Let's go back to last Thursday night. I'm riding the train through Iowa headed for Lincoln NE and the Stanley family reunion. It is night, it is storming, and the train is going v.e.r.y.... s.l.o.w.... as the lightning flashes I notice that there is a lot of water all along the tracks.. in fact it often appears that we are actually traveling along a bridge over a lake rather than an elevated rail line on solid ground. I ask the conductor why we are going so slow, and the answer is that there are flash flood warnings for the area we are traveling through, and NTSB rules require a passenger train to go no faster than 15 MPH in such a situation. Then I start to hear rumblings from the crew about service being cancelled from Chicago through to Denver for the California Zephyr, the train I am on.
Long story short; I get to Lincoln and find out this train is the last one to come through Lincoln heading West for several days and perhaps even weeks. The flooding on the Missouri River south of Omaha is threatening to wash out the only viable crossing point for hundreds of miles, and the freight traffic added to that crossing is making it impossible for the Zephyr to keep any reasonable schedule even if the bridge doesn't wash out.
This means I get in Lincoln six hours later than expected at 5:30 am Friday morning without any hope of being able to rejoin the westbound Zephyr on Sunday night as planned. I did some quick checking and found a seat on a flight from Lincoln Sunday evening to Denver, the place from which the Zephyr would now originate on Monday morning at 8 am. I also checked with Amtrak to make sure my reservation on the train would still be in effect.
So I settle in to my very comfortable B&B room in Lincoln, join in all the Family Reunion activities, do some Lincoln site-seeing, and proceed to have a great time. To make it more enjoyable I find I'm on the same flight out of Lincoln as Susan although she is proceeding onto Portland via another plane. We hang out at the rather compact Lincoln airport together, go through security together (I apparently violate far more security rules than Susan), and have an uneventful one hour flight to Denver. Karen, Ken's wife who is AWESOME and most wise pointed out a fallacy in my thinking regarding Denver. I thought I could simply hang out at the airport until say 6 am and then take a shuttle to the train station. Karen pointed out that I would be riding downtown (not a short ride) from the airport at the start of rush hour, a major cluster**** in Denver. Also the shuttle services stop at many places as people need let out, and I have no guarantee that I would be at the station early enough to catch my train. The prospect of possibly missing my connection to rejoin my travel itinerary was too horrible to contemplate, and so I decided I should get a room in downtown Denver near the station to be safe. I found a pretty good deal at the Hampton Suites on Sherman and ended up having a really great night's sleep there.
Getting to the train station proved to be yet another ordeal not anticipated. The hotel clerk was very cheerful and assuring that the free people mover shuttle on 16th Street would take me right to the front of Union Station which turned out to be about 20 blocks from the hotel. It was true that the shuttle proved frequent and free, and it does stop at the front entrance to the classic Union Station Terminal building, but unfortunately the Amtrak station is temporarily relocated to a building about five blocks away. In spite of all my efforts to get to the train station in plenty of time, it was almost 7:30 am when I walk up to the counter to check-in. Got on fine though and I've been rolling along ever since.
Next challenge... money. So because of the extra time it took me to get to the train station in Denver, I didn't have a chance to pull some cash out of an ATM on the way. I had what I thought would be enough but after buying some coffee and some food in the dining car, my reserves were down to about eight dollars and some change.
I made a decision to try and get a sleeper berth since the train was not at all crowded and a lot of people had changed their travel plans due to the Chicago/Denver cancellations. When you purchase a sleeper you get all your meals, snacks, beverages, etc. included. You do not, of course, have any tips included.
After dinner and leaving a five dollar tip, I realized I had to do something about the cash situation. I asked my sleeper attendant named Errol and he suggested I could get cash during the half-hour layover in Salt Lake CIty. Turns out the ATM at that spot didn't work so I'm down to change for the remainder. Then during breakfast I asked the waiter if there was anyway my credit card could be used for tips or to get some cash. The dining services manager came over and.. by buying a cup of coffee I was able to get enough cash to tip the servers for my remaining meals and the sleeper attendant. Traveling is easy if you have money and credit!
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