On the Capitol Limited

This is something that cross-country trains have in common with Disney World: Everyone smiles and seems genuinely happy to help you. Not just the staff, but your fellow travelers as well.

It is now 6:35 pm, and we are trundling across some farmlands just west of Martinsburg, West Virginia. I'm not sure at what time Lou (our cabin attendant) will show up to transform our bench seat into a bed, but earlier--for us--would probably trump later. Neither of us is given to nightlife (not that there is any, that I know of, other than watching The Right Stuff for 3 hours with Carl 3 doors down.) But we won't take Carl up on his kind offer as much as I know he'd like our ears for another spell. One of us can only take so much of Carl with a C, and the other tends to turn in early.

Here's what I'm going to try to do once Lou does transform our berth into its nighttime morphology: Take a shower. What that means is I will sit on the potty and aim the handheld sprayer at my head for 30 second intervals of water. I will check back after giving that a whirl, and let you know how it goes.

Meanwhile, I can hardly complain about dinner. Yes, it is true that the salmon "special" was comparable to one of the nicer dishes at Denny's...but it was nonetheless agreeable enough, and the key lime and chocolate peanut butter desserts were completely worth the calories. And here's the thing: At dinner we were seated with (you guessed it) Carl with a C, who was much more tolerable in that setting as opposed to standing in the doorway of our compartment regaling(?) us with a one-way dissertation on Frank Sinatra trivia. You see, I actually had enough to say about Broadway musicals that he occasionally stopped to insert food into his mouth...

...It is now about 9 pm. I discovered that when our small collapsible table is in closed position, the underside reveals instructions for making our seat into a bed. So I did it. So far I am resisting deploying the upper bunk, and just sharing the lower. But first I had to figure out how to manage Jeff's elbows which he especially likes to tuck behind his head. So now I've got his head at the door end of the bunk, next to my feet. Ever since we put the bed down he's been commenting that he thinks he's in someone's rec room, and couldn't we find better accommodations? Hard to think this is the same guy who drove up the Al-Can highway in a VW on a whim. "Like what?" I said, to the question of better accommodations. "Like a hotel," he replied. "The problem with hotels," I said, "is that they don't move." Well...this will all feed into the end-of-trip evaluation process, as this whole thing is a bit experimental.

And oh yes...the shower...Here's how it worked: I stashed my shampoo on one back corner of the john, and my conditioner on the other. You push a button which allows you 30 seconds of spray. However, it takes a good 10 pushes before the water is warm enough that you'd care to aim it at yourself. Still, I got the job done. What I think I will not do is try to get Jeff showered until we're comfortably ensconced in our inn in Santa Fe.