2004 Europe

Tampa Reunion





April 9 – Miguel and Avi Caterneau drove me to the Santa Ana train station so I could check baggage. The Irvine station does not have baggage check service and the conductors on the trains are getting pickier about where you put carry on luggage. I took the Surfliner train to Los Angeles where I boarded the Sunset Limited train to Orlando, Florida. We left exactly on time and that was the last on time event of the day. We were already one hour late when we were only three hours out of LA. All night we stopped on sidings to wait for freight trains to pass going the opposite direction. It’s a funny thing. No matter how rough the tracks are, I only wake up when the train stops and I have a hard time getting back to sleep until the train starts moving again.



April 10 – I awoke at 6AM, just in time for first call for breakfast. The train is a little over two hours late this morning. After another day of stopping for freights we finally got so far behind schedule that the engineer and crew reached the maximum time they could be on duty (the technical term for this is ‘timed out’) and we had to park just outside Demming, NM to wait for a new crew to come by pickup from El Paso to drive the train the rest of the way in. We were parked on a siding for about 2 hours. We are almost 5 hours late at this point but are moving again and heading into El Paso. I’ve met several people heading for FL and cruise ships. One lady from Arizona and another couple are also heading for the ms Noordam. They are both stopping off in Orlando before going to Tampa and the ship.



April 11 – Got up at 6:30AM and headed to breakfast. It’s raining and we’re going to spend all day getting across TX. It did rain all day and we are now 8 hours late heading to New Orleans. Our TA, Monica, is a good-natured young Latina. She is very energetic and helpful to the people on the car who are not able to get around very well. She brings them their meals and helps them with little things. I hope they appreciate it and give her a nice tip. After we leave New Orleans we will be going by Blue Bayou (Bayou Bleu on Louisiana Maps), the area made famous by Roy Orbison in his 1963 song of the same name.



April 12 – Got up at 6:30 AM again and had breakfast. In case you haven’t caught on yet, breakfast is my favorite meal on the train. The food is the best and if you eat early the diner is not crowded. We are currently in MS and riding right along the ocean. Very pretty. Swamps on the north and ocean on the south. As the day continued we ran later and later.



Finally Amtrak decided to take us off the train in Sanford, FL and bus us the rest of the way. First the bus went to Orlando, then Lakeland, finally my destination, Tampa. We arrived in Tampa at 6AM, 9 hours late. After a $25 cab ride I arrived at the Radisson Bay Harbor Hotel only to find that the hotel had no electricity. High winds over the previous day had knocked out the power and I was not able to check in or get a room. Finally at 9AM one of the employees decided they could get me in a room and worry about checking me in later. I hadn’t slept in 29 hours so that sounded good to me. I got a 3-hour nap and was able to check in and have lunch at 12:30AM. The short version of this is you have to be flexible to travel by train in the USA.



April 13 – Actually the last part of the above paragraph took place this morning. (Oh, oh more evidence of the validity of Triscadecaphobia.) After I got a little more sleep I went to the airport on the hotel shuttle to pick up Diana. Her flight was only about 45 minutes late due to the connecting flight being late arriving in Atlanta. We had dinner at Crabby Bill’s in the hotel. Very good seafood.



April 14 – Today we met with Sherry McMillen, a friend of ours that had moved to FL from Irvine, and went on a drive down to Clearwater and Sand Key. Very pretty spots. Sherry took us to a Wal-Mart where we bought another carry-on size suitcase. It’s a blue American Tourister and it has a very convenient layout. Then we met with Bill and Almira Mauger and Shirley and Max Minear, all friends from previous cruses that live in the Tampa area. We were table mates with Bill and Almira on our ms Amsterdam transatlantic cruise in 2001. We met Shirley and Max on the Asia-Pacific Explorer cruise on the ms Volendam in 2003. Shirley and Max will be on the 2005 World Cruise with us. We talked for a while at the hotel, catching up on latest events and then went to early dinner at Landry’s Seafood, also very good.

To continue the journey, go to the bottom Archives and click on July.

(c) 2004 Rod Longenberger