VanishingPoint

Ten blog posts, 16 pages of session notes organized, 360 pages in a book, a hotdog, two bags of Doritos, two Pepsi’s, a bottle of water, a Baby Ruth, a cinnamon roll, 6 pieces of gum, and two ibuprofen later I am finally close to getting home.

Ok, I am still positive about train travel, but oh my! Adding four hours to a commute that is already five 1/2 hours makes for a long trip… We even left on time. I am happy that I use Live Writer for offline blog post creation or I may have gone a little bonkers.

I arrived 20 minutes before boarding, hopped onto the free Amtrak wireless grabbed my most recent session photos from Flickr and prepped them into five blank Live Writer posts and then hopped onto the train ready to blog away!

The Way to Really Fly…

Now I’m from Chicago and taking the amtrak down to St. Louis was a little like a trip to the airport. We depart from Union Station the largest rail yard in the midwest. There you have actual “Gates” complete with waiting areas and different calls for priority passengers. They check your boarding passes before they let you on the train Amtrak even provides free wifi! Now, I was hoping for this when I was at Union Station, however, I really didn’t anticipate it at the terminal stop in St. Louis which is lovingly referred to by the local as “Amshack.” But, even there free wifi . . . sweet.

However, 100 miles at 20 mph due to signal malfunctions does begin to grate on your nerves a bit. Offset that with the ability to walk around, plug your laptop in, and take a trip to the bathroom, and venture to a dining car, and overall I’d have to say train travel was pretty cool, even with the delays. But, boy am I tired.