We are home. Finally. I have had a day to calm down a bit before I vent my spleen about Amtrak. It would appear we were simply fortunate on our way out west because the trip home was nearly a nightmare. The train was at least 45 minutes late to the train station in the first place so we started that far behind. Then we discovered the door on our sleeper car was busted so we couldn’t close it for privacy or to block some of the noise. We did have a curtain at least. The air conditioning in our car didn’t work most of the time ... especially when we got further north and east and the humidity continued to climb. Our train car attendant was not very good so we didn’t have any bottled water, ice or coffee most of the time. We had to go to the adjacent car to get that stuff. At least that car’s attendant was generous about helping us. The final and worst aspect of the whole thing was that we were 4 hours late getting into Chicago because of the flooding in Iowa. I know Amtrak can’t be blamed for the delay as such but they knew it would be late and made no provision for those who might miss later connections. They told us to “work it out” with the customer services desk in Chicago. None of the attendants or conductors we talked to could (or would) answer our questions but we knew there was another train that left for downstate Illinois some time around 7:00. It turned out it was exactly 7:00 and we pulled into Chicago at about 6:58. Tracey left me with most of the luggage and she sprinted through the train station dragging the smallest suitcase to stop the train and hold it for me. She just made it and I rounded the last corner less than 30 seconds behind her dragging the rest of our stuff and there is the train conductor yelling at me to run. As I made it to the car he yelled at me, “Hurry, hurry, hurry ... we are holding this entire train just for you because you can’t be here on time!” I nearly lost it right there. They can’t run a train properly and then blame me for being late! We know there were a lot of others who ended up spending a night in Chicago because they did what they were told instead of sprinting to make the connection. There is absolutely no reason that Amtrak couldn’t have made arrangements to hold that train for everyone or to make sure the one we were on was there at least 5 minutes earlier. They knew about the flooding delays all week. They acted like it was all a big surprise but we aren’t stupid. Those trains run those tracks every day and the flooding was causing delays at least a week before we got there. They could have used their radios to coordiante the connections and informed their passengers of what to expect when we arrived FOUR HOURS LATE. But they did NOTING. And THAT is why Amtrak is to be despised ... for lying to their customers and leaving them stranded to fend for themselves. Along with the shoddy service we paid a premium for.
Gosh it is good to vent! So first thing yesteday morning the crew arrived to start tearing off our shingles and repairing our roof. It appears we will need about 20 sheets of new plywood to replace the buckled and bowed places in our roof. They also ended up shoring up 4 of the roof rafters because they were sagging. Evidently the damage was done some time in the past when we had a heavy load of snow and then just gradually got worse over the years.
Aaron, Ben and I spent some time mowing. What a mess! It hadn’t been mowed for about 2½ weeks and it was tall! I still have all the area around the house but didn’t want to crowd the guys working on the roof. They’ve got stuff scattered all around the work zone.
Tracey just left for meetings in Effingham. She is not too thrilled about that but at least it is very close to home so she will get to spend a bit of time visiting with her family while she is there. She should be home Wednesday evening.
An undated handout photo of “Meet the Press” moderator and NBC News Senior Vice President and Washington Bureau Chief Tim Russert on the set his show. Russert, a leading U.S. political correspondent and host of the NBC television network’s long-running “Meet the Press” talk show, died on June 13, 2008 of a heart attack, the network said. He was 58.
Three paramedics were boasting about improvements in their respective ambulance team’s response times.
“Since we installed our new satellite navigation system,” bragged the first one, “we cut our emergency response time by ten percent.”
The other paramedics nodded in approval. “Not bad,” the second paramedic commented. “But by using a computer model of traffic patterns, we’ve cut our average ERT by 20 percent.”
Again, the other team members gave their congratulations, until the third paramedic said, “That’s nothing! Since our ambulance driver passed the bar exam, we’ve cut our emergency response time in half!”
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Border Disorder
