Riding the Rails

It was a short night. We went to bed at 8:30 and 1 of us was asleep shortly thereafter. The other was too anxious to sleep. I mean that in the correct sense of the root word “anxiety”. Perhaps it was anxiety over missing a wakeup call—which never came. Or a concern about riding the train or any 1 of other imagination induced terrors. At any rate we were up and showered and entering the taxi by 5. We took the short ride to the Amtrak station and were stunned to find the train already there. Trains are rarely on time, never mind early. We learned later that it had left Chicago earlier and made good time because the economy has depleted the number of freight trains carrying goods. We got our tickets, checked our baggage and were in our little sleeper before 5:30. Again I was asleep as soon as we began rolling at 5:40. We slept until 7:30 when we were up and eating breakfast. I have decided to try losing some weight on this trip by eating a high protein, low carb diet. I had an omelet and 2 sausage patties. Due to the lack of space in the dining car, we were seated with 2 other single travelers. The man had worked for TXU, our electric provider in the Valley, and a woman who had an agency that provided care for Alzheimers patients. We spent the morning in the observation car watching the desolate west Texas dessert go by. Actually, in the beginning of the trip, the foliage was surprisingly green from all the rain we had during November and December. There were some interesting rock formations along the way. We had a seating for lunch at noon and ate with another traveling couple. The man was the biggest boor I had met in some time. He was a wealth of information but felt moved to tell everything he knew on the way through the area. They were from Houston. After lunch 1 of us took a nap while the other read. I had some problem with the computer but it straightened itself out. We went to our dinner reservation, and I had steak while Evelyn had crab cakes. We shared a table with what we surmise were 2young sodomites. We enjoyed their company but prayed for them. We walked inside the train for exercise and went to bed.