Pudding!

I really do somehow seem to attract both helpful coincidence and just plain bizarre.  Today, the Walrus and I took a day trip to a place that requires three different trains each way.  Normally, this kind of thing could take up to an hour, including waiting for trains at each transfer.  Both ways today took approximately half that each.  We'd enter a station, get to a platform, and a train would simply appear.

But the stranger thing is that on the last train, while we sat, tired and quiet from all the wandering around, listening to some college students discover for the first time that it is entertaining to try and figure out which Hogwarts school your friends would be, a young woman with bright purple hair, eyes red-rimmed not with fatigue or withdrawal but with copious amounts of red eyeshadow, and a box-top full of pudding cups came aboard, sat down across from us, and promptly offered me a pudding.

Of course I took a pudding!  Who doesn't want pudding?

Travels and Tribulations

Yesterday, the Walrus and I were taking the train home from a place so far that we were scheduled to be aboard said train for approximately eight hours. We had a very nice vacation; thanks for asking.

The first absolutely ridiculous thing was that the main announcer on the train was a woman who clearly did not know that her microphone was set to 11. The rest of us cringed every time an announcement was made as we tried desperately to not need that analgesic yet again. At one point, the conductor came on at normal volume and said, "Conductor to mid-train, do you read me?" to which the very loud woman replied, "I hear you just fine, but apparently you're not hearing me." The irony was not lost on our poor ringing ears.

About halfway through the trip home, we encountered one of the larger stops along the way. The train stopped just short of the station, and then the very loud woman began again. "Attention all passengers, please clear the aisle; the conductor needs to come through, and the faster he can get by the faster we can get this figured out." A few minutes went by. "Attention all passengers, please take your seats. We will be backing up the train and you must be seated for us to move." The train began to inch slowly backwards.

About ten minutes of backwards crawl later, the conductor came on. "I'm sorry folks; there's a disabled train ahead of us at the station, and we're backing up to switch to another track. We'll be out of here as soon as we can." Everyone's frowns lessened slightly and we waited some more. About five minutes passed, and yet another voice came on and announced, "It seems there's a disabled train on our track. Thanks for your patience while we back up and switch to another track." Hmm, thought I, the right hand knows not what the left does. Another five minutes of backing, and suddenly the loud woman came on. "I think what's going on is that there's a disabled train at the station. We're backing up to find another track. I repeat, there's a disabled train, and we're backing up to find another track."

Another ten minutes or so went by before we managed, evidently, to switch tracks and get into the station. The ticket takers walked through the train explaining that we had just gotten around a disabled train, and that we would shortly reach the station.

Getting back to our city (an hour late), the Walrus and I then proceeded to get on the local subway. The time there said 12:15. This being clearly wrong, we thought it must have simply been forgotten during the change of DST. We were tired, went home, and collapsed. When I awoke this morning, however, it occurred to me that this could not possibly have been the case; if they had forgotten to switch the time, it would have been 10:15. Some silly station worker must have switched the clocks twice!

Story the Fourth: Trains

I'm a big fan of trains as a way of getting where you're going. They're safer than cars, faster than walking, and much, much freer of irritation than airplanes. Train travel places the traveller in a slightly surreal state of being: the landscape slides by, gradually changing. If you fall asleep, you awaken in a distinctly different place. Some would say an airplane does the same, but honestly one bunch of clouds that you have to dislocate your neck to see through two layers of semi-transparent material look much like any other. In any case, the unique environment of trains can lead to odd experiences, and so I shall relate one such. This event took place when I was about five. My parents and I were taking a cross-country trip, by train, to visit an aunt in California. For anyone who hasn't done this, it's a three full day trip, which means sleeping on the train at least twice. During the second night, somewhere in the wilds of the American west, we were awakened by the train crew with the news that due to heavy rainfall, a bridge somewhere farther along the line had literally fallen down. It was stated that we might well have to get off the train and get shuffled to another on the far side of the ravine by bus, but that we should 'wait and see'. For what, we weren't entirely sure. The mystery persisted for at least an hour, at which point we were informed that the Army Corps of Engineers had been dispatched and that they had erected a temporary replacement bridge. We were unaware that this was a thing, and the attitude of the train crew was less than reassuring. However, after only a few more hours the train began to inch slowly forward. It made its way over the 'temporary replacement bridge' with much groaning of metal, and we were on our way again.