Why Do You Smell Like Gasoline?

It's been six months since it happened (and five months since I actually typed words for a post instead of just throwing up a youtube clip), but I think it is finally time to describe the most interesting travel experience of my life. My family was going out to West Point, NY to have a funeral for my uncle, and then we were to travel down to Washington, DC for a ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery (and yes, I do realize that Arlington in actually in Virginia). It was a very interesting trip all the way around, but the opening leg from my house to West Point proved to be the most interesting.

Anyway, the family had had a lot of success by traveling with Amtrak, so instead of flying and renting a car, we decided to take the train from South Bend, IN (which is about 45 minutes from my house) out to New York City, and then we were to take New York's version of the Metro from New York to a city near West Point. Then we would take a cab from the train station to our hotel.

The first sign that the trip wasn't going to go well should have come when we left our house on time. The train was scheduled to leave at 12:30am, and we were on our way by 11pm. That should have been the first sign because my family is notoriously late. We normally wouldn't be on time even if the fate of the world depended on us showing up on time, so this was indeed a rare occurrence.

Right away, we should have had an idea that something was going to go wrong, but we didn't. We were driving to train station just going about our business, when we got pulled over (I was driving and that was the first time I have ever been pulled over) just as the van was getting onto the highway. I hadn't been speeding or driving like a maniac, so I was certainly surprised. When he came to the door, we found out the cop had pulled us over because our muffler had been loud. Yes, police officers in small towns in Southwest Michigan have nothing better to do than pull you over for a loud muffler.

We made it to the train station without any other incident. All we had to do was wait for the train to show up. As convenient as Amtrak trains are, they hardly ever run exactly on time. We were used to that, so when the train didn't show up at 12:30, we weren't concerned. We called in an eventually figured out that the train would show up around 2am or so. So at 1:30, we headed over to the station to wait for the train (in case it had made up some time on the way over).

While we were waiting for the train, a car drove up and instead of just going over the tracks (like most normal cars do), this car turns right and starts driving down the tracks. So everyone who's waiting for the train goes to get the attention of the station manager, and someone else calls 911 because a train is coming soon and there is a car stuck on the tracks. Meanwhile, the guys get out of the car (both are more than a little intoxicated) and start yelling at us to stop the train. It was very entertaining, especially when one of the guys yelled, "We're gonna get f----- killed."

Eventually, the police show up, and the train comes in soon after. With enough warning, the train stopped well short of the stopped car. We were all able to get on (finally), but the train didn't go anywhere until after 3am, which made it more than 2.5 hours late. Most of the rest of the train trip was uneventful, although I was rudely woken up in Erie, PA by the border patrol. They kept asking me what my country of origin was. It took two or three times for me to figure out what they were asking. I answered and they went on their way down the car, of course neglecting to wake up my sister.

When were a couple of hours away from NYC, we started talking with one of the conductors, and he said that we didn't have to go all the way into New York, instead we could get off somewhere (it was in Poughkeepsie, I think) and catch the metro there. So we did, and saved ourselves a couple of hours, which we soon gave right back.

When we got to the city where we needed to be to get to West Point, my mom called for a cab. There were two companies she had numbers for. She left a message at the first one, and unfortunately for us, the second company answered. As soon as the cab showed up, we should have known we were in trouble. It was a mini-van, with the front quarter panel missing. The driver said we couldn't put our luggage in the trunk because she there wasn't room (I looked, and she had what I can only hope were spare parts stowed back there). So we're holding onto our luggage, and the next thing she does is ask us if we know how to get to our hotel. (Isn't that kind of the reason most people hire a cab, so you can get to a place that you don't know how to get to?) We said that we didn't, so she turned to her GPS system, which was a man in the passenger seat with the Nextel Walkie-Talkie function of his phone.

I won't mention the trip in detail, but we almost ran out of gas twice, went about 40 miles in the wrong direction and twice came so near the hotel that if the cab had continued going in the same direction, we would have made it there much sooner. As it was, it took 2 hours for a cab ride that when were headed back to the train station to leave, with a different cab company of course, it was a 10-minute trip. The best part of the whole trip, was when we finally go to our hotel, we walked in and the lady behind the desk asked, "Excuse me, but why do you smell like gasoline?" After traveling for almost 24 straight hours, all we could do was laugh.

The moral of this whole story is that my family should never leave on time for a trip again. Ever.