Gary and my roomettes were across the aisle from one another. They were three feet six inches wide and six and a half feet long. They had two bench seats facing one another that folded down to make a bed. There was a second bed folded up against the wall hanging above the first. We were both happy that we’d each booked our own.
I had a street level view of one side of our trip, and Gary had a view of the other.
There was an end “family room” just past ours. A father and his two children occupied that space. I’d speculate the girl was ten and her brother was eight. We didn’t see them a lot. They were loud when we first boarded, but our car attendant knocked on their door and reminded them that they weren’t traveling alone. There were others on the train seeking peace and quiet.
The conductor announced each stop. Most were brief. When we had a stop of about ten minutes, we could get off the train to stretch our legs and smokers could have a quick smoke.
We ate two meals on the trip. We had a seating choice for dinner: 5:30, 6:30 and 7:30. We chose 6:30 and were joined by a nice lady about our age and her twenty-something year old granddaughter. They were heading to Sacramento and would arrive on Monday afternoon at 2 pm, about thirty hours after Gary and I departed.
Dinner was family restaurant quality good. Gary’s salmon was a bit dry, but Grandma and my steaks were cooked to perfection. The twenty-something enjoyed her pasta Bolognese. Our appetizers sparked our palettes, and our desserts were spectacular. We could have had a beer or glass of wine, but we stuck with water.
We exchanged small talk during dinner. The granddaughter was getting ready to earn her degree as a librarian. I told her I was working with a former librarian on a book and asked how she became interested in the field. It turns out her mom and her sister are both librarians. Small world.
The duo was making their first train trip like Gary and me. I forget where they were originally from, but grandma had just visited Traverse City for the first time. We spoke about how beautiful that area of Michigan is. After dinner we parted ways and didn’t run into them again.
I was told by our car attendant to arrive by 6:30 a.m. to catch our “eat on demand” breakfast as we were scheduled to arrive in Denver at 7:30. She said we were running about an hour late, but we’d probably make up the time during the night. She and I talked about her job a bit. She lamented that the Zepher is one of two passenger trains that doesn’t have internet. “They need to fix that.”
She also said that she works six days on the round-trip ride from Chicago to Sacramento and then has five days off. She used to have eight off, but things changed after Covid when several former employees didn’t return.
I knew from my research that our car had a restroom and a shower, but I didn’t know where they were relative to our roomettes. I wasn’t sure if they were on both levels of the train car or if we’d have to climb up and down a set of stairs to use the facilities. Luckily, they were just a few steps from us. I’m not sure if the people in the upper car had a restroom but they had to come down to use the shower. We had to go up if we wanted a cup of coffee. We got the better deal.
My biggest challenge was knowing what time it was and what state we were in. There were no announcements as we crossed state lines. They announced the names of the cities when we stopped, but I was familiar with very few. As for the time, I couldn’t remember if I reset my watch when we started off or not. I knew Denver was two hours behind Holland but that’s about it.
I wanted to take a shower before breakfast and was happy it was close to us. To be honest, I didn’t sleep very well. It was nobody’s fault. I heard the train whistle as we crossed each railway street crossing and the announcement of each stop, so between the train noise, and the rocking and rolling, I just never got comfortable. The bed was nice enough, but my brain didn’t settle down. I had a lot of thoughts kicking about.
I kept looking at my watch. I wanted to be sure to get up early to catch a shower before breakfast. I recall looking outside my window during one lengthy stop. The sign said, Omaha, Nebraska. My watch said 12:30, but I didn’t know if it was 12:30 in Holland, Michigan, Chicago, Illinois, or Denver, Colorado. I studied geography in college and taught it to seventh graders in 1969 and 1970, but I couldn’t recall how far Omaha is from Denver, or how far we had traveled from Chicago. I just knew we were well into corn country.
When my watch read 5:30, I got up to take a shower. I was afraid I’d fall back to sleep and miss my opportunity before breakfast. I was the first one up so the shared shower was clean. There were plenty of clean towels, but no soap, and I didn’t bring any. Note to self: bring soap next time you travel by train. This was no Hampton Inn.
I just got wet. I rubbed the water into my hair and across my body. It felt like I was just smearing dust, but wet dust felt better than dry dust, so I continued on.
When I was done, I dried off and went back to my roomette. I dressed, tried to flip my bed back into bench seats, but failed. I wondered why no one else was up and about. That’s when I realized it was 5:30 in Holland. I had at least another four hours before we’d reach Denver.
TBC
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