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8/6/2000
Time would be the least of our worries on Day 2. After breafast, the girls wanted to spend some time in the sightseer car. It's a nice open area with plenty of chairs that swivel and plenty of large windows. Unfortunately, a man who we later dubbed "Norman" (after Norman Bates - Psycho), was also visiting this car. He was about 35 years old, 6 feet tall, wearing army boots and fatigues, a massive headset, and dark glasses. He managed to mingle about discussing every Star Trek episode and how they applied to his life. He began talikg to the children, not just mine, everyone's. Naturally, we parents got our kids out of there and as a group decided to keep tabs on Norman. Just outside of New Orleans, Norman came up to the kids and said that he was going to blow up the train. He began yelling, stating derogatory things about women, and made a few off color remarks in the presence of the kids. We kept our distance from Norman and once in New Orleans took action. I managed to get a hold of our conductor and an officer, explained the situation, and within seconds AMTRAK had Norman removed from the train. We were delayed in New Orleans for a few hours since our smoking car was a mess and our sightseer car had bad wheels. Both cars were reomved from the train. Both sightseer cars were the only ones capable of holding snacks. We were told that food wouldn't be available for another 2-3 hours...at least 8PM. I tracked down our steward, told him that the time fram for dinner, espescially for the kids, was too long. He had the kitchen cook a meal for us and brought it back to our seats at 6PM.
Our core of friends disembarked at at Houston at 2:30AM. The original stop was to be at 9PM.
8/7/00
Texas passed pretty quickly until the toilets broke near ElPaso. We stopped to get emptied out. The men on the septic truck worked quickly. If they would have taken their time they would have noticed that the 4 inch hose on the truck and from the train were not connected to each other. Enough said. We left El Paso with broken toilets.
8/8/00
We made it to Los Angeles 8 hours past schedule. We missed our tour of the city but still had 4 hours until the connection to Flagstaff. Lunch was a little challenging. Traxx, a restaurant at the station, was convenient. The 3 of us were greeted by a valley girl who said "Maybe you should look at the menu before you come in." Now, we WERE a little travel weary, but we DID clean up on the train. I looked at the moderately priced menu and said, "You're right, only regular food is served here. We had our hearts set on lizard tongue. I sure wish you were my employee, you'd be a pleasure to fire."
We walked across the street to an outside Mexican market. Plenty of great food, no valley girls. The kids picked up several pieces of costume jewelry and had a great time at the Mexican Culural Museum.
As luck would have it, our connecting train would leaves 2 hours late. Thankfully, an older couple were entertained by the girls for the extra wait.
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Flagstaff 
At Mexican Cutlutral Area in L.A. 
A "quiet" moment on the train to LA |
