My Thanksgiving train tickets are for Thursday morning and Saturday evening. Why not Wednesday and Sunday? Well, by booking tickets on low capacity days, I save eight dollars.
My valise is still one-wheeled from last time. The wheel is just hanging on by a couple of pieces of plastic. I still had two miles to trek, alone this time. I have few options, so all my junk went into the suitcase. I left extra early (allowing for only two hours’ sleep) to allow for the fact that the valise was hauled on my shoulders in a sort of fireman’s carry for cuboids. It wasn’t super heavy. I was mostly bringing home excess t-shirts, which outnumbered my pants by 4:1.
I thought that would be the strategy until I saw some other people, got a little self-conscious, and started pretending to drag it like normal. As soon as they got out of sight, I went back to the over-the-shoulders carry. Other people became more frequent as I approached the station. By the time I got there, the broken wheel had become shorn off completely and the plastic wheel guard had been worn down to a nub. I nabbed a seat near the back of the train and tried to sleep. For a while, I was really caught up in this Star Trek dream. I kept hearing the starship bridge doors opening and closing. Then I woke up and realized what that compressed air sound really was: it was the lavatory toilet shooting its contents into whatever godforsaken holding tank it was destined for, repeatedly, over the course of the ride.