We did a little poking around and found out we could ride Amtrak on a big circle, stop at three cities for extended visits, and view the countryside all for one low price. We planned to go from Raleigh to New Orleans and party for a few days, hop back on the train to Houston to visit my sister for a few days, then go up to Chicago for sightseeing and a Cubs game before heading back home. I called the Cubs and got tickets, and let the travel agent handle the rest.

One small problem came up immediately. It seems you can't get on Amtrak in Raleigh to get to New Orleans. You have to get the train in Greensboro (a little over an hour's drive away). Oh, well. We could do that. We asked a friend to drive us to Greensboro to get the train. It was due in at midnight (ugh!) but we sent the friend back at 10 so he could get home at a decent hour. We sat in the station and waited...

Along about 11 pm, I got a little restless and decided to get out the train tickets and look over them. Hmmm. Not where I thought they were. I started looking through all our stuff. Hmmm. Still no tickets. Five minutes later, in a panic, I'd gone through everything we had and couldn't find the tickets. We were in a town over an hour away from home, with the train due in an hour, and we (ok, I) had forgotten the tickets. AAAAAAAAA!!!! My lovely wife started laughing. I looked at her like she'd lost her mind and started screaming again. Whereupon she grabs me by the lapels (not easy when you're wearing a t-shirt) and informs me in no uncertain terms that it's our vacation and we're going to laugh and have a good time no matter what. I began to wonder what had snapped.

The nightmare had only begun.

We briefly considered having our friend pick up our tickets at our house (we'd left him the key) and drive them back to us in Greensboro. A glance at the clock and a little math quickly ruled that out. Plan B was to confess our (ok, my) stupidity to the train station clerk and beg for help. I commenced begging.

Well, it turns out you can get your Amtrak tickets re-issued if you've lost them or had them stolen or even if you were dumb enough to leave them some place far away. But it takes just short of an act of congress. The clerk got on the phone to his boss (remember it's now about 11:15 at night). He in turn got on the phone to someone else and before it was all done, I'd signed about a dozen forms and somebody at the Amtrak home office in Washington had signed off on it, too. The re-issued tickets were printing out as the train was pulling to the station. I tossed the clerk the $30 fee and M and I jumped on the train. Whew!

We'd gotten our friend on the phone about the time Washington had been alerted to our (ok, my) stupidity. He went over to our house and called us back. Sure enough, there were our tickets, safely organized in the vacation folder. Along with our Cubs tickets. We arraigned for him to mail the Cubs tickets to my sister's house in Houston and we'd pick them up there.

We stumbled around in the train until we found a couple of coach seats next to each other and settled in to get what sleep we could.

We couldn't.

It really isn't easy to sleep sitting up in a coach seat. Combine that with the fact that the temperature inside the train was kept at a comfortable 55 degrees and also with the fact that our fellow travelers have no respect for anyone but themselves, and you get a fairly miserable night. We were freezing (it's August and we'd packed no warm clothes) and certain other persons in the car thought it was OK to be loud all night. This vacation had started off with a bang and really wasn't getting much better. We were looking forward to New Orleans.

After a tolerable breakfast in the dining car, we went back to our seats to enjoy the view of the countryside passing by our window. I'm here to tell you, friend, that if you ride the train from Greensboro, NC to New Orleans, the only thing you're going to see from your window is Kudzu. Hours and hours of Kudzu, the weed that ate the south, zinging by at 60 mph. The tracks are bordered on both sides by steep banks with nothing but that ubiquitous weed growing on them. Occasionally we'd be treated to some backwoods crossroads (a.k.a. charming southern town). We quickly bored of the Great Southern Weed Show and turned to our paperbacks.

After a while, M got bored with her book and took out the itinerary our travel agent had drawn up for us. She had the Amtrak book out, too, and was checking off each little town as we passed it. Then, for what reason I'll never figure out, she started doing math in her head. It seemed we'd be getting into New Orleans that evening but our hotel reservations didn't start until the following evening.

She explained the situation to me, we looked at each other for a couple of seconds, and then burst into laughter. We'd crossed that line where disasters start being funny. And we were living a doozy. I had visions of that scene in Oliver where the little boy asks for more food: "Please sir, may we have a room?" We began wondering what it would be like to sleep on a park bench overnight.

Well, we got to New Orleans, caught a cab and asked him to take us to the Holiday Inn in the French Quarter. He dropped us off, we went in, and explained our predicament to the desk clerk. We knew we were a day early for our reservations but did he have something for us that night? He started tapping away at his computer and said he was terribly sorry but he couldn't find a reservation for us the following night or any night for that matter.

Oh, Jeez.

He said maybe our reservation was at the other Holiday Inn in the French Quarter. Other? I spun around looking for a cabbie to maim, but lucky for him he'd already left.

But then clerk-dude said that they did have rooms available and they'd be glad to have us for the duration of our stay. We could switch to the other Holiday Inn in the morning if we wanted, but they'd love to have us there. Alleluia! Something finally going right! Then he made a very bad mistake. He asked a couple of travel weary, and definitely punchy folks if they wanted a king bed or two doubles. My dear sweet wife slammed her wedding ring (finger still inside) onto the counter-top and demanded to know if he thought that looked like we wanted two double beds.

He turned an indescribable shade of bright red. I felt for the guy.

We snooped around the other H.I. the next day and decided we were at the better one. Ours was in an older building with the old wrought iron rails and all the charm, but the other one was in a modern building that was very "out of place" for the French Quarter. We stayed where we were.

What followed were several days of the best fun we'd ever had. Good food, good jazz, good party atmosphere. New Orleans is very cool. Even in August when the temperature is high enough to melt steel. Of course, next time we go back it won't be in August. But it was great nonetheless. The last day we were there, we started off getting blitzed with Mimosas for breakfast and the day got even better as it went on. It ended with dinner in a fine French restaurant and drinks in a top-floor revolving lounge. Very nice.

Then it was back to Amtrak.

Truthfully, the trip over to Houston wasn't so bad. We spent a couple of days visiting my sister (got the Cubs tickets, too). If you ever have the desire to go to Houston in August, shut yourself inside a sauna and save yourself the trip. Same thing. Then one whole afternoon we spent in a car shop waiting for her car to get fixed. Seems our bad luck was still following us because her radiator blew up while we were driving around. Of course. What a way to spend time with your sister, huh?

Then it was back to Amtrak.

We did it the right way, this time though. We paid the extra to get first class. Amtrak's first class comes in several varieties. All the way from the mondo deluxe with almost the whole durn car to yourself down to the kind we got. Economy first class. You get a compartment to yourself that's all as wide as the seat you're sitting on. Your partner sits facing you so your knees bump together. At night, the two seats slide together to form a lower bunk while the upper bunk folds down from the wall. Very tight quarters. But most importantly, you get to sleep lying down and the door closes! It was the only time we were able to sleep on the train.

Well, anyway, we got on the train in Houston and headed up to Dallas. The plan was that our train would meet another train in Dallas and link up. Then the super train would head up to Chicago. Well, we got into Dallas and waited. And waited. And, you guessed it, waited.

After almost an hour, I stopped one of the conductor fellows and asked what was up. He said the other train had been delayed because it had hit something on the tracks.

Will this nightmare ever end!!!???

The plan was we'd be in Chicago for 24 hours. Just 24. And the more time we spent in Dallas the less time we'd have for sightseeing. Ho-boy. Eventually the other train showed up and we headed north. Nice trip really. We'd finally gotten out of the Kudzu Kingdom and had actual countryside to look at. We viewed the scenery. We read. We bumped knees. We were content.

Chicago. I looked at my watch. M checked the train tickets for our trip home. 22 hours. We had 22 hours to do Chicago. We looked at each other and screamed "Ready! Set! Go!"

We grabbed a cab lickety-split and gave him the exact street address of our hotel. He looked at us kinda funny, but we’d learned our lesson in New Orleans. Off we went to the Days Inn downtown. Whoa! We were on one of the higher floors, with a great view overlooking Lake Michigan. Too bad. We had some serious tourist duties to perform. We headed over to the Sears Tower before it got dark. Nice view there, too. Of course, the August haze made things hard to see, but we tried. From there it was on to walk around downtown for a while. After dinner, we were too tired (and it was too dark) to see much else, so we turned in. The next morning we hit the streets running. Gave ourselves the grand walking tour. Then we headed out to Wrigley Field via the ‘el to catch the Cubs game. Our seats were in left field, next to the foul pole. Literally. I could lean over and touch it. You couldn’t really see much of what was going on in the infield, but that wasn’t too bad. We were in Wrigley Field. I was one happy traveler. The game was a good one, too. Actually, a bit too good. The game went into extra innings. M checked her watch, said we had to leave to catch the train, and dragged me, sobbing, out of a tied Cubs game. I had choice words for Amtrak. Oh well, nothing to do about it. Our 22 hours were up.

And just to add insult to injury, it was back to traveling coach.

The next leg took us through West Virginia, where the train had to slow down to 5 miles per hour. Seems there had been a derailment there the previous day and they weren’t too sure how good the rails were. I’m tellin’ ya, folks…If you’re looking for an adventure, Amtrak will give you one. Makes you want to watch what you ask for, doesn’t it?

Because of the delay in getting through Derailment Alley, we were an hour late getting into Union Station, Washington. We only had a one hour layover between trains so we weren’t sure we’d catch our connection to Raleigh. Thank goodness for Amtrak’s record of on-time train departures! The departing train was a few minutes late. By sprinting across Union Station, with all our suitcases, we were just able to catch the train (on the other side of the station, of course) before it pulled out. We caught our breaths somewhere around Richmond, I think.

This leg was definitely the worst yet. We sat right in front of the most ill-behaved three year old in the world. He’d apparently just discovered that screaming at the top of his lungs was not only fun, it royally pissed off everyone around him. We were trapped. The train was full and we had nowhere to go. The little runt’s travelling companion (mother?) was very gently saying, “Now, now. Be quiet.” Of course, you could hardly hear her over the screams.

SCREAM!!! (giggle) SCREAM!! (giggle) SCREAM!!

All the way to Raleigh. By the time we got there, we were ready to do hard time for homicide. Justifiable homicide in my book. And once we got through with the useless Mom, we’d probably do the kid, too. I’m pretty sure no one else in the train would testify against us. Looking back on it, I’m surprised we didn’t off them both. Oh, well. Maybe next time.

Yea. Right. Like there’s gonna be a next time.