Well, it certainly has been longer than I anticipated since my last post. It is a bit late at night, but if I can make it this may be a long one...
Taking the train has to be my new favorite mode of transportation! As I may have mentioned before, the train ride from Chicago to Seattle (which is officially known as the Empire Builder) is just under two days long. It takes you along flat prairies, rolling hills, mountains, and finally the ocean. For some reason, all of the scenery seems even more spectacular when you can hear the rails passing below you.
The train left at 2:25 on Tuesday from Union Station in downtown Chicago. We were told that the train had about 450 passengers traveling on it. If you took into consideration the weight of the people, the complete train weighed in around 1.8 million pounds...that's a lot of weight in motion! As we all found out, even a slow moving train does not stop quickly. Just a few stops into the trip we had to make an emergency stop, and were told that we came about as close to hitting a car as you can without actually doing so!
Since I was riding coach, I had a seat set up much like you would find on an airplane. However, there was about three times as much space between each row as well as a leg rest like you might find on a recliner. This did help make sleeping a bit more comfortable. Passengers are not confined in there seats either. Most of my time was spent in the lounge car, with its booths and large windows for viewing the outside scenery. It is also where I met my first friend.
She was a woman in her 70's of Native and African ancestry. Her journey started much farther away than mine did, in Miami. It was her sixth time taking the train out west, and she loved speaking her mind to me about her previous trips and most anything else that came up through the course of conversation. We talked about her grandkids and how the neighborhood she lived in is becoming less and less safe. We talked about the jobs she had done in the past as well and even a bit about race. What really interested me though was when she spoke of how she wanted her kids to come out and see South Dakota. When I told her I was from there, she went on to say that she was on her way to Fargo, and then going down to a very small town in S.D. I asked which one, and she told me Fredrick. Now, for those of you who don't know, my grandparents farmed just a few miles away from Fredrick. My mom and her siblings went to school there. It is essentially their hometown. I cannot imagine a bigger coincidence happening for the rest of this trip!
There were some other cool people as well. As I sat in the lounge car doing the crossword puzzle out of the Chicago Tribune, a high school guy on his way back home to LaCrosse sat down beside me and worked on it for a while as well. My seat mate was a girl from the UK. She was out on a six-month trip doing some independent backpacking. Though not her next stop, she would eventually be coming out to Seattle, and then on to Fiji as well as some of the other Pacific islands. She was an accountant who didn't like her job, so she quit and had enough money to do this trip before returning and finding another one. Also, she used the word "dodgy" in our conversation. It is my favorite British - English word and it made my day that she said it.
I'd like to write more, but we returned from a weekend of camping tonight, and I must admit I am drained. Probably nothing again until Tuesday.
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