Amtrak: Suck It.

Note: This post was written in several pieces. The first time was after 2 hours of intense boredom. The second time was after 2 hours more. This post is horribly repetitive, long, uninteresting, and reads like the Diary of Anne Frank, except with slightly more intensity and meaningfulness. And it happens to literally be me whining for hours and hours. This is me live blogging one of the least interesting, most boring, most irritating non-events of my life. And this is exactly why blogs rule (fucking suck as self-indulgent uselessness.)

Enjoy!


This life of mine has little to report. Apart from the obvious things that everyone is aware but of which no one speaks, my life has been pretty stressful, albeit it entirely uneventful.

At this very moment, instead of doing something productive, I am sitting on a broken down Amtrak train in the middle of Connecticut. It is 11:11 pm. The train has been broken down for the past 2 hours. The train was operating just fine, mind you, until the internal cabins suffered some sort of failure, meaning that the cabins were a little dim. Sure sure, that was slightly inconvenient. And to remedy this problem, the “engineer” (Yes, that’s how he was described to us), decided that the best solution would be to power down the train, turn off the engine, and attempt to recycle the engine. Whatever the hell that means. The result, as you could surmise, is that once the engine was turned off, the life force was gone. And we sit, broken down, inside of a drafty Amtrak beast, with a large Asian in coach class, feeling forlorn as the cold breeze creeps in under the train doors, and feeling a sense of regret at sitting so near the Café Cart and restrooms, both of which have turned out to be spectacularly annoying during a stranded train situation.

We’re currently awaiting the arrival of a “Rescue Engine” which, if I understand correctly, will pulls us the rest of the way. What this means for me, is that I will spend 10 hours on a train on this fine Black Friday instead of eating leftovers, doing homework, or even sitting in the warmth and comfort of my own home. Without even light enough to do my homework. For shame. (Fortunately, there was beer in the café cart, so Sam Adams is keeping me company, helping me pass the time.)

Now, if I could smoke a cigarette, things would be slightly better. But since contracting a respiratory infection of some sort, I have been over 48 hours without a cigarette, and think it’s probably a bad idea. (Now, you may be asking why, if I can stop smoking for 48 hours, why I don’t just quit. Answer? Four words: It’s awesome. Shut up.)

Since it appears I have all the time in the world I can fill you in on some of the boring inanity that my legal life is comprised of.

1) My brother has acquired “Rock Star,”
(….ah crap, I just saw a train go past us…sigh….)
…a video game where you actually play guitar, bass, and drums with electronic versions. Here’s a picture. Anyway, turns out I’m awesome. Not at the game…but at life. But also at the game. Or at least, I can play Hard versions of some songs.
ME  Awesome.

2) Thanksgiving was good.

3) Your mother was better.

4) I have nothing else to report. Peace out.

Edit: It is now 11:40 pm. We were just informed we were going to move the train forward. And then, in this next forward area, we are going to REPLACE one of the engines on the train…because…..as it turns out, they just realized that 1) The rescue engine couldn’t attach to the front of the train, and 2) If it Did, we still wouldn’t have power. It seems to me that either of these problems was perfectly foreseeable before sitting on the track for over 2 hours.

Edit 2: It is now 1:17 a.m. We haven’t moved. It has gotten much colder. Things are much much worse. So now, that is has become a full-blown event, I’m going to lay the situation for you…

I went to Thanksgiving with a bit of a chest cold. I had just managed to dodge a rapidly emerging sore throat, and felt it spread into my upper lungs. I was also exhausted. So exhausted that I passed out on the floor of the Thanksgiving get together and had my picture taken with a shoe in front of my face. (See Facebook.) Anyhow, I feel worn, torn, and feel constantly on the verge of catastrophic illness. (mistake #1)

So I get up feeling much better this Friday morning, a morning which also brought a 20+ degree drop in temperature. I went through the day in typical manner, slightly dreading the 8 hour train ride in coach I was to embark upon later in the afternoon, but I wasn’t all that worried. I mean, the train was supposed to arrive at 11:50 pm, and the subway stopped running at 12:15, so I didn’t have anything to stress out about, right? I could work on the train for a nice 8 hours, sleep a little, take the last subway out, and walk home to a warm apartment full of beer, and freshly made Chinese food from my mother.
So I started packing things up, and I decided I didn’t really need to charge my phone overnight. I mean, why bother, right? (mistake #2)

So I begin packing up my stuff, and my mother tells me to wear my sweater. I say, “no, why?” and wear my long sleeve t-shirt. (mistake #3). I carefully move my computer gear out to the main room in my bro’s apartment in order to pack it up properly, and, as it turns out, I forget to put the power adapter in my bag. (mistake #4)

And so I get on the train…and I sit on the cabin right next to the Café Car (mistake #5), and next to the main toilets (mistake #6)…

4:32 -The train ride begins. It’s boring, and once on the train, I realize I don’t have my power adapter, and stare wistfully at the power outlets next to me in the train. A sense of longing comes over me. I want my AC adapter.

4:33 - I get over it. And I open up my secured transactions book and read for 4 hours, falling asleep for 3 hours. I manage to eat two Chinese pineapple cakes in the next 4 hours.

8:33 - It’s smooth sailing all the way past New York, past New Haven, and I’m on my way home. At some point in the midst of Connecticut, the train’s internal power seems to go out. Now I’d like to note that this power goes out on trains like, 20 times per trip. This time it just didn’t come on. So what does this mean? This means, you can’t plug in your computers or phones (see mistake #2 and counterfactual mistake #4). It also means that the cabin lights are slightly dimmer. No biggie. There’s really no need for either of these amenities. It’s a train. It’s 9:30 pm. It’s not a big deal. The train is clearly running just fine, and it just seems to be an internal wiring problem. The train is running JUST FINE.

9:30 - For this tiny little problem, they tell us that the Engineer wants to shut the whole engine down and recycle it, and fix the internal power problem.

9:35 - The train shuts down. We are told this process will take 5 to 10 minutes. I start to get mildly anxious about catching the subway back. But I reassure myself, 5 or 10 minutes will allow me to barely catch the last subway car, save 50 bucks, and the hassle of fighting hundreds of people for a midnight cab. No electricity means low light, no heat, and annoying teenage girls behind me.

10:30 - Silence. I go and buy a beer. The bathrooms are constantly in use with jackasses leaving the bathroom doors wide open after use. I can smell the blue. The deep lovely blue of train toilet water. Over the last hour, over 100 people have visited the café car for beer and food. Each trip opens the cabin door to the outside temperatures and lets in a breeze that whips around my ankles. It’s cold. The temperature is dropping. My feet take on that clammy wet feeling they get when it’s cold.

11:00 - We are informed that the Engineer, who is on the phone by the way, and not on the train, cannot get the train started again. A rescue engine is on its way from New Haven. That will take an hour. Another 100+ people thought café car was a good idea letting in another 100+ bursts of cold draft into the train. My beer runs out. I consider getting another, but it seems a mite excessive to start pounding beers on the train.

11:40 - The Rescue Engine arrives. Whoops. Apparently it can’t attach to the train, thus it cannot pull us. And, even if it did, we still would not have heat. This sounds to me like sending a crane to pick up the ocean…and realizing that you can’t use a fucking crane to pick up the ocean….but only after you got there and noticed that THIS, does not pick up Ocean. It remains cold. I want beer. I get concerned about starving, and eat a pineapple cake. (translated: me want food.)

11:41 - We are informed that the new plan is to await a brand new replacement engine which will be swapped out with the old Engine. That way the train will be back to normal. It is colder than it was a minute ago, my cough is getting worse, my nose is running, and I want beer.

11:50 - Our original ETA passes by. And smirks. That fucking bastard.

12:15 - The New Engine Arrives! Huzzah! I eat a taro cake in celebration.

12:35 - The lights flicker and turn on! The New Engine Lives! Heat begins to fill the cabin. Hope springs etern…

12:37 - …the lights turn off. The whiplash I give myself when my head sinks forward in disgust and disappointment will give rise to articles in medical journals about me being the first person to survive a neck whipping equal to that of a medieval hanging. I’m cold. I suck it up and go to get another beer. NONE LEFT! NO MORE ALCOHOL.

12:50 - We are forlornly informed that the brand new engine the put it simply died. They don’t know why. The plan is now to have another train come from New Haven, pull us back to New Haven, strap on (heh, strap on) diesel engines onto the train and THEN depart for Boston. My internal calculations tell me this will get me home no earlier than 4 am even if I caught a cab immediately upon my return.

1:15 - We’re told there are three plans now, working all at the same time. Plan 1, we will be towed back to New Haven where the trains will be repaired. Plan 2, the diesel engines will be brought out to us. Plan 3, I forget. In any case, the plans don’t make any sense.

1:20 - My computer battery begins to drain dangerously, since I won’t have my adapter until Monday, and I will need the computer to have power for things like, oh, exam studying? Transferring crucial files? Not blogging on the fucking train. (See mistake #4). My constant text messaging with my brother and a few others, which I have to this point used to keep me occupied, has dwindled my cell phone battery dangerously. (See mistake #2). And I’m fucking cold, bored, and hating the idea that this is going to last until late into the morning and that my plans for Saturday are now completely fucked.

1:37 - The backwards tow to New Haven begins
1:38 - The backwards tow to New Haven abruptly ends.
1:39 - The backwards tow to New Haven starts again…….and stops. Head explodes.
1:41 - The backwards tow to New Haven starts again. I am now wearing a full winter coat, my awesome black hat, a scarf, and I have consumed 3 pineapple cakes, 1 taro cake, 1 sam adams, 1 mini bottle of water (seriously, why do these exist?) 1 cracker, 1 oatmeal cookie, and some sort of dried fruit mix that I ate after holding the package under the light of my cell phone and scrutinizing the ingredients for the word “peanuts.”

1:42 - I whip out the Macbook and start to blog about this. And that brings me up to now…

1:52 - I type the words “I type the words ‘I type the words’”. Yes. I did just do that. And now I’m bored. Luckily I still have 6 pineapple cakes left. But I want beer. And I want a cigarette I can’t smoke. And I want sleep I can’t have. And an AC adapter, and a stronger phone battery. Everyone else is asleep. I hate that. I hate being the only one awake on the plane. Or in this case, on the train. But it always fucking happens. Everyone falls asleep happily for 10 hours, while I sit there glumly, silently, in the dark, thinking about whether it is ok to turn on my super bright reading light. Except today, there’s no power, so I can’t.

2:00 - We have arrived in New Haven. Now we await the Strap-Ons. Or more appropriately, I await the Strap Ons while the rest of the happy fucks slumber the misery away. My feet are cold. I haven’t taken my contacts out in 40 hours.

2:04 - HA!! The intercom lady wakes everyone up with a peal of feedback through the PA system and announces that they are “tying on some diesels.” (translated: Lubing up the Strap-Ons.)

2:05 - I experience a sense of smug satisfaction that I’ve been coughing my respiratory plague into a closed and sealed tube with no air circulation for the last 4 hours. Pasiant Zero! (Pasiant = Patient + Asian). I’ve unleashed Asian Dude Flu unto this foul world.

2:10 - Step outside to stretch out. It’s fucking cold. Stewardess looks at me, suspiciously says “are you a passenger sir?” My brimmed black hat hobo look apparently doesn’t inspire confidence. Because, there are, in fact, Asian hoodlums who wait around train stations at 2 am in the off chance this happens. And then who stand there looking miserable.

2:15 - Still cold. And I want chap stick.

2:16 - I found Chapstick. Thank the lord for small miracles.

2:23 -I take some solace in the realization that somewhere, on this train, the odds are that someone got some sort of food poisoning from eating massive amounts of undercooked poultry or underheated stuffing from inside an undercooked bird (Stuffing is Evil!) or suffers from some sort of IBS that they are totally and utterly in hell right now. (The water for the toilets no longer runs.) My thoughts go out to you.

2:26 - I have a thought. I think it would have been very easy for me to have become VERY upset about this whole situation. To be totally indignant about this. To feel burning anger and injustice. But, I sorta haven’t. I have maintained a total Zen-like calm this whole time. Now, that doesn’t mean I haven’t been absolutely fucking MISERABLE this whole time. Because I have been…

2:28 - Lights come on!!!

2:28 - …fucking miserable. Cold, tired, hungry, far from home, and bored out of my fucking mind. And too goddamned tall to sleep in these seats laying down.

2:30 - The train crawls forward out of New Haven. My calculations get us back to Boston sometime in the morning, probably by 5:30. That means I might actually make the Subway! …for the first train of the morning…I’m totally suing.

3:10 - I fall asleep, laying down on a seat approximately 3 feet across. Note that that I am 6'2".

5:10 – We arrive at Boston South Station. Finally. I stumble out into the very cold weather and stumble down to the Subway stop.

5:22 – No train yet. Argh.

5:32 – 22 minute wait for a subway car? I am going to fucking kill some.

5:33 – Yay!

6:05 – Stumble into my warm apartment. Ahhh…..

6:06 – Turn on Sportscenter, cracked a beer, sat on couch.