So I arrived in Boston...

The train trip from D.C. to Boston was fairly unevent....no...wait a minute...it was chock full of events.

I have to admit, I'm writing this a full three weeks later - having finally regained some semblance of brain function after my travels - and want to tell you a little bit about my journey back home to Portland. The details may be a tad fuzzy, but I'll do my best.

Anyway, the train trip.

All was going smoothly.

Well, we were a half and hour late pulling out of the station, but that's nothing. It's really a non-event.

I reached Penn Station in New York City and text messaged Kathleen, who was driving the Pearl back home to upstate New York. I got a phone call from her while I was standing on the platform - "Dude, rain from Hell going through Pennsylvania!! I just got out of it...crazy!!" She was laughing, it was so good to hear her voice, even though it had just been a couple of hours since we parted. I told her the skies were clear in New York, so hopefully she would have a saner journey as she got closer to home.

I had settled in nicely to the train ride. I love trains. Good pace for me, the seats are comfortable, and you can zone out to other passengers pretty well if you need to. I was enjoying my iPOD and a very quiet seat companion.

And then things started getting sticky. We stopped.

Anyone who's travelled by train knows that the full-on stop is a harbinger of doom because when it comes right down to it...a train can't do anything but travel on a track, and if anything is obstructing the track...well...that's that for an indeterminable amount of time.

And that's where we were at. A voice came overhead, "looks like we are stopped for an indeterminable amount of time. We'll keep you updated as we get information."

And suddenly there was a mad rush for the snack car. Like people knew. Seasoned train travellers. We weren't getting off this thing. It's not like a bus where there's a pull-over and you can get out. There's no getting out and meandering around the tracks while they "get information." I imagine a similar thing happens on planes that are stuck on the tarmac. The difference is, the flight attendants are in control of that snack cart. On a train...the poor guy who mans the snack counter got completely bum rushed. Suddenly there was a line almost a full car deep. People were buying up all the hamburgers and hot dogs and anything remotely edible. At one point, one of the train stewards just pulled a big unwieldy box of peanuts out of some cupboard and just started throwing them at people, hoping to fend off the siege.

Keep in mind folks that this announcement had only happened ten minutes prior. Even knowing we could be in for a long haul, I was taken aback by the sheer panic that seemed to have arisen so suddenly. Like there was a massive blood sugar crash, train-wide. Too much Survivor or Lost perhaps. It was brutal.

So, more information came in and as it turned out, there was a train in front of us whose engine had died. We were on a single track, so there was no getting around it. We would just have to wait until the train got fixed or towed up the line. Cool fun fact? The train in front of us was a charter from the Boston Red Sox, so there were a bunch of players and coaches and the like on it. That fun fact seemed to actually calm this East Coast crowd down and give them something to talk about and bond over. Good thing there weren't a hoard of Yankee fans on the train.

Eventually we got moving again, I texted my brother Matt, who was picking me up at the station with his (newly wed!) wife, Amy (who I hadn't met yet). I told him we were gonna be at least an hour late at this point, maybe more...which didn't seem to bother him in the least, cool guy that he is.

So life was good, we were all smiling. The snack bar was closed for food, but...you would've guessed that. And then...

We stopped.

Just outside a train station in Connecticut. We could see the station. People were milling about. But we were about 500 yards from it. Criminy, now what!

Well...the rumor mill started up. I kind of had a hand in it, which I feel a little bad about...who knew?

While we were sitting there, three Connecticut troopers ran down the aisle. What?

Here's where my part came in. I had told my seatmate about the chaos in the snack bar and then he told someone that some guy had threatened the snack bar attendant and that they were looking for the guy who did it. This information turned into someone threatening the conductor, which was a federal crime and a terrorist act because of 9-1-1. (!!!) I could hear all this chatter going on around me, and kind of sunk into my seat a little bit, but let it go none-the-less.

The voice on the loudspeaker...and, she seriously said this, "Ladies and Gentlemen, we apologize again for the further delay. It seems we have had some other doins happening. We will give you information as we receive it."

I can't believe "doins" is in "trainspeak to passengers during an unexpected stop" anywhere in the Amtrak manual, but it should be. That was awesome.

We started moving again. After quite some time I tell you, my guy next to me was super agitated. My brother was mellow on the other end of the text message machine and I eventually pulled into South Station at around 11:30 - 'bout two hours late. Not bad, really. Not bad.

Got to meet Amy, who is lovely, and they took me to this very cool little tavern not far from the station where we had a terrific meal of min-hamburgers, Caesar's salad and a tomato-mozzarella number, along with some real Boston Clam Chowder. I was whooped, but excited to see Matt. We headed to his new house!

Sorry for having absolutely no pictures to go with this blog. I didn't take any. Not a one.

Oh, and as far as the terrorist threat? Never happened. I don't know what those troopers were looking for, it had nothing to do with any out-of-control snack bar incident. Everyone was safe. And fed.