Day One in NYC: Why I Hate Trains

The train ride to New York began badly when we misread the departure time and got to the train station 2 hours earlier than necessary. No matter, the porter was a capitalist and accepted a very generous tip to place us on the train before everybody else which turned out to be a little creepy, sitting in a dark train alone for 2 hours. It was a crowded ride but everyone behaved except the unidentified person with digestive problems. We were just past Albany when 6:00 pm rolled up and as everyone knows, the end of the world was expected. I looked around but nobody seemed concerned so I started shouting “OMG,OMG, I feel it happening, I’m rapturing and all you people are now officially LEFT BEHIND. But it hurts, why does it hurt so bad? OMG, He’s leaving parts of me behind! The parts that sinned! Parts that I’m fond of!” Well, Donna wasn’t amused, and since most of the train couldn’t speak a word of English or French, they thought I was having some kind of fit and starting offering me weird food. Because of delays, it was a 13-hour ride and this ain’t Euro-standard train travel, this is Amtrak medieval class. There appears to be a direct relation between the degree of rocking and the cleanliness of the toilet, and we rocked like a ship in a storm.