nyet roomette.

We have a roomette. A roomette is one of many tiny convertible compartments running along both sides of a sleeping car, with an aisle down the middle.

It is on something of a whim that we are in one at all. This particular leg of our trip--Lamy, NM (the point of embark/disembarkation for Santa Fe) to Flagstaff--began at 2:24 this afternoon, and we will arrive in Flagstaff just prior to 9 pm. So, even at the very moment I was booking it, I wondered why I would pay even a little extra as opposed to just having seats in coach. We will not, after all, be converting our two facing seats into a bottom bunk, with the upper bunk lowering from above, like one of those baby changing stations in restrooms. This is mostly why people have roomettes. To more comfortably pass the night.

I think we have it because I was hoping we would nap, and I was thinking we might nap better in a compartment. But between a lengthy service stop in Albuquerque which we used to run to an ATM in the station, to the scenery of New Mexico's rocky crags, to dinner in the dining car at 5 pm, we have scarcely shut an eye. We will be, no doubt, in fine form when we do disembark in Flagstaff.

Having spent two nights in a "bedroom," Amtrak style, I can hardly imagine passing the night in this roomette. Well, I can imagine me doing it--I still like tents, after all--but I cannot imagine managing Jeff in one. I peeked in a few, during our other two nights aboard, that were in sleep mode. I'm not sure, actually, how one accesses the top bunk without opening the compartment door and protruding into the corridor while climbing. And, at that point, you're faced with the same lack of maneuver room or headroom I experienced in the bedroom top bunk. There is a bathroom at the end of the roomette car, much like what you find on an airplane, and several more down the stairs. Also downstairs are a couple of shower rooms, which--though communal--are of sufficient size that you don't have to sit on a potty to use them.

But--in our case--the more important disadvantages are that we'd be hard pressed to dress Jeff in such a space, I could not conveniently help him to the bathroom at 11, 1, and 3:00 at night, and we cannot see what's out the window on the other side of the train, because that's someone else's roomette, and they are evidently very private sorts who have the curtains drawn. In the bedroom, by leaving our curtains open, we had a good view out the windows in the corridor (as bedrooms line only one side of a sleeping car.)

So, while economizing with a roomette seems clever, our life has become the sort in which what we must do dictates what we can do. We can take an overnight train trip because we can book a bedroom. If we could not book a bedroom, we'd have to do something else.

It was, by the way, about 30º F in Santa Fe this morning when we set out, after breakfast, for a stroll across town. The purpose was to get liquid bandage for my cracky fingertips at CVS. The entertainment was crunching around on the frosted grass, and checking out the icicles dripping from a picnic table in the park.