Absolutely NOTHING came easy last year. Getting the hell out of the SF Bay Area ahead of the Zombie Apocalypse proved to be no different. I was hoping to get a discount bus ticket, but when that plan fell through, I was forced to decide between purchasing a Greyhound ticket for approximately 110 dollars, or taking a nice… comfortable– and QUICKER— ride on Amtrak– with AmtrakConnect Wi-Fi™ to keep me occupied during my journey– for only $50 more! Although I really couldn’t afford the extra amount– How could I pass THIS one up?
First, the train was over two hours late arriving at the Jack London Station.
I found out later that The train had plowed into a vehicle that had stopped on the track somewhere around Gilroy. OK: that constitutes extenuating circumstances. I figure the driver of the vehicle had a worse time than I was having. But that doesn’t explain why the train stopped again next to the Oakland Sewage Treatment facility for another hour, fifteen minutes!
The train was scheduled to leave the Jack London Station at 9:42 PM; every half hour they moved back the departure time back about 30 to 45 minutes. I was getting hungry, but I didn’t want to leave the station because I didn’t want to end up missing my train.
I finally boarded the train around MIDNIGHT. The dining car, however, closed promptly at 11:30. Also, despite the numerous advertisements posted about the station, as well as displayed prominently on Amtrak’s website, advertising the amenity of wireless service on Amtrak’s trains,
I was informed by the porter that AmtrakConnect™ was NOT available on the Coast Starlight™ due to the lack of an available signal when it passed through the Southern Cascade range. Unless, of course, one paid for a SLEEPER car. Wait…
You CAN’T get an Internet signal because of the mountains— UNLESS you PAY EXTRA??? (I don’t think I’m familiar with that particular Internet Protocol…)
I queried the porter: “You mean I waited over THREE HOURS in a FREEZING COLD train station, paid half AGAIN the amount that I would have paid for a Greyhound ticket (and half again as much as it would have cost to FLY from SFO to Portland, as I found out subsequently) for the amenities of (1) a dining car, (2) getting into Portland during the afternoon (scheduled 3:30ish, actual arrival after SIX), and (3) loudly advertised Wireless Internet to keep me occupied during my journey– and NONE of these are ACTUALLY AVAILABLE???”
He was the very model of courteous service: “Well, if you don’t LIKE it, you can get off and take the BUS.” (which, of course, I couldn’t…)
Maslow (no. not THAT one: his less illustrious Second Cousin, thrice removed– to various correctional facilities) identified Three Basic Human Needs:
The need NOT to be:
- cold
- hungry, or
- Fucked With
All basic drives that had been thwarted, by a Shadowy Organization™ I will henceforth be referring to as (or various permutations thereof) ScamTrak™. And I had paid $153 that I couldn’t afford for the privilege. Great. My New Year™ was starting out much like my Last Year™, which was hellish enough to last me ONE lifetime. I sat there too angry to sleep, comforting myself with the thought that the train could derail in the darkness of night, killing me instantly…
I dozed off just as the first faint rays of dawn were peeking over the horizon… ♪ cue swelling string section ♪
Woke up, and the peak of Mt. Shasta was looming above, almost directly in front of the train. I reached for my phone/camera, fumbling with the cheap-ass, Third/Fourth World manufacture touch screen (which RARELY works the way it’s supposed to), and finally pulled the camera app up JUST as the train was turning into a tunnel. It went on like that for about an hour (the “camera”, an Android™ phone that cost me UPWARDS of a hundred dollars that I couldn’t afford, to purchase and activate. Which has served no essential function which could not have been adequately performed with the Google Phone™ app on my wholly inadequate laptop, which has not functioned correctly in the ENTIRE time I’ve owned it, and which reboots itself with MetroPCS™’s annoying “Hello Hello Hello” corporate jingle EVERY TIME it REBOOTS— AND at the worst possible moment…)…
…hhhhh… <– (gasping for air after that last run-on sentence)
…when they called “Breakfast” in the Dining Car. I glanced at the menu, and decided I would forego the 9 dollar scrambled eggs, and headed downstairs to the Cafe Car for a slightly cheaper breakfast. It was closed for… Wait for it… BREAKFAST!!! I asked a group of eight very pissed-off women if I could take their picture (more on that in a bit) to send to The Company™ (Amtrak™) when I sent in my complaint. They were only TOO happy to oblige. Finally, someone arrived, and he greeted the assembled passengers with Sarcasm and a Sneer™. None of us could BELIEVE it. Far from being apologetic about the inconvenience, he was unrelentingly SHITTY about it to EVERY SINGLE ONE of the assembled women!
Fortunately, the Cafe Car was located just downstairs from the deck of the Cbservation Car. After a little more than an hour of futzing around with the camera app on my Cheap-Ass Huawei™ phone, I was finally able to get some decent photographs of the trip: at Mt. Shasta receding in the distance behing the train. The spectacular volcanic moonscape of Lava Beds National Monument, Upper Klamath Lake, and small, seemingly inaccessible towns along the route between Klamath and the station stop at Eugene, OR. As I had been taking pictures, my touch screen had been displaying warnings about available memory and such, so I found myself deleting photographs that didn’t appear to have come out. And as my laptop was for some reason unable to find or read the USB storage folder on the memory chip of my phone, I took the opportunity to use the wireless signal at the Eugene station, to mail myself the photos as attachments, via gMail. Everything seemed to be working well. I deleted the photos off my phone to make room in memory for the rest of the trip, where I would be traveling through the scenic Willamette Valley, with stops in Albany and Salem. By this time I had the hang of the camera function (more or less. To this day, the entire phone still functions erratically).
When I finally arrived at the Portland Station
I sent the remainder of my photos to myself, so I could look at them later, full-sized, on my computer. I took a couple of pictures of the Portland ScabCrack™ station and text-mailed my friends while I waited for them to arrive. JUst about everything had gone wrong on the trip (until I got the camera working on my phone). I joked to Karen (Holling-Leddy, aka Nerak) that the only thing left that could go wrong is that they would lose my large suitcase with ALL my clothes. When they brought the bags out, I watched them pulling the bags off the electric lorry. I watched them place the bags on the rack in front of us (the passengers). The truck was almost empty– STILL no sign of my bag. I thought, of course: How could it be otherwise?
Finally, they lifted my bag off the transport. It was the very… last… one…
My friends arrived shortly thereafter. It was sooo good to see them. I was exhausted; spent, after an entire year of one hellish day after another.
The next day was January 2nd. I opened my laptop and logged into my gMail account. All the emails had come through but– with the exception of an occasional missive where two or three pictures, inevitably the blurry ones– almost none of the attachments had survived intact. The “Sent Mail” folder told the same sad tale. The one thing that had made the trip anything but a fiasco, a few dozen extremely good shots of the scenery out of the 150+ I had taken and forwarded to myself (and of which, only the shot I used for the touch screen on my phone remains), were gone. I almost cried. I was just too TIRED to do so. The New Year appeared to be staring like the disastrous Old Year.
It’s taken a few days to feel human again, but things appear to be looking up.
