I'm back.

I will talk about the break, the things I did on it, photos of finished projects, etc., later on. Because when one has - to put it politely - a challenging time getting back from a trip, that tends to overshadow the rest of the memories of the trip.

I do not know how much it was on the news - not having seen news since about 2 pm on Thursday - about the problems the cold weather and snow caused for Amtrak. (I know it caused problems for flying; it probably would have been worse had I been flying.)

Everything seemed fine (save for a 45 minute or so delay, caused by frozen switches north of us) when I got on in my parents' town. Everything WAS fine until shortly before crossing the Mississippi, when there was a crunch, the train stopped, and the power went out.

Turns out there was "debris on the tracks" that we hit - probably branches; we were going through a wooded area. It damaged an air hose, we were told, it would be a few minutes - and then everything was fine again.

Well, until St. Louis. As we were getting close to the station, the train shook a bit, and stopped. As I had already eaten, had my bed made up, and was reading, I didn't think much of it, and went on reading.

And we sat. And sat and sat. I began to get a bit concerned - was the engine broken? Were they deciding that the switches were too dangerous to proceed?

I contemplated putting on my pajamas and trying to sleep (by now it was about 9), with the thought that if something was VERY wrong, and we were (God forbid) going to be pulled off and stuck on buses (as happened in March a few years back, when there was flooding), I would be in a bit of difficulty. (That said, my pajamas are about as modest as the street clothes a lot of people wear - it was a pair of knit long pants from Old Navy and a long-sleeve OBI t-shirt). So I went ahead, figuring, "If the switches are too frozen, they'll probably just keep us here overnight, keep refueling as needed to keep the heat on."

Um, wrong decision.

I had just fallen asleep when the conductor and the train attendant knocked on my door. The sleeper car I was in needed to be taken off, we would need to go to the diner car and wait, then we'd be told what to do. I commented that I had a suitcase below - in addition to the overnight bag, coat, and purse in my compartment. The train attendant was nice enough to get it (or maybe, in retrospect, he was required to, given what had happened).

It turned out the engine and the car I was in had derailed. Now, "derailed" is a scary word - I always picture train cars off on their sides - but there are different degrees of "derailed" ranging from "looks like Gomez Addams had some fun this afternoon" to "barely noticeable but not really safe to proceed." The "derailment" I experienced was in the second category.

At first, we got no explanation - and tired, half-awake people who have been rousted from a compartment they paid well for are generally not happy people. But after hearing it was a derailment later, I guess we were actually quite lucky.

Though - and I suppose this is a function of Amtrak being a largish bureaucracy - it was frustrating trying to get helped. And frustrating for the conductor who was trying to help us. First off - he thought there were enough open compartments on the remaining sleeper car to house us (AKA, "the best of all possible worlds.") But no, one had been sold at the last minute, and crew were in the others (That said : crew probably need a compartment more than passengers do; if you are working 18 hour shifts feeding people in a dining car you need to get away from the crush of humanity).

Then, he said, "Well, we have an empty coach that was to come off on the back. I will see if we can leave it on; if so, I will put you in there, at least it will be more quiet and you will have more room. (There were, IIRC, six of us "displaced persons.")

So he called around - it seemed to take forever to go up the chain of command - and I took a moment to quickly call my mom, even though it was near midnight, because my dad is an inveterate 24-hour-news-channel watcher, and I imagined that "Amtrak train derails in St. Louis!" could be a headline, and that would not be good.

(She hadn't heard, but hadn't gone to bed yet, so no harm, no foul.)

Finally, the conductor moved us - helping me drag my heavy suitcase the last bit of the way. The empty coach was not ideal (I am at least 10" too tall to comfortably stretch out across two seats, and there is always a hard spot in them that winds up somewhere around the small of my back). But I settled in and tried to sleep.

I think I had slept for about an hour when the conductor came back. Amtrak had called again, they decided the empty coach had to come off. I don't know if he was embarrassed about the situation or just tired out, but he wasn't as helpful this time. First of all, I would have liked to hear an "I'm sorry we're making you move again" but didn't get that. And then we were not offered help to move all our luggage - just a "you need to have all your stuff out in 10 minutes." And then, we were handed seat-check slips (a piece of paper with the abbreviation for our destination) and told which coach to go into - no help with finding a seat (normally, on crowded trains, conductors do this, at least when you first get on).

Of course, it was like 2 am at that point, so in "my" coach, every empty single seat had someone sprawled across it. I didn't relish waking someone up and asking them to shove over so I could sit, and it was dark enough it was hard to see which seats had just one check (meaning one person) and which had two.

I sat down on the floor - my head hurt, I was tired beyond tired, I was distressed at trekking all over the train in my pajamas (and no brassiere on underneath; and yes, that matters to me).

That's when things began to turn around, I guess. A young mother saw me, and quietly said, "We put our kids in an empty pair of seats so my husband and I could each have more room; let me move them and you can have that pair of seats."

So she gathered them up - they didn't even wake - and moved them back next to her and next to her husband. I thanked her as profusely as I could without waking anyone up and flopped in the seat.

The only really bad thing, there was a guy who snored about as loud as a chain saw on full blast. And there were people talking fairly loudly. I know most snorers can't help it but I do admit whimpering to myself a bit about being "forsaken" and miserable.

I think I may have slept for two more hours or so, despite all that. I woke around six, waited until seven (I didn't want to wake anyone, even if they kept me awake the night before), quietly went to the bathroom and put back on the necessary underpinnings to feel "decent" in the dining car, and went to get breakfast. (At least they let the former-sleeping-car passengers still get their meals comped).

After breakfast, I changed back into my street clothes and read for interminable hours. I saw parts of Arkansas I normally never see on the trip. I got lunch (I don't recommend their brisket sandwich) and read for many more hours.

(One book I was reading - after finishing "The Whiskey Rebels" - was "Sisterhood of Spies," which is about OSS operations - Julia Child (before she married Paul Child) was involved, as was Marlene Dietrich (well, tangentially, but still). And it occurred to me that I would make a poor spy; I do not deal well with discomfort of even the relatively minor sort I was experiencing.)

Finally we pulled in at Mineola around 7 - some 9 1/2 hours after we "should" have. I was so tired at that point that even if I had wanted to drive the 2 1/2 hours home, I don't think it would have been safe for me to (let alone the thought of facing grocery shopping at 9 pm or so). I asked the nice lady who volunteers at the train station two favors, which she willingly agreed to:

1. That she would stay until it was sure my car would start (It's been unnaturally cold here). The other good thing - her grown son was with her, and I think I heard him mention that he had jumper cables in his truck, so that would have taken care of things had it been necessary)

2. If I could get the name and directions of some kind of motel to stay in. (Again, her son helped - he went over and gave me a brochure for the new Best Western that had opened up in town. I called them just to be sure they had a room - of course they did, but given how the earlier part of the trip went, I figured it was not good to trust that everything would fall into place).

My car started up right away, her son helped me stow my luggage, and I got to the motel and checked in. (I also drove out to a McDonald's and got one of those yogurt things - they call it 'fruit and yogurt' but this time of year it was more like 'jam and yogurt' - and some apple slices and a little thing of milk and a cookie, because I had not had dinner).

And you know, when I've had a bad experience, I become almost irrationally grateful for any good thing that happens. I thanked the nice lady at the Amtrak station and her son profusely for their help, I thanked the lady at the motel desk for having a room available and for helping me (and even better; she gave me a room very close to one of the doors, so it was easy to haul my suitcase in). I was also very thankful to the teenager at the McDonald's who sold me my food.

And I got back to my room and ate my yogurt and cookie, and called my folks to let them know I was safely in a motel room, and watched a bit of the Weather Channel, and tried to call and arrange for the refund for the cost of my sleeping compartment (but by then, the refunds department at Amtrak had closed; I will call back Monday).

And when I finally went to bed I thought about how the place I was in now had so many of the things I didn't have the night before but wanted - it was dark, it was quiet, I was all by myself, I could stretch out, it was warm enough. And that the hotel couldn't derail. (I suppose it could have suffered an earthquake, but I don't think Mineola is near to any faults).

I will say that the one thing that had saved my sanity on the train (well, other than having books to escape into) was that I had a dark eyeshade (one of those "sleep masks") and a set of ear plugs to wear. Even with the ear plugs the talking and snoring still bugged me, but not as much as it would have without them. I'm considering buying a sleep mask and set of ear plugs to keep in each of my purses - whatever purse I am using at the moment being part of my 'go bag' in case there's some major evacuation-requiring emergency. Because I can see a Red Cross shelter situation being a lot more tolerable if you could cut down on the noise with ear plugs.

But anyway.

Another nice thing about the motel was that they had one of those little hair dryers (you know the kind, they are like a regular compact hair dryer but are attached to the wall so people won't steal them) and a sample size bottle of conditioning shampoo. So, after I ate my yogurt and cookie, I took a long hot shower and washed my hair (another thing I desired greatly after getting off the train, but was prepared not to be too disappointed if washing my hair wasn't possible). I put on my white button-front shirt (it is a unisex style and so is almost long enough on me to serve as a sleep shirt) because I really didn't want to put the grubby "pajamas" I had worn on my Flying Dutchman trek through the train. After drying my hair, I went to bed, slept pretty solidly for nine hours. The next morning, I got the free breakfast the hotel offered, loaded up the car, and checked out.

I have to say that I think that hotel room was the best - and likely the wisest - $90 I have spent in a while. Not only was I better rested and therefore MUCH safer to drive, but I was in a much better mood (one thing I have learned is that anything I experience that is upsetting or unpleasant, it seems much less so after a decent night's sleep). And it was daylight - another good thing, as I saw deer running across the road in a couple of the wooded areas I passed through, and it's possible if they had been doing that last night in the dark, I might not have seen them in time.

So I drove to Sherman, went and spent a crazy amount of money on groceries at the Kroger (I had no perishables at home, of course, but also I wanted to stock up on canned goods just in case of more bad weather). I worried a bit the whole way back about the pipes in my house - I live in an old house, it's poorly insulated in places, and though I left the heat on at 65*, you never know for sure.

I did get to Durant just before 11, got in as nearly the LAST person in line before they closed the post office, picked up my mail. (There was so much - I think there's a surprise Christmas present in there - that they gave me one of their boxes to carry it in and just asked me to bring it back at some point).

And I got home. And the pipes were fine. My mailbox, however, was on the ground - either the pipe holding it up just had rusted to the point where it fell over in the wind, or someone hit the pipe with their car - but I think I can temporarily fix that by getting a piece of PVC pipe just slightly larger than the metal pipe and using that as a "splint" on the pipe until I can figure out what I want to do as a replacement mailbox foundation.

So now, I have to eat (soup is heating on the stove), practice piano, write a Sunday school lesson, and put stuff away. But wow, am I glad to be home and off that train, and done with traveling for a while.

I will say that Best Western in Mineola was pretty nice - and not that terribly expensive (and I might have been able to dicker for a better room price if I had felt like it), that I am thinking at some point I should do a short East Texas road trip and make that my place to stay - I could see getting a room there for two nights, driving down the first day and spending it in and around Mineola (there are a lot of natural areas in East Texas, and also lots of good antiquing, and Mineola is supposed to have a really excellent restaurant that features "giant bunnies" in the outdoor garden area...) and then stay over at the hotel, and then the next day go over to Longview, and then on my way home on the third day, stop at Quitman or Lindale (Quitman is supposed to have a large quilt shop, and Lindale has a weaving shop that also sells a lot of natural-fiber yarn). If nothing else, I could do it as my shopping pilgrimage next fall over mid-fall break. Or maybe in May, after classes let out for the summer.