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Picture
of the Day
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Sunday
September 29,
2024
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the first rule of amtrak is never book online. the website is incoherent and frustrating in myriad and sometimes surprising ways. so it's always better to speak with a human to get the best deal and avoid obscure conditions and limitations. as an amtrak aficionado of more than 30 years, i know this. i preach it. and yet... and yet. i don't know what came over me, but i fucked around and found out--booked online and even applied some rewards points. that was a fatal error. for you see, when you use points you forsake your ability to bid for a low-cost upgrade to a sleeper, and so i doomed us to a lengthy round trip in coach as we wend our way to wisconsin, minnesota, and back again. but at least coach has come a long way since i last rode it any great distance 20 years ago, with comfier seats, better water, plus sexy mood lighting. but the first few hours was a dark night of the soul as i pined for our kitties and tried to fold my body into a comfortable position, a failed experiment in anatomical origami. barely east of the cascades and it was already an excruciating exercise in exhaustion and pain, neck stiff, back tweaked. my thoughts took a despairing turn as i peered into the abyss of rapidly approaching madness. i even squirmed under our seats like a cockroach, horizontal at last but wedged into claustrophobic immobility. i shimmied back out, resigned to my fate, reminding myself to keep things in perspective--i wasn't, after all, a refugee huddled in the bottom of an overloaded leaky raft in the mediterranean. that snapped me out of self-pity and soon afterwards some seats opened up after stopping in spokane and i was able to claim a pair and curl into a fetal ball with a crumpled tee shirt for a pillow. the sleep that comes when that tired is oblivion itself, a tunnel with no light at the end. |
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