October 01, 2024
#496
Gentle reader,
While this article is technically not about a physical collection (other than of all the hundreds of digital images we made during the trip) it is about something which I feel the need to get out of my head and hopefully into yours.
I have no idea who this couple is, but, when I saw them obviously enjoying themselves beside the epic majesty of the Grand Canyon, I decided to capture the moment.
Nancy and I are both "control freaks". One would think that might cause problems within a marriage. But, except for that one time too many in which I "suggested" she do something while driving like, "You know we're going to be turning right, right?" we both set aside the need to be in control for the sake of our marriage and our sanity. We are truly soul mates and have a mental linkage which is downright spooky. We love each other too deeply to worry about the little things.
A little background: I'm 68 and have been retired for almost eight years. Nancy is 59 and is still working. We met thirty years ago at my part time (and her full time) job. We went out for six months as friends before she grabbed me and kissed me passionately. When we broke apart, I said, "Wow. What was that for?" She explained why and thus we went from great friends to, well much better friends who were also in love. Oh, and we both broke up with the individuals we were dating at the time.
We've been married for twenty-eight years and have never had a fight. Both of us suffered through bad first marriages. We know that we were brought together against all odds. I could tell you step by step each choice I made (or thought that I was the one who made the choices) in my life to get to that point in 1994. But, that is not what this article is about.
This article is about letting go and letting someone else take the reigns for a change.
Above is, I believe, the cover photo of the US AMTRAK rail system routes book.
Some months ago, Nancy decided that we needed a REAL vacation. Aside from taking some time to visit relatives over the years, we really haven't gone anywhere just for fun since our honeymoon in January, 1996.
I had worked on Washington, D.C.'s subway rail cars for thirty-five years after nine years of being a new car dealership mechanic. Which is what I knew at an early age that I wanted to do for a living, and thus trained for. Yet, aside from my one commuter train ride sixty years ago, I had not ever ridden a "real" train. Nor, had Nancy.
Nancy has lived in Virginia since she was two or three, having been born in Puerto Rico. while I had grown up in the West until the family was moving to Virginia in 1974, right after my graduating from high school. Nancy felt that travelling by rail across the United States to visit the Grand Canyon, in Arizona would be just what was called for. She has only known a small part of the East and only seen America from high in the sky. So, she called AMTRAK Vacations and had set it all up. Every step of the way was planned by A-V representative and every moment was laid out with us spending five days at the Grand Canyon. And, then reversing our route back home.
Therefore, I was in charge of making that work. Which I was able to do. It was not easy, and would require perfect timing for me to be able to pick up the rental car within minutes of the train arriving in Flagstaff four days after we left Virginia.
Also, I proposed taking the southern AMTRAK route home would show us so much more of the US, and as it turned out, a slice of Mexico too. The trouble is, there is no train tracks which one can ride over to get to the southern stations.
The trip began with her arranging the day before for a Taxi to pick us up at home well in advance of our needing to catch the last last northbound VRE (Virginia Railway Express) commuter train from our town to Washington, D.C.'s Union Station.
Guess what? No taxi. I called the company and was told, "Yeah, we don't schedule a driver the day before for a pick up." Hearing that she whipped out her phone and called the LOCAL Yellow Cab company and was told, "We have a driver which can be there in ten minutes." The car which showed up was not yellow...
A nice man from Ghana arrived and stored all of our (too many) suitcases in the back of his Scion XD taxi. He drove us to the commuter train station and got us there with plenty of time to spare. First bump in the road avoided.
We'd never been to ANY train station (other than subway car stations) before and found the Woodbridge station was quite nice. A VRE was there, but we knew it was not the last train, so we waited patiently. The less time wandering around Union Station until time to board the AMTRAK train, the better.
A few moments later, we heard a train horn, and were thinking, "Here comes our train." Wrong! It was a freight train with four locomotives and it was FLYING into and through the station! Man was it l-o-n-g, loud and producing a lot of wind!
Eventually our VRE train arrived and our first hardship was lugging all those heavy suitcases (all of which had other bags mounted on their handles) up all those stairs inside the car and storing them out of the way in the passenger seating area of the car.
Those VRE cars are very nice. We enjoyed the ride and as Union Station was the last stop, enjoyed the sights without having to keep an ear out for our stop being announced. A conductor helped us get all the luggage (and us) off the train safely in Union Station. Then, she climbed back abord and away the train went.
We looked around and asked each other at the same time, "Which way do we go?" And seemingly, just like that, a woman in an AMTRAK uniform asked if she could help us. She looked at our tickets and said, "Ah, you're going first class. I'll take care of you. She led us to the Check In, had our big cases labeled and whisked away then to the First Class lounge. We would not see those suitcases for four days. Out of our control!!! Gulp!
One of the stunning sights inside of Washington's Union Station.
Okay, I realize that I do not need to tell you every step of our trip. The point I am trying to make is that, for the first time in our adult lives, we were NOT able to do anything like we always have, such as, hop in our car and take off. No, we had to rely on total strangers to get us every step of the way to and from Arizona. The only thing I can compare it to is being enslaved or in jail. Nonetheless, we HAD to learn to trust the system and the professionals who do this all the time.
Now, many people in the United States rely on public transportation to get everywhere they go. At least places they can't get to on foot. Many cannot afford, or do not want a car of their own and the expenses thereof. We are both from, while not truly poor, but our parents did struggle some years to get enough food on the table when we were little. Thus, this trip would be our first experience at doing anything "First Class".
A quick overview of AMTRAK trips. One has three riding/sleeping choices: Coach, Roomette or Sleeper. By far, the most people travel by coach. We sure have when flying! A roomette ticket gets you two facing seats which can be slid down and together and a thin mattress laid over the seats and made up for sleeping. In coach, most choose to sleep sitting up. Although, the one time I had to go to a coach car was on the last train ride home. The bathrooms in our car had some kind of electrical problem. One could use the toilets, but not be able to flush it. They would reset the circuit breaker, but it would mysteriously trip again, later on. Therefore, I had to walk through the sleeping cars to use the coach car's bathroom. Which was MUCH larger than ours because it had to accommodate a wheelchair. But, I digress.
The roomette, at least in our first three trains, has an upper bed which folds down from the wall (see below, the handle at the top of the image). It is made of hard plastic and the mattress is firm and not too yielding. I did not sleep well when in that bunk. Nancy graciously chose it climb up into it the first two nights. The last two it was all mine. The last train, from New Orleans, north, was made up of east coast cars. Central and West rail car tunnels are much higher than the much older East coast rail system tunnels. The cars are only 1 1/2 high compared to the original AMTRAK cars. Thus, that upper bunk slid down and locked into place. The roomette was slightly larger as well.
The view through the doorway into a roomette.
We were able to sit in a sleeper room for the first part of one of the trips since we boarded near the rear of the train (more on that later) and thus, had to disembark (or detrain) at the next station and hoof it all the way down the station to our car. Anyway, the Sleepers have twice the square footage of a Roomette and also have a sink and sometimes a full bathroom in them. Next time, and there will be a next time, we are going to book Sleepers.
Mather Point at Grand Canyon, which we walked to in order to watch the sunset over the canyon. You simply cannot imagine JUST how incredibly large, complex and beautiful the place is!
I compiled the list above to determine how far we had gone over the ten days and to show each mode of transportation we utilized. I could not find rail distances, but since rails often parallel roads, the distances should be closely similar.
So, are you ready for all of the God Moments which happened during our trip? Some, I have already mentioned. But, there are more:
The first, occurred once we got to Arizona and were all on the shuttle bus from Flagstaff AMTRAK station to Wilson, Arizona, home of the Grand Canyon Railway and hotel complex. Dave was driving the bus, and as he took the ramp down from the interstate, he was not slowing, let alone stopping for a stop sign! I was about to yell, "Dave! STOP!" when he suddenly stood on the brakes! I have worked on all kinds and sizes of vehicles and I am well aware of stopping distances verses vehicle weight and friction. Thus, there was NO way that van should have been able to stop, fully loaded with fourteen adults and all their luggage, going downhill in that short of distance. Physically impossible. But stop it did. There was a semi-truck which would have hit and likely killed, most of us. First God Moment.
We had a wonderful time at the Canyon. The lodge we stayed it was great, the food plentiful and delicious and we plan to go back again. And the canyon! My first impression was, "This can not be real!"
Now, since the train from Chicago was late getting into Flagstaff, and since I had not been able to get ahold of the first taxi company I had called days earlier, to arrange to be picked up from the train station, I called the next one on the list of all the taxi companies in Flagstaff I had written down. I had a very nice conversation with Tim, the proprietor of Turquoise Taxi. On board the train, which sat stopped for another train which was stopped ahead of ours and we were waiting (a distraught person had jumped to their death in front of the freight train ahead of us on the track, we found out later) I used the time to call Tim and to tell him we would be too late and he could go ahead and go home for the night and I arranged to hire him to pick us up on the morning of the 19th at 9:30 at the G.C.H. To which he readily agreed to do so.
That morning, three days later, and we were our front of the hotel, but no taxi yet. No problem, I called the T.T. phone number, and a man answered, I said, "Tim? This is Scott.", and told me he was Mark, Tim's son and would be there in a couple minutes. Which he was. Well, first of all, the taxi was not turquoise! And the man who climbed out was OLD! Long silver hair and beard! I said, "If you're Tim's son, how old is he?" He laughed and said, "Did I say, 'son'? No, I'm his Dad."
We had a good laugh and loaded everything up and climbed in for the thirty-five mile trip to the airport car rentals. We got to talking and I mentioned that I was born in Phoenix, but only lived there my first two weeks because that's where the grandparents lived and that my dad was training to be a Presbyterian minister at a seminary north of San Francisco. "Well, what about that," Mark replied, "I'm a retired Presbyterian Minister!" "Outstanding and what a small world!" I said, "We are quite involved in our church and I am part of KAIROS prison ministry." "Really? So am I!" And we high-fived. The rest of the trip was quite pleasant and he helped us unload, pointed us in the right direction and I paid him and said, "KAIROS hug?" We embraced tightly. God Moment.
To catch you up: So far, we had ridden trains five times: VRE, AMTRAK, AMTRAK, Grand Canyon Railway, twice and were now driving from the Flagstaff Airport in the mountainous evergreen forests of Arizona in a 2025 Nissan Sentra. A very technologically advanced car. I uses active radar to monitor what's ahead and automatically brakes the car, quicker than a human would notice the danger. A God Moment? No, but God gave us the brains to be able to create all kinds of unimaginable things.
I had last been in Arizona fifty two years prior. And, had not seen any of my Arizona relatives except in 2011 for Dad's memorial service. EVERY August, no matter where we lived in the West, we all piled into our forty horsepower Volkswagen Bus and drover OVER mountains to visit the grandparents. Therefore, I did not recall much of Arizona except being very hot. So, seeing so much of it as an adult was fun and exciting.
Dad and my middle sister, Judy with one of three Buses they'd bought.
We arrived in Mesa, much sooner than anticipated. My sister, who lives in Goodyear, but has never been to the Grand Canyon, had said that it would take six hours to get from there to Mesa. She was likely thinking from the G.C. itself, where speed limits are much lower until one gets to a real highway.
Much fun was had seeing my Aunt and meeting her husband. Even more so being able to finally meet Bob and his wife. Bob and Joseph hit it right off. The next day we visited the Berne home and I took in all of the Dynaco equipment and so much more! Some incredibly rare stuff!
Once the visiting was done, Nancy joined my Aunt in her car as she led me to the Mesa Airport's car rental return area. Then, she drove us to Maricopa where I had booked a room for the night prior to catching the AMTRAK train which departed that station at 5:55 AM. The desk clerk of the hotel, which was brand new and only moments from the train station, was very nice. He offered to drive us the next morning, if we liked. I thanked him and told him I would let him know.
Nancy arranged for a LYFT car while I downloaded the app and signed up as well. She was promised that a driver would be there at 5:00 AM. The next morning, we saw a Cadillac SUV out front, but empty. The overnight clerk did not know whose car it was. I asked a man sitting in the lobby if it was his. It wasn't. Nancy began calling for a driver and kept being told there was none available!
She began shaking and I too was wound pretty tight. I grabbed her, held her tight, told her to have faith. Then I prayed asking for the Lord to provide us with a ride. She relaxed somewhat and we parted. Not one minute later, her phone rang, a driver said that he was six minutes away! God Moment.
When he arrived, we (too) hurriedly put all the suitcases in the back of his car. Once inside, I asked, "Sir, are you a Christian?" "Yes, I am." "I am convinced that the Lord Sent you." and explained why. We were still cutting it close. We arrived and I jumped out and ran to the AMTRAK staff, "Wait! We have to get our luggage!" "Where are you going?" "New Orleans!" She got on the radio to the engineer and they waited.
It was as we lifted the last suitcases to the ground did I say, "Where's the third suitcase?" Freakout time all over! Not to worry, although Nancy surely did. The hotel desk clerk saw what happened, secured our bags (smaller suitcase with our laptops and other things and her CPAP machine attached to the handle) and he called me to tell me so. I thanked him and told him that we would arrange to have them picked up by UPS and sent to our home. He replied that he would find a large enough box to hold everything and keep them safe. God Moment.
One difference when traveling first class is that one's contact with others is limited. Every time we have flown somewhere, I have made a new friend by the time we landed. AMTRAK, due to limited seating in the dining car purposely sits strangers together. Something I love and Nancy tries her best to accept. One couple asked if we could all say Grace together? We all held hands and did so. God Moment.
On the last day of that train ride across Texas, I saw a man I had heard speaking and asked him, "Are you an Aussie?" He replied that he is. I then told him that (Australian V8) Supercars was my favorite racing series. Boy, did we get to talking! The rest of the trip, when possible, he, and a woman he met on the train, and us was spent together, getting to know each other.
He had not arranged a hotel for the night, he TOO was going to Virginia. I showed him where AMTRAK had booked us, he called and got a room on the same floor. Out of gratitude, he arranged for an Uber from the station to the hotel and back the next morning. We ate breakfast together then boarded the next train for Virginia, after being sequestered in the First Class Lounge. New Orleans station was very modest, but still nice.
We parted ways with hugs as he was getting off at Charlottesville to visit his cousin. Coincidently, her car was right outside our window! So, Nancy took "surveillance" photos of the two. There were SO many people waiting to board trains! That was true at every station stop. We had no idea that train travel was so popular.
This trip and the several events, meetings and moments which happened within those ten days truly showed me that if we JUST let go, and let God, everything will be alright.
Nancy, truly relaxed, aboard an AMTRAK train.
God has intervened in my life in so many ways helping me to make decisions which, if I listened to that small, still voice, always worked out for the BEST. The times I ignored it, did not work out well for me. I cannot tell you where that voice comes from, perhaps the Holy Spirit, or a Guardian Angel, but it always has my best interests at heart.
If you find yourself overwhelmed, or lost, all it takes is for you to sit down, put your phone aside and pray. Regardless of whether you believe in Him or not, He loves you, He always has. He wants you to let Him into your life. Letting go is not easy. It took me decades to finally be able to do so. But, you CAN let go. He will take your hand and show you a whole new world of possibilities. There IS a better life out there, waiting for you. So far, you have not been able to see it. But, it has been there the entire time. All you have to do is open your eyes and see the great big, glorious world God created and brought YOU into, right in front of you. Are you ready? If not now, then when? The present is a gift, will you open it and have your eyes truly opened? I pray that you will.
Scott Robb
October 1, 2024
#496
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