UMTravels

This will probably be the last of my train travel for the year – and this week I’m on The Texas Eagle:

But first I have to get there…in style, courtesy of an upgrade to First Class…

Definitely a red-eye flight…which means the food service is minimal, sadly:

So, when I hit Chicago, I headed to the Admiral’s Club (American) for a bagel, a newspaper, and a little nap:

My train didn’t leave until 1:45pm, so I had time to linger, then catch the train into town, which oddly didn’t charge me – I had a transit card from last week that apparently still had some dollars on it!

Checked into the Metropolitan Lounge in Chicago, which I have no pictures of for some reason. Dropped my bags and headed to the CVS across the street for booze and mixers for the train. Returned to the lounge to drop that, then went back upstairs in the station for a world-famous Chicago Dog. Eventually they put out some vegetable and cheese in the lounge – and a complimentary half glass of some way too sweet Asti Sparkling.

Was happy to get onto the train.

Thankfully they at least had the Amtrak Signature Steak – but like The Silver Meteor a couple of months ago, no Surf to go with the turf (they were actually out of both surf AND turf):

One of things about the long-distance trains is that they feed you three times a day as part of your Sleeper fare. My routine on the train is to eat breakfast and go back to bed. I’ve tried skipping it but lunch doesn’t come early enough.

Here are some random shots from the train that I liked:

In San Antonio, The Texas Eagle gets split apart and added to the end of The Sunset Limited from New Orleans. It used to come from Orlando, but Hurricane Katrina knocked a bunch of tracks out – it’s fixed, but the route has yet to be restored. The upside is that we got The Sunset Limited’s dining car, which did have the Surf to go with the Turf.

My last night of this 66-hour trip was connecting up with my buddy Joe from Tucson. This was truly the highlight of the trip – I don’t get to see him often enough.

He was kind enough to even track down some Diet Ginger Ale for me. And he brought me a bottle of whiskey produced in Tucson to top it off!

The downside of this route is that the train arrives into LA’s Union Station at 5:45am assuming it is on-time, which for once, it was.

I hiked up to the Metropolitan Lounge to hang out for a bit before taking FlyAway to LAX. While there, checked my seat for the flight, and ONCE AGAIN they had pulled me out of premium and stuck me in the back. I fixed the problem last night in Tucson when I went to check in and noticed it. 45-minutes on that call, and another 30-minutes to change to an earlier flight that had a premium seat, albeit, a middle one.

At least there is an Alaska Lounge at LAX!

Another week, another trip.

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