Amtrak

I've only had two experiences with Amtrak, both in the past week. My first trip was from Winter Park, Florida to Columbia, South Carolina. It went swimmingly. I boarded about 8 o'clock one night, read The Hobbit for an hour, fell asleep, and was woken up by the conductor at 4 the next morning when we arrived in Columbia. The only real problem with the ride was a very obnoxious passenger sitting a few rows ahead of me. But what are you t do about that? Really, not a big deal.

A few days ago, I had a reservation on a ride from Columbia to Washington DC. It was scheduled to leave at 4 in the morning and arrive in DC at 3 that afternoon, Saturday. Alright, the day before, Friday, I received an automated voice message saying that my train was cancelled. Seeing as I was leaving in 12 hours, I panicked and called Amtrak to talk to somebody and ask them when the next train was. I got online and called at the same time. Amtrak's website said that the train was still on time and scheduled. The guy that I talked to said that the phone message was a mistake and that the train was still coming. I was extremely relieved.

That night my cousins all came over and we had a little dinner party with bbq sandwiches and sangria and other yumminess. A wonderful time. By the time everybody had left it was close to midnight and we had to leave at 3:15. I still had to shower and pack, so I just decided to stay up all night and that way I cold sleep the entire train ride. My sweet cousin woke up in the middle of the night and drove me to the train station. It had started to rain and it looked like it might, maybe, possibly freeze. The train station was empty. I was greeted with a "Didn't anybody tell you that the train was cancelled? and a Why are you here?" The train had been cancelled. The guy I talked to on the phone was clueless.

We went back to her house, it's 4 in the morning on Saturday now. I called Amtrak. The Columbia station had been closed until further notice, maybe opening on Monday, they weren't sure. The next train and closest station was leaving out of Florence that morning at 11:30. Florence is an hour and half away. My cousin told me she'd drive me. I changed my reservation to that train and called Anna, who I was meeting in DC, to tell her I wouldn't be there until Saturday night...

I woke up at 9 to leave for Florence. The weather didn't look good. I called Amtrak to make sure my train was leaving that morning still because there was absolutely no way that I was going to drive all the way to Florence to only find out that I wasn't leaving. The website still said that the train was on time. 

That train was cancelled. Luckily, I found out before we left the house.

The next train was leaving at 11:45 that night. I wouldn't make it to DC until 8 on Sunday morning. Anna was already in DC waiting for me on Saturday morning. It had snowed. A lot. It was beautiful, Anna said. She also said that the bus ride was a little scary coming from New York and nobody was out. 

I went back to bed and was super lazy all day. It was really nice. I love a good lazy day. Finally saw Iron Man and The Hangover. Both good. Watched some of the X games. (Side note: I've never watched the X games before until this year. They are awesome. It is a good thing I've never watched them because I probably would've gone through a phase in my life where I thought that I would one day win gold in the snow mobile event, even though I've never even been near that much snow in my life before or even seen a snow mobile.) 

That night, I showered and repacked and called Amtrak every hour to make sure the train was still leaving. My cousin and her husband drove me all the way to Florence at 9:30 that night. On the way, it started to snow. The trees in Florence were really pretty, but they were pretty because they were covered in ice. It did not look promising. We got to the station and it was pretty full of people. The train was on time and ready to go.

Welcome to the train ride from hell. Remember how I was supposed to get to Washington around 7:45 Sunday morning. Well around 1 in the morning, the train stops. In the middle of nowhere (okay, somewhere in North Carolina). It was stopped for 5 HOURS. Seriously. 5 hours of sitting there. In the middle of nowhere. In the middle of the night. There was no announcement made about what was going on and nobody was walking down the aisles informing anybody of anything. Most of the passengers were sleeping. I was in and out because my seat partner, a red hat association lady who was loud and proud (a very very sweet lady) for some reason was not tired at all and was not very happy. At about 5 in the morning, most of the passengers were beginning to wake up. We were finally told that we had been waiting for the South bound trains to come by first because the tracks switched from two lanes to one and it had taken them "longer than expected." Then apparently a switch was frozen and that had to be fixed and that took "a couple hours." Everybody looked outside and saw that we were in a foot of snow (to be quite honest, I'm not sure how much it was, but to me it looked like we were in the north pole and Santa's elves and polar bears should've been hanging out outside.) The train finally starts moving at 6 that morning. 

We went along for a few more hours, very slowly. Then we started to gain some speed and everybody thought everything was going to be okay. Then all of a sudden we stopped. Quite suddenly. We waited a while. An announcement was made that a switch was frozen again. We were stuck for another hour and a half.

I should mention that this train was packed. Every seat was filled because we were the only train going north. All other trains had been delayed or cancelled the past several days, so everybody had been crammed on this one. People were not handling this situation very well. They had a right to be upset- most people had missed their next train or bus. I personally had missed my entire nice weekend in DC and left my best friend stranded by herself there. It kinda sucked. But there were only a few select people, including me, that chose to call and complain to somebody and then sleep through it. Most people fell into one of two categories- the people who took advantage of the free coffee or the people who took advantage of the bar car. It was very very bad mix. People began drinking either too much coffee or too much alcohol at 6 o'clock that morning. Everybody became very unfriendly, including the train conductors.

Anyways, I finally made it to DC at 2 that afternoon, a full 24 hours after I was supposed to arrive. I was extremely happy to be able to stand up, but to be quite honest I wasn't in a very touristy kindof mood. I only had about 3 hours to see DC. Anna and I went to get margaritas and on the way to the bus station we walked past the capital building.

Ya, we're gonna go back.