people say she’s crazy…

Ho hum, remember a few days ago when I posted that la-de-dah, nothing interesting ever happens to me and aren’t I bored and shoot, if something interesting would just happen, I’d write a fun post?

That was dumb.

What is NOT dumb is how much I love this guy:Not only how much I love him, but how much many people do! So in that spirit, I gamely decided that I would boogie down, with Dan’s help, from NU Hillel’s riveting Rosh Hashanah service to Union Station to hop the 1:15 Amtrak train to Ann Arbor to visit this guy and drink his wine. The 1:15 CST Amtrak gets into Ann Arbor at 6:45 EST, so it’s a quick 4hr30min jaunt. The early fall Michigan countryside is starting to get colorful, so once you get out of Indiana, it’s actually a pretty nice ride.

At least, that’s what they tell me.

See, right around 4:30, when we were just about to pull into Kalamazoo, we stopped. I mean we’d stopped outside Chicago and we’d stopped somewhere else, no big deal. Someone needed to pass us or something, right? No. Totally wrong, actually. This was made clear when, oh, 30 minutes after we stopped, the power went out on the train. Curious. About 30 minutes later, the conducter stopped in our car to tell us that the engines were broken. They were trying to fix them. The jolt and shudder we’d felt about 20 minutes after we’d stopped was the engines trying to power the train and failing. Great!

It would have taken about 30 more miles for us to get to Kalamazoo. In Kalamazoo, about half the train’s passengers would have been at their destination. In Kalamazoo, the rest of us could have gotten off the train and called someone to come get us, or Amtrak could have put us on a bus. Instead, we were in a swamp. Those swamp weeds that look like corn dogs could be seen out the window.

After about an hour, I decided to brave the “Cafe Car” in search of a Diet Coke. I’d grabbed a sandwich at the station and had plenty of snacks with me, but I was low on liquids. The Cafe Car, I learned, compares unfavorably to the Westminster Campus Center snack bar on every level: fewer booths, one shifty microwave (particularly shifty when the power goes out), a shoddy selection and, worst of all, Pepsi products only. They do, however, sell beer. I didn’t notice it on the menu, but an hour into the stall-out, a table of four old dudes (one in overalls) in the Cafe Car was covered in a few dozen Heineken bottles and countless empty bags of chips. A little hilarious. Anyway, I paid $1.75 for a can of Diet Pepsi and went back to my seat.

Back at my seat, the lady in front of me was admiring my knitting, so we chatted about that. The lady behind me told horror stories of the air traffic control strike [?????] when she and her husband took an oversold train to Seattle from Phoenix–people in the aisles; if you stood up, you lost your seat; no toilet paper; over-flooded toilets by central CA… general awesomeness. I mean, how could you ever take the train again after that? She was also very pleased to have made it to the Cafe Car while the power was on (it flickered on and off a few times) so that she could get a hot dog. She bragged to her husband, “Well, I was able to get a hot dog, so I’ve got enough protein to get me through as long as it takes.” Which… I mean, Amtrak hot dog? Microwaved? Not gonna sustain anyone that long, lady. Sorry. At one point, a jolly old man walked by and commented that he just took the train to Chicago the night before just for the train ride. He was enjoying himself thoroughly. What universe is this?

I put my iPod on album shuffle. The following went by:
1) Continuum
2) Transatlanticism
3) HAIR (seriously)
4) Reveal
5) Parade
6) The Garden State Soundtrack

I overheard a conversation between two teenagers trying to get to the Western MI football game in Kalamazoo, talking about how they were applying to Illinois and Michigan State but they’d never get in. Indiana was a better bet, and that’s okay because it has such good teaching school.

I knitted like 9 zillion rows. I ate like 9 zillion jelly beans and 9 zillion Goldfish. I read a frickin Cosmopolitan magazine for the first time since I was maybe 17.

Somewhere in there an announcement was made: Giving up on our engines. Instead, we’re gonna wait on another train to bring us another engine, and then they’re gonna try to hook this other engine up to our train… ETD of 45 minutes. About an hour and a half later, we were on the road. All in all, the train was 4 hours late. I was on the train for 9.5 hours. I was wearing a black turtleneck under a wide collared grey sweater. It was cold!

Anyway, I had a lovely evening with this guy:U of M was lovely, if schizophrenic when it came to the weather. Brunch [which was not cooked for me but rather ordered] from ZANZIBAR was delicious. I bought a hoodie and a magnet, because I believe in comfort and supporting local economies. And I had a lovely car ride home in the back seat of Sherri’s friend’s Nissan. It took 4hr15min. Including two gas breaks and a food stop.

Just another weekend in the life, I suppose :)