So, we had a pile of family stuff in Bellingham this weekend, so I was planning on driving up from Seattle after work, but my wife needed to be in Mt. Vernon before I got off work. I hate taking two cars to Bellingham; that’s roughly 100 miles each way. So, for a change of pace, she suggested that I take the train–Seattle’s Amtrak station is only a few blocks from work, and the Bellingham station is reasonably convenient. I had a few chapters of Quicksilver left to finish, and my iPod was charged and ready to go. It sounded like a good idea. Heh.

One of the problems with working long hours in a windowless office in a big office building is that you completely lose touch with the weather. I hadn't noticed that western Washington was suffering from a big storm, and that most of the rivers were flooding. And I was completely unaware that mud was covering Amtrak's tracks somewhere (no one was ever clear exactly where, and Google isn't helpful). So, when I went to get onto my nice, comfy train, I had a How Few Wheels You Have, Grandma sort of moment, and found myself on a bus, with crowded seats, weird lighting, and lousy heat control. Fortunately, I had two seats to myself, and my Shure earphones did a nice job blocking out the road noise. So, I was mostly able to ignore what was going on around me and concentrate on Quicksilver. I ended up getting off of the bus in Mt. Vernon and meeting Cynthia at the station. Of course, she got held up trying to get directions to the station from her family, and 2 minutes after the "train" pulled out, the Amtrak parking lot was plunged into total darkness, leaving me standing in the middle of nowhere in the dark in a storm ("It was a dark and stormy night..."), carrying about 25 lbs of computer, camera, music, and reading equipment on my back.

Fortunately, they made it eventually :-).