I thought that I would steal part of that famous line from Waldo, and of course later Matt Lauer, “Where in the US is AlanB” Well as you may have already guessed from where I’ve made this post, I’m on a train.
Since I can connect my laptop to the net, via my cell phone, I thought that I’d give you a bit of a running commentary from my trip. However, I’m not going to tell you where I’m going during this running narrative, only where I’ve already been.
So in that vein, I met my mother (since I couldn’t get my wife to join me), this morning at the Port Authority’s main bus terminal on 42nd Street in NY City. A quick ride on the A train to 34th street brought us to NY’s Penn Station. After checking into the Club Acela Lounge, we waited about an hour and a half to board Amtrak regional train #95. Train 95 was running a bit late out of Boston, so it pulled in just about the time it was scheduled to depart at 10:35 AM.
We therefore departed 10 minutes late at 10:45 AM. The ride by and large went without incident. Kevin Korell (aka Superliner Diner) joined us at Metro Park for the first leg of our trip to DC. Probably the biggest item of note for this trip, was our café attendant who definitely provided the example that all Amtrak employee’s should follow. He was polite, he was jovial, and he was quick and efficient.
As he was giving my mom her total for lunch, I mentioned to him that we were both in Business Class (since she hadn’t, even though she was holding her ticket stub). He proceeded to embarrass me by telling me that her name was Grace, since he had already seen her ticket, even though I didn’t think that he had been paying attention. Again, kudo’s to our café attendant for actually paying attention to the people he was serving.
Our arrival into WAS, was almost an hour late. We arrived at 2:36, scheduled was 1:48 PM. I haven’t stopped to see where we lost more time, but obviously we lost quite a bit.
After our arrival, I used my AGR Select Plus card to get Kevin into the DC Club Acela, while my mom and I entered using our first class sleeper tickets for the Capitol Limited. Kevin and I chatted for a while, even as I was busy checking on the various train boards.
Since I can connect my laptop to the net, via my cell phone, I thought that I’d give you a bit of a running commentary from my trip. However, I’m not going to tell you where I’m going during this running narrative, only where I’ve already been.
So in that vein, I met my mother (since I couldn’t get my wife to join me), this morning at the Port Authority’s main bus terminal on 42nd Street in NY City. A quick ride on the A train to 34th street brought us to NY’s Penn Station. After checking into the Club Acela Lounge, we waited about an hour and a half to board Amtrak regional train #95. Train 95 was running a bit late out of Boston, so it pulled in just about the time it was scheduled to depart at 10:35 AM.
We therefore departed 10 minutes late at 10:45 AM. The ride by and large went without incident. Kevin Korell (aka Superliner Diner) joined us at Metro Park for the first leg of our trip to DC. Probably the biggest item of note for this trip, was our café attendant who definitely provided the example that all Amtrak employee’s should follow. He was polite, he was jovial, and he was quick and efficient.
As he was giving my mom her total for lunch, I mentioned to him that we were both in Business Class (since she hadn’t, even though she was holding her ticket stub). He proceeded to embarrass me by telling me that her name was Grace, since he had already seen her ticket, even though I didn’t think that he had been paying attention. Again, kudo’s to our café attendant for actually paying attention to the people he was serving.
Our arrival into WAS, was almost an hour late. We arrived at 2:36, scheduled was 1:48 PM. I haven’t stopped to see where we lost more time, but obviously we lost quite a bit.
After our arrival, I used my AGR Select Plus card to get Kevin into the DC Club Acela, while my mom and I entered using our first class sleeper tickets for the Capitol Limited. Kevin and I chatted for a while, even as I was busy checking on the various train boards.