UMTravels

It was a lazy day around the casa this morning — really all that I was waiting for was to leave. I’m Jonezing for train ride — or probably more Jonezing for some anonymity, the lovely joy of being able to close your compartment door and ignore the world… until they call you for dinner.

Off topic — internet access on this trip. At the parents, Mom had dial-up. This doesn’t cut it for me, and I’m too lazy to go next door to my sister-in-laws (and they are big lots so the wi-fi signal doesn’t make it) so I tethered my T-Mobile Dash 3G to my laptop. At the parents, I got an Edge signal which was about 210kbps down and 35kbps up. While we were stopped at the Albuquerque station I was getting 415kbps down and 315kbps up — and that was under an overpass with only 2 out of 5 bars of service! That’s enough speed to upload photos! Hell, my ClearWire connection at home is only 256kbps up.

So, here is a picture of the dinner last night (minus Jennifer, who was using my camera and Karen who was watching a movie in her room):

And should you want to see all the pictures (though there aren’t that many), here is the “photo bar” that you are all used to:

Dinner in the dining car tonight at 6pm, after a couple of scotches in my compartment (Room 6, Car 0331, Train #3, Southwest Chief). Table guest were an odd woman from New York yelling at her husband about “stop leak” for the car, and a father/son (no, not that way) from Indianapolis on their way to Flagstaff/Phoenix (work=son/pay=dad).

I had the marinated steak (medium rare — the father had it well done and they butterflied it which amazed me for being on the train) with a salad and a split of Hahn Cabernet. Not bad for a split. I took the dessert back to the room for later.

Had a nice after dinner glass of scotch with the guy from dinner — and logged on t LinkedIn and passed his information onto Rusty who last time I touched base was looking for a helicopter pilot job.

I love my roomette.

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