Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Rail trek

In Chicago. Had two nights in Denver - shared hostel room with Marielle, a massage therapist called Candice and next door to a man who described himself as 'vibrating with joy'.

My brother has rubbed off on me. I have become a train geek. These Amtrak overnighters are not like the European ones. Loads of space, no passport controls every ten minutes, no Soviet-style loos which you can't use when the train's in a station. It was three hours late however, which felt comfortingly like home.

We had a big Christian youth group in our carriage. Less pot-smoking and card playing and more boggle and guitars. One of the leaders had a very annoying habit of playing an imaginary trumpet. He nearly got a smack, Christian or not.

Felt like a character in an Agatha Christie made-for-tv film having breakfast in the dining car. There was a old gentleman with a brown shirt and braces sat opposite me who didn't say a word, and slept through the wait for his food. When it eventually came, he took three bites before puking it up on the floor, which was somewhat unexpected.

Anyway. Now in Chicago. Massive buildings, massive pizza, Transformers 3 being filmed downtown. The set looked like a disaster zone - exploded cars, trashed buildings, soldiers with M16s. Shrewsbury on a Saturday night?

1 comment:

  1. OH WOW... SOUNDS LIKE YOU GUYS HAD A BLAST ON THE TRAIN!! ha ha!!!

    I am glad you both arrived safe in Chicago... I could totally go some of that pizza... ha ha. Randomly there was just a segment on one of our trashy current affairs shows saying our pizza is shrinking! HOW RIDICULOUS IS THAT? I think we need to go Chicago style...

    What in the world did you guys do for the 3 hours you were waiting for the train? I would have cried... Saige xx

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