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.
that will teach you not to ride in the back of the train…
Were you a redshirt in the dream? It’s a bad sign if you were.