The AMTRAK Chronicles...

some of you may have seen my original attempt, if ever so feeble, to post 'the amtrak chronicles' to the site via email posts from my cellphone. for whatever reason, that turned out to be quite the disaster, showing the first sentence and ending with '...' so i'll attempt now, to recreate the amusing experience i had while riding the train to virginia and back. enhanced of course by photos taken with my cellphone.

it all started at the asscrack of dawn train from newark-penn station. 7:24am to be exact. after driving around the ghettos of newark, nj for an hour looking for parking, i was directed to park at newark-liberty airport and take the shuttle to the train station. the funny part is, after the train leaves penn station, it stops at the newark airport train station, but i was not able to wait for the train there, because my ticket was for boarding at penn station. whatever. i hadn't had enough coffee at this point, nor enough sleep to bother arguing about it with the 'lovely' lady in the ticket window, whose nametag said 'peaches.' it was great that my trip began with such sarcasm.


the next bit of fun, of which i wish i had a photo, or even better, a video was of the lovely woman busting her ass in the aisle of the train. we were trucking along through maryland, soon after she boarded the train in baltimore, and we hit quite a patch of 'turbulence.' she was walking ever so carefully down the aisle, but to no avail, she tripped and fell nearly flat on her face. as if the combination of her falling, and the reaction of the entire train cracking up wasn't enough, she pulled herself up onto her knees and shout's 'f*cking choo-choo.' classic.


the next entertaining portion of my voyage included a whole lot of eavesdropping on my part. the couple in front of me, who in my honest opinion had probably met on jdate, were chatting about what 'ishmael' should say and do when he met 'esmerelda's' parents for the first time. from what i gathered, esmerelda's mom was in the hospital and poor ishmael was going to meet her for the first time, at her bedside. they gleefully chatted about what he should do when he was introduced. he wondered, out loud, should i go right in for the hug? should i shake her hand? esmerelda gave the keen suggestion that he should ask her if he could give her a hug. stupidest thing i've ever heard. who does that? then he asked if, upon meeting her mother, if he should say something along the lines of 'oh i see where esmerelda gets her height from.' she, for the record, was maybe, maybe 5'4". the conversation continued with a crash course on bluegrass music, so that ishmael had something to talk to her father about as well. i don't know much about bluegrass, but if i was basing my opinion on her descriptions, and i was her boyfriend, i would have surely heaved myself off the side of the moving train.


next, after switching from electric to diesel engine in washington, d.c., we broke down in the middle of the woods and had to wait for another engine to come and bail us out. needless to say, the 6 hour trip took about 7 1/2. such is my life.


on wednesday, after sleeping til around noon, sam and i went paint shopping at the home depot. how many home depot employees does it take to mix a gallon of paint? three, to be exact. in case you were wondering. then we were off to the movies. of which, after long and hard thought, i realized that i hadn't been to the movies since i saw the good shepherd. we opted for stop-loss. and i'll say, from someone who doesn't usually have the attention span to watch a movie, and rarely gets to the movies; stop-loss is a must see.


after partaking in the divine movie mentioned above, we were stopping, as sam said for 'a beer.' which after stepping into the capital ale house was a guaranteed impossibility. their beer menu was about 40 pages long. i couldn't even get into it, i just asked the bartender for an ipa that he recommended; and it was all downhill from there. after 4 or 5 or maybe 6 HUGE breckenridge 471 double ipa's, the people-watching got really fun. the chick in the red holly sweater in the picture, worked her magic with every guy that would give her the time of day. then when they got bored she'd move onto the next one. young, old, hairy, hairless, she didn't care. she kind of reminded me of wal-mart, ALWAYS LOW STANDARDS, ALWAYS! at one point i watched her throw up in her hand and then wipe it on her pants, before continuing her lame conversation with baldilocks. the night was downhill from there; 100% drunkeness & debauchery.


fast forward to the amtrak chronicles: part deux. the ride home. although for the most part, it was less eventful, i did run into another amusing cast of characters, and some old favorites as well. i wish i could have gotten a close up of this lady's shirt, it said something like 'chocolate: i like it milky like me.' where she bought that beauty i'll never know, but it looked hot with her mudd jeans, circa 1998, and her classic reeboks. my friend electa said i shouldn't be surprised that people in virginia still wear mudd jeans, because after all, 'they sell ham on the side of the road.' i didn't see any drive by pork product stands, but i was happy to see ishmael and esmerelda again when they hopped back on the train in fredericksburg.


i recall my days as a young lad, playing with my toy train, and wondering why i had an entire train set of tropicana orange juice train cars. i think i liked them, because unlike the prodcuts on my other toy train cars, i actually knew what tropicana was, but i thought it was just for the sake of the toy. today, for the first time, i was proven wrong; as today's delay was because of a 100 car train of tropicana cars. i couldn't friggin believe it. i have never seen an iron snake that long, and for it to be all tropicana cars was like a childhood dream come true. not necessarily worth the hour and fifteen minute delay, but divine none-the-less.


so that was my slamtrack experience in a nutshell. a long ride, but fun times were had by all. next time i'm bringing my video camera for the ride; that'll be interesting for sure.