Sitting in the Café Car
Well, here it is. 11:00 AM, and I’m already through Elizabeth, New Jersey, the City of Dreams and Destiny. The trip has been a rollicking success so far, mainly because of the incredible, friendly, and convenient service of the Amtrak Regional Train System. That is, indeed, a sentence that I never believed I would write, speak, or think, as Amtrak is usually anything but helpful; most of the time it is comically inefficient and counterproductive. Here are some of the experiences I have had on the train:
n On a ride from Williamsburg to New Jersey, the train arrived 45 minutes late, which doesn’t sound too bad until you realize that there is only one stop before Williamsburg in that direction. The train was doing well enough, until just after Richmond, when we slowed to about a walking crawl and maintained this speed for a half hour. I was already understandably frustrated with the ride, until we finally started moving with some semblance of speed. Except we were now moving BACKWARDS, and I was more than just frustrated. I was full on pissed. Which sounds like something you could get on craigslist.
n There was one more train ride that compares to this one. The spectacularly fucked southbound jaunt got off the ground about an hour and a half late, and it wasn’t about to make up any time. It was going well enough until the BWI station, where a lady decided to break her ankle upon exiting the train. This shouldn’t really be a delay, but like any good friend, the Amtrak driver decided he needed to be there for this lady until the ambulance arrived. 45 freaking minutes later. As if that wasn’t enough, this was right around the time of Obama’s inauguration, so of course the bomb sniffing dogs needed another 35 minutes in Washington to make sure we weren’t threatening the president. After this point there was an average of about three people to a car and it was approaching midnight rather rapidly. I spent the rest of the ride with a headache laying down in a row of seats listening to the chef at the Bonefish Grill in Newport News talk about how awesome his job was. I was crushed when he mentioned he was a William & Mary grad.
n This doesn’t really have to do with Amtrak service, but on one crowded Thanksgiving train, I was forced between Washington and home to sit next to a guy trading stocks on the Filipino Stock Exchange and playing online roulette on his computer. Both of which sound about the equivalent to throwing money down a well.
There have been many other Amtrak trips that have followed similar storylines. The point is, this trip has so far not been one of them, though I don’t want to jinx anything. When I checked on my phone on the way to the station, the train was an hour and a half late. Typical. Yet upon arrival at Newark, I was told that they had re-routed a train from New York and we would now be perfectly on time. To make matters even better, the train was relatively empty thanks to skipping over all the pre-NYC stops.
All this is a way of saying that I finally get to live my dream. I get to sit in the Café Car of the Amtrak train. Yes, this is a modest dream, one of my many dreams that have absolutely nothing to do with achievement. (I will one day blog a post that lists these, include my subset of dreams that involves things I want to do in the medians of highways.)
Anyways, I have always wanted to sit in the café car for a number of reasons. Most importantly, though, the café car is where spies and international dissidents sit. This isn’t just an opinion, it’s in the goddamn dictionary of FACTS. Spies sit in the café car for a number of reasons. First off, all spies are smart, and they know that in the café car, you get more legroom, more table room, proximity to food and drinks, and a reduced likelihood of having to sit next to a Filipino investment banker/online roulette player. (Seriously, I can understand online poker, but roulette? It’s like clicking your mouse and watching your bank account get depleted.)
Besides knowing about the comforts and amenities of the café car, spies have many other reasons for sitting where they do. For instance, the café car is where people who know what they are talking about sit. Besides the fact that all the train employees sit there and do train employee things like count tickets or rearrange tickets, all the people who like to think they know anything about the transit industry sit there, presumably to talk to the train employees. Furthermore, rich people who don’t want to be spotted sit in the café car so they don’t have to be crammed in with the proles while they’re skipping business class. This is where spies come in, as the aforementioned groups are all the people a spy would presumably be spying on or gleaning information from while on a train. I basically just described the train insiders, the desperate criminals trying to get to the train insiders, and the rich supervillain who is planning an assassination of the train.
So here I sit, on my way to Philadelphia, the City of Bells and Mirrors, now, hoping that my presence in the café car (I look like a writer with my comfy sweater and laptop!) will lead me to encounter and possibly adventure with an international superspy. I’m crossing my fingers for Matt Damon.
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