Victor’s Accounts of Wednesday, June 9 – Thursday, June 10

Hey everyone! Victor checking in. Boy, does “adventure” really sum up our trip so far. Mine started before leaving Edinburg!

After depositing dinero at an ATM, I was shocked to find out the machine decided not to return my card for “security purposes.” Little did I know it would be the first of a few headaches on this trip!

Time went quickly on our journey up to San Antonio to catch the first train. Most of it was spent laughing or listening to Eartha Kitt (she’s the good kind of weird), Laurie Anderson (the weird kind of weird), Electric Light Orchestra (the sometimes weird), and the Glee soundtrack.

The ensuing headaches included: where to safely park Hilda’s car for nine days, whose bags will be checked, reducing our bag count, no WiFi anywhere on the train (we were told otherwise), and, oh yeah, 700 feet of train tracks washed out from the prior night’s storm.

Four hours after our departure time, the conductor announced that the train would go no farther. We only made it a few miles out of San Antonio. We were to board buses instead and travel over five hours to Fort Worth and board another train there. WHAAAAT!?

We arrived to Fort Worth, boarded the train, and waited another 45 minutes for the other two buses of passengers. At 6:30 p.m., roughly 11 hours after our departure time, we were finally on a train gaining speed.

I befriended a lovely lady from San Antonio (I think) who told me about her son who was trying to leave Alaska at the same time. We bonded over mocking the woman in front of us who had no idea what an “indoor voice” was.

Despite relatively close to the Texas-Arkansas border, it would be another 7 hours before we’d hit Arkansas.

My inability to sleep led me to sitting in the lounge car and watching Arkansas pass me by in the dark. The most I was able to see was their capitol building in Little Rock. (Texas’ is better.)

I found it much more comfortable to sleep lying down in the lounge car. I stirred from my slumber shortly after 6 a.m. (only three hours of sleep) to find a beautiful Arkansan sun lighting silos, piles of woods, farmland, pine trees, and farmhouses.

Hilda and I played a series of card games in the lounge after grabbing coffee and befriending the rude snack lady. Don’t worry! She wasn’t rude to us.

We later befriended D.J. and Alexis (another one), a young brother/sister from Dallas. We played multiple games of Egyptian Ratscrew (I won all games). They were a lot of fun and helped the time pass by so much quicker.

We arrived in Chicago at 6:47 p.m., a mere FIVE HOURS later than expected. After grabbing Chinese food and haggling with Chicago Union Station’s Internet, we departed at 9:30 p.m… the first on-time anything we had on this trip.