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After initially dozing off (see yesterday’s post), I woke up long enough to realize I missed a few songs, and then dozed off again. When I woke up a second time, the songs were still going since I had it set for infinite looping and figured I slept for 45 minutes as I was now hearing repeats; after a couple more songs played the MP3 player went silent (battery has been drained). I pulled out my cell phone & it showed to be 4:30 AM – I had slept for more than 2 hours straight. It was still dark outside my window, and I could see some flashes of lightening from thunderstorms off in the distance. I then dozed off & on a couple more times before daybreak.
At 8 AM I made my way to the dining car to see about getting some breakfast. They took my name for the waiting list, then I returned one car back to the observation car (has open view windows and sideways facing chairs) to sit & wait for my name to be called. After about 10 minutes I was called to the dining car and seated at a table for 4 with three other people. They (Jack, his wife Pat, and Dakota their 8 or 9 year old grandson) were actually a party of 7 (the other four at the table across the aisle – Dakota’s sister, his aunt and two cousins) and were heading back home in Alta Loma, CA after spending a couple weeks in Indiana visiting other family members. While seated at the table, we rolled across the state line from Kansas into Colorado, which meant a time zone change to Mountain Time – it was now the 7 o’clock hour again. Three of us had the French toast, while Pat enjoyed her corn beef eggs – I’m not a corn beef person, but she said it was good & I hear other compliments on the dish later during the day.
I then returned to my seat and loaded Iron Man into my laptop’s DVD player. Somewhere in there we pulled into La Junta, so my neighbor got off the train and I would have the two seats to myself the rest of the way. My morning ‘double feature’ included Despicable Me, which I dozed off towards the end when Dru had grabbed the Moon, made haste for the girl’s recital only to find that they were kidnapped by Vector… I’ll have to catch the ending again later, as it was now time for lunch.
An attendant had come through the car taking lunch reservations, so when the 11:30 announcement was made I proceeded to the dining car where I was seated with a grandfather/grand-daughter from Michigan making their way to Flagstaff to spend the week around the Grand Canyon, and Tim, also from Michigan but going to Fullerton, CA to visit some friends. These three were not travelling together, though they did meet up in the Detroit station and been playing tag since. As we were enjoying our lunch, the train stopped in Trinidad, CO and then climbed our way into New Mexico heading towards Raton.
After lunch I returned to my seat for a couple more movies, and missed parts of them as I dozed off again. As I sit here and type this, we are still about an hour outside of Albuquerque, and we should have been there 2 hours 20 minutes ago. Welcome to the world of Amtrak. So, now my 9 PM ETA into Flagstaff will be closer to midnight. Update: arrived in ABQ at 7:10 PM, 3 hours 15 minutes behind schedule.
ABQ is normally scheduled to be a 1 hour stop – fuel, water, food, etc. are replenished on the train, and tonight’s stop was no different, so we didn’t get underway again until after 8 PM. We passed through Gallup at 10:30 PM (this is for my sister that lives there – I thought it was a little late to call as rolled by in view of her house). With one more stop in Winslow, AZ we finally arrived in Flagstaff at 12:30 AM (Fri). As I was waiting for the checked luggage to be brought to the station so I could retrieve my bike, a taxi was sitting near-by in the parking lot with the cabbie standing nearby. He just finished talking to another passenger that he was going to take to a nearby hotel, and said he could take me & my bike to my hotel in the same area. So I was in my hotel room and in bed by 1 AM for some hopefully sound sleep.
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