Wheeee! Train adventures!

I feel like I've only been writing on here about the stressful bits of my travels, which kind of misrepresents my actual experiences and also creates a vibe for this Substack that I hadn't really intended.

Plus, I feel like a good portion of you are probably going, “Why the hell did this anxiety-ridden idiot ever think that being a nomad was a good idea for her??”

Honestly, overall, I've been having a blast and getting a ton of writing and other work done!

The problem, of course, is that when I'm so busy seeing cool things and working, I don't think about chronicalling that! I need to get into the habit of doing so.

So! I'm in the middle of what was supposed to be a five-day train trip from Maine to Oregon, and the past couple of days have been an adventure! I mean, riding the train is always an adventure; you never know what's going to happen! But this is even more unpredictable than usual.

Two days ago, there was a mudslide in Colorado that blocked the train tracks and delayed a train by ten hours. I was not on that train. The train I was on, however, is the one the crew from that train was scheduled to get onto. But because they were ten hours late, they had to rest for eight hours before they could be put on a new train

Which is good! I'm glad Amtrak does that! But La Junta, Colorado is not where I would normally choose to spend eight hours, especially when that actually stretched into ten and a half hours.

I did get a lot of work done, though, because there was literally nothing to do in LA Junta.

Naturally, once your train is ten and a half hours late, it just keeps on being later, because now the other trains aren't expecting you to be there, so you have to keep stopping to let them past, and by the time we got to LA last night, we were twelve hours late, and my connection to Oregon had been gone for eight hours.

Amtrak was awesome about it. They gave us free dinner and free breakfast the next day, although the vegetarian option was a bit lacklustre. And then they booked me and everyone else who had missed their trains onto new ones this morning and put us up in a hotel for the night.

Honestly, this is way better than most airlines. I've spent my fair share of nights in airports because I've missed a flight and the airline was just kind of like, “Oh, dear, that sucks for you.” I mean, they'll book you on a new flight, but that's it.

And now I'm in LA, and the train station is gorgeous!

I tried to post a picture here, but my phone is being weird and it ended up at the bottom of the post. What can you do?

This is my first time in Los Angeles, and I don't hate it as much as I thought I would. Granted, the question then becomes have I really been to LA now? I mean, I don't usually count layovers, but I did leave the train station! What do you think? At what point can one say they've been to a place?

Some people say it's if you spend a night. Check. Some people say it's if your feet touch the ground (not the floor, but the ground, so you have to leave the airport/train station/bus terminal). Check. But some people say you have to do some kind of activity. Discuss!