?  That's about where Grant's Overland Campaign began.  Check into hotel and try, unsuccessfully to nap.  Murph doesn't arrive till 8ish, and it's 6ish, and I get some racing thoughts going on keeping me up.  Again, not a big deal.  Car Ramrod's campaign doesn't begin till tomorrow.

I know Sean will want to eat, so I am trying to hold off, but I haven't eaten in well...a day.  So I go to the KFC next door.

F-Burg KFC was having a rough night.  The cashier was probably 12.  I say 12, she looked 10.  Mass confusion, but I just ordered a leg and fries, impossible to screw up.  I'm sure every other order in that place was messed up though.  Sean arrives and onto Shoney's.  Not our last foray into Generica, but the most pleasant.  More on that next Blog.