The Amtrak Way: A new way to Munch, Date, & "Flirt Tickle"…?
https://www.amtrak.com/home.html
I came up w/ this idea recently. When I had it… I thought the prices might be way too high. -Not only is it mega cheaper and more comfortable than Greyhound (except car). It’s a Train service that was really back when, a nice way to sight see and not have to drive
.
...Dinner/ Drinks,
...uncomfy I’m sure, sleep stations though, lol... :/ Idk. Privacy will have to be seen to know the limits of. And obv there will be boundaries each of us have.
Every day conversation- woulden't that be nice? Whatever!
🙂 Hell... Video Gaming/ RP... Gaming HAHAHA... (filmed...? Ooooooh...)
ETC... etc... For me, it puts to bed near every other form of transportation idea (except limos of course >
🙂 ) out the window. For longer or event short trips. Esp when you think about Munches as they are now. Restaurants, bars, homes etc. That's nice. With this though… you can plan or impromto, to a degree, get off (ha ha) at wherever you want to. Bathrooms. Possible Privacy bench stalls with curtains? Idk lolololl
ESPECIALLY IF: if you don't feel comfortable let’s say. Or are sick/ disabled? Hosting a discussion. Interviewing. Or are planning to go to a BIGGER event… and could travel all together like a party bus!!?!!
😀
TADAAAAA!!!!!
Amtrak is Nationwide. Watch the deals all year long… Right now there is a deal in California for one regular ticket, and invite 5 friends for $5.00 each!
I just looked at a stretch -from starting from Orlando to Savannah Georgia. $100.00+ tax ROUND TRIP. An 1-95 special deal! (You HAVE 2 though look at the actual 4 level to “VIP” seating. 4 day trip I planned. Now.. I can only tell you from here that to truly understand what it's like is to just do it. I want to do it very soon.
🙂 What do you all think of my idea? Please consider and think about how nice this might be for dating purposes as well.
🙂
Do any of you ride Amtrak/ other?
And please discuss.
🙂 <3
Well, for those of you wondering what a long journey on Amtrak is like, here's a story commissioned from me by a national British newspaper many years ago, about crossing the entire United States by rail. Anything 'identifying' has been excised, but KT and I hope you will enjoy this.
And I assure you 'Our Deed', although discreetly unmentioned in the article was done many times, much to her (exquisitely hysterical) delight and the undoubted confusion of fellow passengers in neighbouring roomettes.
Especially across Utah, just to be elegantly sacrilegious!
Anyway, we both hope you enjoy the story.
Amtrak Hell
No scar-faced KGB assassins. No mysterious countesses in burgundy velvet evening gowns. And no lace tablecloths either. The Orient Express, I decided, it ain’t. But as I gazed into the eyes of my beautiful bride while we sat in our militantly cosy ‘roomette’ (i.e. oubliette) on the Amtrak Railway Train which was poised to ferry us across the entire continental United States of America in a mere 3½ days, I knew I’d never lack for companionship.
For one thing, both her parents were joining us on the journey.
KT and I had succumbed to temptation and married spontaneously while holidaying in Jamaica at a Kink/Fetish resort a few months previously (Link to her story about one occasion there below). The impulse was irresistible, the resort having informed us when we booked our stay that weddings were being offered free of charge that week, with a complimentary room upgrade. How could we refuse?
The service took place in a flower-bedecked wooden gazebo overlooking the Caribbean, performed fortissimo by a highly animated local clergyman. But since only our fellow guests were witnesses, we felt her relatives and friends, most of whom live on the East Coast of America, would enjoy attending some sort of ceremony to mark the event. So we flew over to the States, hired a minister and invited all and sundry to a Vow Renewal which we celebrated in a clifftop park overlooking New York’s Hudson River.
Which led to a bit of a problem. KT’s parents, ‘Fred’ and ‘Annie’, are Northern Californians. Her father, a renowned Emergency Room physician now in his mid-70s, and retired after several decades of distinguished practise, began his career as a U.S. Army Captain in the Medical Corps, in which capacity he was flown about extensively in practically every variety of aircraft. And having thus experienced first hand the sort of peculiar behaviour in which bored airplane pilots engage, he has resolutely refused to fly ever since.
Brilliant men being permitted certain eccentricities, he decided that he and my mother-in–law would make a cross-country rail journey from San Francisco to New York, an inconsequential jaunt of 3,397 miles to attend their only child’s Nuptial Re-Run. I have to confess it was my idea for us to join them on the return journey. I wanted to afford them the dubious pleasure of getting to know their new son-in law better, a privilege previously denied them.
We began our odyssey in Penn Station, Manhattan, surrounded by luggage and The In-Laws, who were resplendent in oversize sunhats and wraparound shades. Having diagnosed and treated practically every disease and condition known to medical science in his time, ‘Fred’ regards the slightest exposure to UV radiation as an easy passport to winning an Elephant Man Look-alike Contest.
Nevertheless, I admire him. His first language was Italian, his unaccented English only learned in elementary school. Yet he overcame this handicap along with the wartime prejudice against Italian immigrants to earn a degree in biochemistry, and then put himself through medical school via a series of menial jobs. He often joked that until halfway through his training he thought a ‘specimen’ was an Italian astronaut.
American trains, like the country itself, the restaurant portions, and the consequent dimensions of an appreciable proportion of Americans, are gargantuan. Ours, sixteen feet high according to the brochure, comprised three double-decker sleeping carriages, an additional four carriages for seated passengers, a dining car, and a plate-glass observation car, the entire congregation hauled by what looked like a nuclear-powered locomotive. A bellowed intercom announcement from the Chief Steward, very tall, very big, very black, and, as he mentioned later, a former Master Sergeant in the U.S. Marines, heralded our departure- ‘Laydeez and Genn’lmen- We are about to begin ouah jerny ‘cross The You-nahted States of Amurica- The Greates‘ Country inna Werld’.
I reserved judgement. But as the sunset’s soft orange deferred to the deepening purple of twilight, the lights of little hamlets glowed faintly through the gathering dark, and the trackless Eden of forest which lines the Hudson River Valley yielded to a vast expanse of fields rippling with corn, I reflected on how strange it was that one could feel such solitude while surrounded by so many fellow passengers.
And I increased the volume of my entreaties to the Chief Steward, who, armed with a crowbar, was manfully attempting to free me from the minuscule lavatory in which I was locked, the inner doorknob having come loose in my hand. Amtrak Rail, he explained apologetically, is woefully under-subsidized by the U.S. government, and non-essential maintenance of the rolling stock can be erratic.
Finally sprung from my bijou Alcatraz, I sought our compartment and sleep. As this is a family newspaper, I shall draw a veil over the Rites of Venus, only observing that the Ritual is easily performed in a sleeping carriage. Once the two of you have successfully pretended to be adjacent railway cars requiring connection, the rocking of the train obviates any need for further effort. This is just as well, because Amtrak ‘Roomettes’ measure 3 ½ feet wide by 6 ½ feet long by 7’ high and still contrive to seat/sleep two, on impossibly narrow fold-down bunks. One does not enter a Roomette; one puts it on.
America, on the other hand, is huge. According to the schedule, we were now several hundred miles along our way, but one could not tell from the view. We’d gone to sleep with the cornfields of New York State whizzing past, and awoke 8 hours later in Ohio to the same landscape. A quick tramp down the corridor and ablutions performed in the communal shower, it was time to join The Parental Unit for breakfast in the dining car. The food was not great, but at least there was plenty of it.
We found KT’s dad solemnly holding another man’s hand, and chatting to him. Apparently the unfortunate fellow had slammed his finger in a compartment door, and ‘Fred’ was busy diagnosing. No-one’s appetite was improved as he cheerfully suggested that the sufferer should heat a needle red-hot, and pierce the afflicted nail with it to drain the bruise and relieve the pressure then and there. The patient queasily decided to take an aspirin instead.
It took 18 hours at 65 mph to cross the endless (and featureless) farmlands of the Midwest- Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, and the pulsating metropolis of McCook, Nebraska where the train stopped for a few minutes to let us stretch our legs. It seemed the sort of place that could have provided most of the extras for ‘Deliverance’, and my impression was confirmed when I actually saw a local sitting on the steps of the general store idly plucking a banjo.
As we stood on the platform en famille in the balmy 90 degree heat, a massive female passenger began shrieking in a curious manner, while flailing her arms and executing a ponderous series of steps reminiscent of a blancmange with St. Vitus’s Dance. ‘Bee-sting’, sighed ‘Fred’, sauntering over to deal with it, and firing a machine-gun litany of questions at the startled casualty. ‘Here, let me have a look. Hmmm. No stinger left behind, so it was a hornet, wasp, or queen bee…Ever been stung before? Any previous allergic reaction? Are you short of breath? Hold still, please- Ju-u-u-st checking the colour of the white of your eye.. No, no, that’s an old wives tale; applying crushed aspirin would be completely useless. Put some ice on it, and here’s my seat number if there are any complications. I do railway car calls, you know.’
He ambled back to us chuckling, ‘I used to prefer the ambulances screaming in from a good multi-vehicle pileup- got us through the night shift faster.’
As the train snaked upward through the foothills of the Rockies just past Denver, Colorado, we made the acquaintance of the friendly retired U.S. air force colonel in the compartment across from us, who was delighted that my father-in-law had also been a military officer. He carefully explained in a syrupy Southern accent how his pacemaker precluded him flying. ‘Fred’ mentioned that this should have no effect whatsoever. ‘Way-ul’ drawled the colonel, ’it’s actually a drug called Coumadin that Ah’m taking to thin mah blood...’
‘No contra-indications there either’, remarked ‘Fred’.
The ex-Air Force Colonel looked uncomfortably at the ex-Captain. ‘It’s OK’ said ‘Fred’ quietly, ‘I can’t stand flying either. Been in too many cockpits. God knows what keeps those things aloft.’
‘Ah have had a few near-misses ovah the years’, admitted the colonel.
They sighed in unison, and changed the subject.
The train writhed ever upward, and the scenery became even more spectacular, as we bridged gaping chasms torn through the rock, bisected by boiling torrents hundreds of feet below us. Mountain lakes, the deep blue of lapis lazuli sparkled in the blazing sun, either fringed with boundless expanses of forest or washing the base of skyscraping granite bluffs. Laying the railroad tracks through this wilderness must have been bad enough given the primitive building techniques of the late 1860s, even more so when I remembered that previously the journey had simply been made by ox-drawn wagon train.
I spent a lot of time in the plate-glass observation car watching it all go by, and chatting to my in-laws about how they’d weathered over 40 years of marriage. ‘I’ve never considered divorce once’ ‘Annie’ confided. ‘Murder several times, but divorce, never’.
‘She means everything to me and I can’t imagine life without her. Please remember that the more you give in a marriage, the more you get’, said ‘Fred’ softly, before grinning, ‘But a real man has the last word in every argument. Just make sure it’s “Yes, dear”’.
I left the pair of them holding hands.
That night we crossed the scrub deserts of Utah, indistinguishable from the equally parched landscape of Nevada which we traversed the following day, and headed upward into California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains. And it was here, passing Donner Lake that the train ran low on food. Someone had blundered. Fortunately they simply stopped the train while the Chief Steward and his minions ransacked the local supermarket, rather than suggesting us passengers resort to the cannibalism which had sustained the snowbound Donner party during the winter of 1846.
But our odyssey was drawing to a close, as the slow, ear-popping descent to the coast began. More and more evidence of civilisation appeared, towns and factories cluttering the mountainsides, and the ubiquitous tangle of telephone wires multiplying against the skyline. Night was falling, as 84 hours and three time zones after leaving New York, we drew into the outskirts of San Francisco.
It took about a week to recover, and then last goodbyes were said, more advice received, and last embraces shared. KT and I sensibly decided to fly back, and settled into our seats on the plane for a comfortable journey, enjoying an extensive menu of digital films, classic television shows and surprisingly good food. The flight was uneventful, the landing smooth.
It took the airline two days to find our luggage.
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And the promised link to KT's perfectly true 'Bondage in the Caribbean' tale:
http://www.ticklingforum.com/showthread.php?73149-Caribbean-Bondage-Tickling-and-Nudity
