Amtrak
So…I’m sitting on the train “#91 Silverstart!” they shout. I didn’t know whether I was going to take the plane or train until recently (I think I was somewhat waiting for Shun to decide if he could afford it because if he could, it’d've been better for him had I taken the train, but Jasmine [who's sitting her lovely self here beside me, playing sudoku] has never been on either, so plane would’ve been fine with her). B/c I waited so long, the plane tickets were up around $600 (for the two of us). This is REDUNKULOUS! I mean, I checked jetblue, southwest, airtran, cheapflights, cheaptix (or is it cheaptickets?), kayak, expedia, travelocity, orbitz, I tried from RDU, CLT, GBO to MIA and FLL (or w/e Ft. Lauderdale is), and I couldn’t get it cheaper, well, actually, I could get it down to about $300 if we went from like CLT to FLL and had a 10 hr layover…so AMTRAK! It’s only $130 for the two of us (one-way of course). While I am a baller now, I can’t justify $200-$500 just for convenience…

doo-dooloo-doo-dooloo-doo-dooloo (that’s supposed to be read aloud in a slightly higher pitch and to sound like the Wayne’s World noise that indicates we are gonna warp elsewhere/elsewhen [in this case back to October, well Jasmine just put Elton {"my" iPod} on "Say You'll Be There" by the Spice Girls so I guess we're back to like '97, but anyways...]) October 2006! Your Greatly and Bert, Becca, and Mia took Amtrak down to ORL (from RGH) for Fall Break to go to Disney and Universal (yes, it was a pretty expensive trip, but the train was like $90 round-trip! Oh, btw, Jasmine just put “Wannabee” by the Spice Girls on). Well, I don’t remember how long the train was supposed to take (if i weren’t w/o connectivity right now, I’d look it up, but I’m writing in Notepad and gonna paste this in later), but it took and EXTRA 16 hrs! So in calculating how long it’d take us to get to Miami, I looked at the approximately 21 hour travel time online and added about 24 hrs in my head. This is what you do if you wish to ride Amrak for any length over a few hours. Any way, I’m digressin from my digression, in October, we were to get on the train at 21:00 in Raleigh, NC. Well, not only was our vessel late, but it was also a charter bus. “Why?!” or WTF?! I hope you’re wondering, well b/c apparently there was a bridge out somewhere, so we had to take a charter bus from Raleigh, NC to Atlanta, GA. Well we were like, w/e as long as we get there on time. Well, that might have been a possibility, but the little catch that I guess went w/o saying (well, it did, whether or not it should’ve) was that the bus driver had to go to all the (TRAIN!) stations that our train was supposed to hit. Well, this poor man (busdriver) had no clue where he was or where he was going, no map, no radio, no cell phone, and of course, no GPS! So here we are, at night, in the rain wandering around in this charter bus, stopping at gas stations, cramped, hot, cold, sleepy, pissed, potty’s broke… So we got to Atlanta WAY late, they were supposedly holding the train for us there…so as if all this weren’t enough (they gave us a free dinner and said get over it), on the way back, we had to stop 2 or 3 times (luckily on the train this time) for them to fix the track! I mean, don’t get me wrong Amtrak delaying committee, I would love to travel only over tracks in a state of good repair, but CON FLABBIT! they know the schedule, couldn’t they have done maintenance before we got there?!

(So I switched to AbiWord for in-line spell checking, I’m really bad at the space bar lately. If I make the same mistake again, I’ll leave it so you can see. )

So, this time, I was pessimistic and thought I may get there as late as Sunday night (instead of Saturday night), and did other things to try to make the trip better. We each have a pillow and small blanket, I have my laptop and some movies/shows on DVD. Well, cool TGM forgot that he doesn’t have a DVD codec on his laptop right now…so those DVDs are worthless. YAY! Well, at least I have Elton and Bert’s headphone 1-to-2 adapter (Jasmine keeps tryin to call it a 2-to-1, but that’s def not what it is), so we can both listen to music. We have snacks, cash, she’s got sudoku and books, I’ve got laptop and books (GEB and Erec) and fatigue. Anyways, when Shun and Bert and Griffin took us to the station last night, I meant to slip them my KK card (buy any dozen donuts and get a free glazed dozen), since we were in Raleigh (where the Krispy Kreme is), but where Shun pulled the car up, there was a piece of pavement scratched to hell that said something like “N R IN” and just about a minute after we all got out to unload and whatnot, this dwoman (that means devilwoman, usually a term of endearment, but in this case, a respectful insult) rolls up (literally) on her golfcart, and was like “MOVEMOVEMOVEMOVE!” and so, Shun got back in hisr car, at which point she backed up as if she would very soon t-bone his lovely Spectra since he was blocking the little garage she was trying to get to (look dwoman, the next train isn’t going to be here for 3 hrs and while I don’t know that at this point [20:40], you do! cut this rushin stuff out!), so they got the heck outta there. Well, when we’d printed our tickets off and looked around for a bit, and checked some luggage (Capitalism help them if Amtrak has harmed a single piece of Kingsley’s plastic [that's my Wii's name]), and guybehindcounter told us train would be here “no sooner than 11, possibly as lat as 1″ (it’s just about 21:00 at this point) I called and told Bert to have them come get us and go to KK, and right now I’m realizing this wasn’t too polite, but I thin khe (<-- that's the sort of typo I keep making!) knows that me telling in situations where I'm not in control is really just me asking. Anyways, he said they'd try to get there themselves, but had just gotten unlost (Raleigh's stupid as far as roads go in case y'all didn't know, stupider than Charlotte even!), so they came and got us, and we got an assorted dozen (we each picked 2 and 2 people each picked one more), and then a glazed dozen, well OF COURSE they were HOT and ... THEN (?) so we ate that dozen in about 30 seconds. So at least Jasmine and I didn't have to just sit in the train station for 2 hours, we spent about 1.5 of them runnin KK with the crew.

btw, as an abstract from what may become "Open Letter to Sweet, Sweet Krispy Kreme": Now KK, your hot glazed donuts and sweet assorted accompaniment are one of the things I live for, but I do not think I need to be treated like I’m tryin to rob the damn store and attack the families of the individual laborers each time I come in and order. While I may tend to come in with several people and we will all be picking approximately 2 donuts of a dozen, we generally pause and get out act together before BOTHERING you with our order, and are generally more streamlined than individuals ordering only a donut or two and coffee. Also, 2 dozen donuts for 4 or 5 people (which is how I generally roll to KK), is pretty darn good, so cut the pdn bs and serve us, if not with a smile, then at least an attitude that conveys to us that you are aware that we did not force you to work for the best donut place EVER…

So anyway, the train ride’s been alright, I think they’re gonna pull some magic out of their conductor hats and have people going to the west side of the state, or at least those to Tampa, get off at Winterhaven, w/e that is and bus to Tampa, which will apparently not only save them 1 hour, but save the rest of the train about 4 hours… Breakfast was a (allegedly) 3-cheese Quiche and turkey sausage links and bran-apple juice (thanks Jasmine for that collaboration), and hashbrowns, and Croissant. The croissant was def the highlight, but with ketchups n saltnpeppa, the hashbrowns approached mediocre. We were seated across from a woman who looked (to me, a terrible age-guesser) about 30 yrs old for our breakfast, and she was going down to see her daughter and granddaugther…LUCKY! (gotta pronounce that like Napoleon Dynamite) I want to have kids and grandkids! oh well, one day…

Oh, this weird woman was seated across the aisle (in case you don’t know the #91 Silverstar! is organized into rows of four seats two-and-two separated in the middle by the aisle) from us. Well, she was very large, which is fine except that she seemed to have trouble getting comfortable, which is totally understandable as the seats aren’t exactly reality-friendly, and she had these thick glasses that made her eyes look HUGE. And her voice was also kind of weird, a bit of a slur in it. Anyways, she seemed nice enough for about a minute, “hi wherery’all gointo?” but then after some nice chit-chat, Jasmine and I were trying to go to sleep…this woman positions herself so that she is leaning with her side against he seat back meaning she’s looking (STARING) directly across the aisle at…me and Jasmine. Now it’d be one thing if she was trying to sleep, but Jasmine pointed it out to me, and every time I would try to steal some sly, non-chalant peek, this woman had eyes WIDE (and exaggerated by her glasses) open and was just looking over at us, a little creepy. I made Jasmine listen to Straight Outta Lynwood+I’m Pitiful this morn, and when it got to “Do I Creep You Out” she wrote that the woman across the aisle creeps her out on the paper she was using as a clipboard for copying #s between cell phones.

Ok, I’m gonna try to read Erec, the darn thing has a 57 page Introduction! ugh!

Well, I’m just about to post this and I must say we were only 30 min late arriving in Miami.