44 hours ... 44 hours trapped in a traveling container populated by a wide variety of, like me, cheapskates.
Not heeding Steve Wilson's advice, I opted to ride the rails in the "Coach" section in my train trip from Tucson to Seattle. I am sure that the salesman who sold Amtrak the seating for the Coach Section promised very comfortable and "sleepable" chairs. Ha!! True, there is sleep to be had, but usually in short and "sore inducing" moments of time.
Waking hours were filled with reading, crosswords (24 separate puzzles), observing in the Observation Car, and eating substandard food. Once you have struck-up a conversation you have developed a trip-long friend. Because I was reading a book about the native societies in North and South America prior to the arrival of Europeans, one fellow traveler felt compelled to share his belief that the first people to travel to North America were led by space aliens. This was initially amusing.
As it turned out, my BFoA (Best Friend on Amtrak) was a guy I met outside the Tucson train station. He lives in Coos Bay, OR, and works on various high-end yachts anchored in the Coos Bay area. He was drunk in Tucson, and pretty much stayed that way for the entire 44 hours. Yeah, he and I were good buddies. At $5.00 per can of beer, he must have spent as much on beer as the price of his ticket to get on the train. Oh, and another thing ... there are few places to hide in the coach section.
My primary reason for taking the train was that it is an easy and inexpensive means to transport a bike to Seattle. Any future overnight train travel will be in "first class" ... a bed to sleep in and good food included.
Lesson learned.
So it sounds like things went on as they started at the Tucson Amtrak station.
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