Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

It reduced down to just a train, thank goodness. I wasn't up to navigating all three (a plane flight, a train trip, and a rental car). But at the beginning of the planning, all three were actually a (dreadful) possibility!

One of my uncles passed away suddenly, and as I really wanted to attend the funeral, I overcame my normal autistic "change=bad; must stay home" impulses (and don't think it was easy) and found a way to get there.

By train. This is the first time I've been on an American train. I was in Europe, once, 17 years ago, and I rode their trains, but I've never been on Amtrak before. It's interesting. I think I may pony up the money for a sleeper car next time since the route I have to take starts at 11 pm and finishes at 12 noon the next day, and I have discovered coach, while far more comfortable than a plane, has just a few too many strangers moving through and disapproving attendants for my ability to handle ... graciously.

This is also the first time I've been away from the boys (my cats) overnight. I hope desperately that they'll be all right. A trusted friend of mine is looking in on them, but you know Apricot isn't going to come out and be okay with her. Thimble's been acting insecure for weeks now, a phase he's going through, but me disappearing isn't going to help that phase be any shorter.

And I'll be gone for three nights if you count the one I left in the middle of the night. Thimble won't be crated on those nights. So I have no idea what will happen with the power balance between him and Apricot. It's possible this will be a good thing in that having Thimble patrolling night and day will allow Apricot to hide and pretend it's all not happening, while Thimble's mind is occupied with the patrolling bit, and both of them end up having the time pass faster until I get back.

They aren't your stereotypical aloof cats, and I really am worried about them.

His fluffy tail doesn't fit.
Of course it's Thimble who actually climbed in!

They didn't know what the suitcase was about, of course, so they were fascinated. I was trying to explain what would be happening, especially the part about me coming back, but I think Apricot was the only one paying attention who got it even a little bit, because he kept giving the luggage and me strange looks, while Thimble and Colby were all over the bags.

And Colby? I have no idea how he'll handle my absence. He could be fine, or he could be left more insecure than Thimble is at the moment. He has been exhibiting a desire to be held and picked up and carried more often, and it doesn't seem to be rivalry with Thimble (who loves to be toted everywhere), but more a simple desire to be close. He generally picks times Thimble is occupied with something else to ask me for cuddles, which means he's not trying to rival Thimble's time with me.

Back to the train: I had to sit next to someone most of the night (his stop happened around 7 am) so I've gotten very little sleep. My stop is at noon or one: I forget if it's 12:ish or 12:55.

The train at my home station
We seriously have a pitiful train
station. You have to climb into the
train using temporary stairs. Even
the tiniest stops in the middle of
nowhere had a platform! My home
town needs to get with it!

Also it took me till 5 am to figure out that I was now small enough (referring to my precipitous weight loss two years ago) that if I flipped up the leg rest part of the seat (a wonderful feature of the train!) and curled up, I could lay flat on the seat and sleep. Next time I'll know. (Sigh. Did it have to take me all night to figure this out?)

A train walks more like a boat; a plane walks like a bus. By that I mean when you walk down the aisle of a plane, it feels like walking down the aisle of a moving tour bus. Yes, occasionally you can hit a "pothole" but all in all, it's got the same motion and the same rumbling forward feel underfoot. With a train, it moves from side to side in a lurching motion that is practically impossible to get used to. I've never been on a boat, (except a cruise ship so big you couldn't feel the motion of the ocean so that doesn't count), but I imagine the sensation would be much the same.

But they let you take water and food and pretty much anything except pets on a train, which is nice for someone like me who drinks lots of water. I got plenty of experience walking down the train aisle to the end of the car where the bathrooms were.

And they did something I thought was really nice. At night, they didn't announce the stops over the intercom like they did during the day. Instead, when you got on, a conductor asked you where you were getting off the train, and then wrote down the three-letter abbreviation that they've all got memorized, and put the piece of paper above your seat. When the train arrived at a stop, the conductors would walk down the aisles looking at the papers above the seats, and if they found one that matched they'd wake the person up and tell them this is your stop. If you weren't already awake, that is.

During the day, they announced the stops over the intercom and while the conductors walked the aisles, it was mostly to help you find your way to the correct door to leave, not to tell you it was your stop. (Sometimes the places the train stopped were small enough that you would have to go up or down the train to find the open doors since the train was longer than the available train platform and they weren't going to let you just hop out on your own.)

And at night the lights were dimmed, too. It was really quite considerate.

My brother says train engines make plenty of electricity, more than they need, actually, and so as a result, every seat had a normal, 120 volt plug available. Most people had varying forms of phones/tablets plugged in while they were using them, if they weren't sleeping.

There was a lounge car and a dining car. Think movie theater food capability (hot dogs, etc) vs a restaurant, albeit with a limited menu. The dining car was expensive for the type of food it was serving, but the lounge car had reasonable prices. I didn't partake of either, though; I had brought snacks and after staying awake all night combined with the swaying motion of the train, I wasn't actually hungry even for my snacks. I wasn't sea-sick or anything. Just wasn't hungry.

It echoes. Beautiful to look at but painful to listen to!

Then when I got to my first stop, we got there early, and I was facing a four hour layover in the train station. Granted, it was a big, beautiful train station. It also echoed like crazy. My autism does not do echoes well. I was rapidly approaching the "I can't handle this" stage and I'd only been there five minutes.

So I went to the information desk and explained the situation and asked if there was an alternative to the wait. I was rather expecting to be told that I'd have to get a rental car and drive to my destination (which would have been an hour drive, not bad, really) but instead he goes, in a bored tone, "Train 43 leaves for L--- in 30 minutes. Stair 7. You don't have to change your ticket."

Of course the echoes were so bad I had to have him repeat it, which made him testy, which made me even less able to handle things, but I got the concept in time to go stand in line for train 43 and call my dad and ask if he could come pick me up from the train station a wee bit earlier (like 3 hours earlier) than we'd planned.

My parents had driven up during the day that I'd left in the middle of the night on the train, which is why they were already there.

My dad was willing and able to pick me up earlier, but of course in the middle of the phone call, the lady comes by asking what stop we were all leaving at. That was multi-tasking I didn't manage well but since I confused my father on the phone and not the busy lady, and I could explain what happened to him after I answered her, it was okay.

Turns out the commuter train apparently breaks apart at some point in the journey and part of the train goes one way and part goes the other, so if you're going to a certain set of stops you have to be in the front half and if you're going to the other set of stops you have to be in the back half.

And no one cared that my ticket said the 3:45 train.