Once again amazingly I am able to sleep on the train. It is not perfect sleep, but I probably got five or six hours of decent sleep. I don’t remember any stops along the way. The most noticeable thing is the fact that the air conditioning stopped working – I’m guessing at about 3:00 am. At five I get up and check the thermostat and also my travel clock which has a thermometer on it. It’s 79 in the roomette.
By 7:30 I am too hot to sleep and go out to find the dining car. Relatively speaking it is frigid in the dining car, but breakfast is good and I sit with a lady who returning to Sacramento, CA from NY. She has spent the last three weeks with her daughter in Fort Lee, NJ. We talk about California and NY, Broadway and trains. She’s a smoker and cannot wait until the next time we can stop and she can have a cigarette. I suggest that this might be a good time for her to stop. She reports that she had “lost her husband” last March and it would be hard to stop smoking now. Maybe she wants to join him sooner than later, I think.
The big news is the train has stopped and we are still 20 minutes out of Cleveland – EAST of Cleveland. This means we are now close to five hours late.
My roomette is too warm for blogging, so I have headed up to the club car to find some cool air. I call cousin Ralph to give him an update on the delays and he starts to develop contingency plans. Once in the club car, I find a conductor. He is NOT optimistic about our arriving in time to catch the Empire Builder. When asked what happens then he indicates that since they are guaranteed connections that Amtrak will provide accommodations in Chicago and a plan to get me to Portland. The word “bus” is mentioned. The adventure continues….
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