Day 3

I just had lunch on the train outside of Minneapolis-St. Paul. I got out for some fresh air at the station, and took a couple of pictures of our train. They added another coach car, probably to help alleviate some of the congestion issues.

I ate lunch with a couple from Florida, on their way home from Alaska (!). They take one long train trip every year, which I think is awesome. Maybe I can convince Jenny…. 🙂 We were talking for a bit, and the guy said he was from New Castle originally. Then he mentioned Franklin. It turns out that he spent a lot of time there. He has a sister who has lived there for quite some time. His favorite fishing spot is in Cooperstown. What? Are you kidding me? We are both far away from home, on long trips, and we were randomly seated together at lunch, but our common point of interest is a place around which we both have fond memories, and its hard to find on a map. Hah!  That was cool. They were visiting their son stationed with a branch of the service in Fairbanks, and they were on their way home to Florida.

I’m now sitting across from an old woman from Germany, who speaks only German. She knows enough English to tell me that she is traveling with her son, who has been a doctor for six years in St. Paul. They are going to Chicago for something, but I couldn’t understand what. She is excited to see the lake that we are skirting now, and is even more excited about seeing the Mississippi. I don’t know German, but the bouncing and pointing and the word "Mississippi" all stand out.

We’re passing now through acres and acres of corn. At least their corn is the right height ("knee high by the 4th of July"). Of course, maybe it is supposed to be higher out west here, but I don’t know.

I don’t think that I’m going to make my connection to Pittsburgh tonight. If we stay perfectly on time from now, we won’t be in until an hour and a half after the Capitol Limited departs. We’ll have to see what happens with that.

We switched conductors sometime this morning. The new conductor is named Connie, and apparently she is popular with the crew. The previous conductor was a bit on the surly side. Everyone seems to like Connie, so go Connie!  She has a great midwestern accent, too, so she’s fun to listen to on the radio.

I just realized that I forgot about dinner last night.  I had a good dinner yesterday as we rode through the Montana plains.  We went through some driving rain as dinner time approached.  I almost missed my reservation, though.  I woke-up my seat-mate so that he didn’t miss his reservation at 6:30PM.  I had one for 8PM.  He had dozed-off a bit, and I caught them on the second call and woke him up.  I dozed-off a bit after he came back, but he didn’t feel it necessary to return the favor.  Argh.  I woke up myself when they did second call, though, so I still made it.  I sat with a nice couple and we talked about train travel and the like.

That’s all for now. I’m going back to enjoying the scenery.

jonathan