Takin' the Amtrak

Disclaimer: This is super incredibly long. I'm so sorry. It won't happen again.

     To get to Oakland, I decided to take the cost-effective yet time-consuming Amtrak train ($170 for a 41 hour ride) from Lincoln, Nebraska. Of course, that meant that someone (meaning my parents) had to drive me two-and-a-half hours from Clay Center to Lincoln. And the train was scheduled to leave at 12:14am. So we left the house at about ten til eight at night, and drove for about two hours through a thunderstorm to Lincoln. We arrived about two hours early, but turns out the Amtrak station had moved to a few blocks over, from the old brick station in the Haymarket to a newer, smaller station. The new station was located in the middle of a construction zone. We were dodging cones and potholes and one time, I'm pretty sure we were on the wrong side of a line of cones. Dad figured it out once he noticed that a precipice was directly in our path, though, so we got our barge of a car swung around and headed in the correct direction. The Amtrak station wasn't staffed until 11pm, so we sat in the car for half an hour, while Mom and Dad took a bit of a nap and I tried not to think about how much I had to pee, and how inviting the weeds in the construction zone looked as a potential potty zone.
     The train was a little late, so I suppose I hopped on at about 12:45am. As soon as I sat down in my seat, the magnitude of my new adventure hit me (to this point, I had somehow managed to avoid the realization that I would be moving a bazillion miles away from everything I knew and loved), and I might have been a bit of a wreck for a few miles. But I eventually fell asleep in my seat (they recline! And they have footrests! It was like sleeping in a giant recliner!) and woke up somewhere in eastern Colorado. It was foggy and we weren't moving. I guess the signaling system broke down or something, is what the conductor said. I decided to see the sights of eastern Colorado (sagebrush, cattle, more sagebrush), so I grabbed my applique kit and camera and headed to the lounge car, where they have panoramic views and lots of windows. I listened to some granolas talk about sustainable agriculture, monogamy, and public restrooms. Then a fairly unhappy couple came and sat with me and whined about the service on the train. There are also some Amish people here, which is kind of cool. We made a stop in Denver at about 9 or something, and I got off and walked a bit. I was super paranoid that the train would leave without me, though, so that didn't last long. Then a whole herd of BRITISH PEOPLE got on the train! A lot of them are in my car, and they are saying things like “knackered” and “loads of space!” “lovely,” and “sheduled” in their crazy British accents. It's fantastic. I hope they stay on for a long time.
      5:10pm Oh my gosh you guys I was almost THAT person. That person that gets left behind, whom you see running for the train as it pulls out of the station. As a matter of fact, I WAS that person, but a platform worker caught it in time. I have no idea what I would have done if she hadn't. I just wanted to use the bathroom in the station and not on the train! I thought it would be a longer stop, but it totally wasn't, it was like 7 minutes! Oh my gosh. I am not getting off this train until we get to San Francisco. Earlier, I listened to one of the granolas, a very liberal-minded woman from California, ask a series of increasingly less-well-thought-out questions of an Amish couple. Then she told them that she had a partner (male) but they weren't married. The Amish guy proceeded to very politely give her “what-for”. I laughed. It was very interesting to get out in a world (i.e. not Bethel) where people don't know what Amish/Mennonites think or believe. I guess that'll probably be my new world for the next little while.
      7:30pm Ooh, there are some honest-to-goodness Australians sitting behind me! They use words like “peckish,” “walkabout,” and “bums,” as well as having fantastic accents. AND they have heard of “Footrot Flats,” a comic book that Dad enjoyed during his time in New Zealand. We're driving through western Colorado or eastern Utah, I'm not quite sure which. The scenery is very pretty, lots of wind-blown and water-shaped sandstone. Very different looking from Kansas, that's for sure. Looks like we're in for some storms too! There are a lot of dark, towering clouds straight ahead.
      8:25pm We did indeed get some rain. Enough to produce the most beautiful full double rainbow I've seen in years. It didn't last too long, of course, but it was absolutely gorgeous, stretched out over the Utah desert.
      3:00pm, Saturday Well, I dropped my camera. Again. It broke. Again. There's this guy on the train from Florence, Italy, and he's going around interviewing all these people about why they're on the train, and stuff. So while we were going through the Sierra Nevadas (beautiful, by the way), just past the Donner Pass, he asked to interview me. So there I was, sitting in the observation car, stitching away on my applique, answering questions about what I was doing in California and what does “Mennonite” mean. And all of a sudden he was like “AAAGH!!” and swiped for my side of the table. About that time, I heard a crash, and my camera went in one direction and my lens went rolling down to the end of the car. Turns out I broke the little plastic mounts that hold the lens into the shotgun mount on the body. So.... now I have to find a place to fix it. And in the meantime... use Ben's point-and-shoot? I feel sort of naked. On the bright side, yours truly may show up on a radio spot in either Switzerland or Italy, talking about Mennonites and Bethel College!