Unexpected Road Trip

We had it all worked out: two days on a train from Seattle to Los Angeles, a hotel room booked and paid for in LA, then two days on another train from LA to San Antonio. Easy peasy. Ha! We were on the train to LA, and all was fine until we stopped in San Luis Obispo, just 300 miles from LA. The conductor announced that we'd be there for 10 minutes. Loads of time! We wandered into the station, checked out the vending machines, stretched our legs. I thought we still had plenty of time left, so I thought I'd use the lovely normal-sized bathroom in the station (rather than the tiny, cramped bathrooms on the train). The train decided to leave while I was in the bathroom.

I came out to find Chris with a very stressed way about him, shouting that the train had just left. Sure enough, I ran outside just in time to see the train disappear around the bend ahead. Of course, all of our stuff was on the train (except for the one bag we always keep with us, which luckily had our train tickets and mobile phone in it). Also luckily, I had my jacket and glasses on me. Chris had nothing but the clothes he was wearing and his wallet. He didn't have a jacket, so we were really lucky to be in warm California!

I was mortified to find that there was no way to stop the train. We could only try to catch up with it. The next stop was Santa Barbara, a couple hours away. Now, you'd think there'd be plenty of public transportation options. Wrong! To make a long story short, the wonderful Amtrak employee in the San Luis Obispo station wound up putting us on an Amtrak bus (for free) that happened to be leaving soon for Santa Barbara. The hope was that we'd arrrive before the train did and be able to get back on, reunite with our belongings and finish the journey to LA. Of course, by the time we got to Santa Barbara, we found out that our train had already been and gone.

We then had lots of phone calls to make. I spent a while on the phone with Amtrak, finally speaking to someone in the LA station who very kindly offered to get our stuff off the train for us to retrieve. Amtrak had nothing else going south that night, so I caved in and spoke to the dreaded Greyhound, who luckily had a bus going from Santa Barbara to LA at 10:45 that night. The delightful Greyhound employee assured me that it was fine that the Greyhound office there was closed; we could just pay the driver in cash rather than buy tickets beforehand. Cool! So we made our way to the Greyhound station and waited about an hour. During that time, it completely escaped our attention that there was a sign on the door informing passengers that Greyhound drivers no longer accept cash. The bus arrived, and we went to give the driver our money and were directed to that sign. ARSE!!! Damn you, Greyhound!

By this time, our only options were to try to rent a car and drive ourselves to LA or spend the night in Santa Barbara and get to LA the next morning. We decided not to spring $45 for a taxi to the airport (and who knows how much for a rental car, provided there was a car rental agency even open at that time). The hotel we'd booked and paid for in LA refused to refund our payment, which was annoying. But we were too tired and cheap to mess around with a rental car. Meanwhile, the incredibly helpful Amtrak guy at the LA station called to let us know he'd “got most if not all” of our stuff off the train, but the train employees had kicked him off because they needed to leave again. We were so anxious about getting all of our stuff back, but it turned out that the lost and found office at the LA station would be closed until 7am anyway. We fortunately found a hostel near the train station and grabbed a few hours of sleep. Luckily this hostel provided soap and towels since we didn't have ours!

After about three hours of sleep, we got up and dragged ourselves to the train station. We told our pitiful story and were very kindly allowed to take the 6:45am train to LA at no extra charge. It took three hours to get to LA, and my stomach was in knots by the time we got there. Would we find all of our stuff? If we didn't, what would we do? We practically ran to the lost and found office, and there to greet my suddenly teary eyes was all of our stuff lumped together – backpacks, food bags, our jackets, a sleeping bag out of its cover, various things usually in our backpacks but out loose because we'd spread out a lot during the train journey, even Chris's sunglasses and his cherished mini maglite – underneath a note that we'd pick it all up that morning. That wonderful Amtrak employee, Dave, managed to grab everything we'd stashed overhead, in our seats, at our feet and in the seat backs in front of us in the few minutes the train staff allowed him. It was a big, messy haul, and we were so relieved to see it. We packed up, thanked the lost and found employee profusely, and made our way back into the main terminal. Disaster averted! Thank you, thank you, Amtrak! I shall be writing a long letter of thanks.

Our Amtrak luck continued. The guy in the baggage claim, who also watches over stuff in day storage, knew about our train debacle, rather my train debacle. He sympathized and only charged us a quarter of the fee for us to leave all of our stuff in the storage area. Genius! We only had a few hours before our train was due to leave for San Antonio, but we were starving and wanted to visit the La Brea Tar Pits museum. The last couple times we were in LA, we tried to get to the museum but were thwarted each time. This time, we were determined! And we made it! After a quick fuel stop at IHOP, we got to visit the wonderful museum. It's full of bones and reconstructed skeletons of animals who wound up in the tar pits over many millenia. It's awesome. We're talking reconstructed skeletons of giant ground sloths, a huge Columbian mammoth, saber-tooth cats, and other cool animals that are now extinct. It was a thrill to see it all.

Then we rushed back to Union Station to retrieve our bags and get onto another train. I'm very happy to report that we got from LA to San Antonio with no hassles, and we were only 90 minutes late arriving in SA! Ross picked us up, and now we're here in his newly cleaned apartment. Life is good! Now I need to take about an hour to write that letter of thanks to Amtrak...