Day 2

I ended up having to take the aisle seat when we boarded last night.  I didn’t care at the time–I was just tired and wanted to sleep.  My seat-mate is a bit of a bother–he’s the kind who takes the window seat, then pulls the curtains half-shut and reads.  He gets off the train somewhere later today, so that’s good for me. 

I woke up to the sunrise in Washington, somewhere near Spokane.  I get the feeling that they’ve been stopping us a lot for freight traffic overnight.  I don’t know why it was taking us that long to get to Spokane.

The train is running pretty late at this point.  We were six hours late last night, and holding steady.  I’m still not sure entirely why.  I have overheard that some sleeper passengers got bumped to coach, which seems odd.  They are also saying that they are overbooked for coach, and all of the overbookings are showing up, making things even more difficult.  They have to be really anal about how the seating arrangements work.  They are trying to make sure that everyone has a seat as soon as possible, and they are trying to make blocks of seats available for families and people traveling together.  Most people are being good about the whole thing.  Some people are being really nasty with the train crew, and the crew is already pretty stressed about things.  They normally don’t have to do this.  On top of the seating thing, they are still running quite late, so everyone’s schedules are thrown-off. 

I’m having some of my cheese and bread for breakfast, along with some of the fruit juices that I grabbed from the conference.  Woo hoo! 

jonathan