Back home....... unfortunately! Part 2

Had a great weekend with my sister Sheelagh and her children Conor 6 and Kate 4. I had forgotten how lively little children can be and was quickly reminded of this fact.

Weather was good so that all the sporting activities for them went ahead from 'flag' football, which is like touch rugby for the little ones. Seeing as american football is all about playing catch and trying to stop the oppositin from getting anywhere near the ball I struggled to understand the concept of having a flag tied loosely to the waist to be ripped off. A non-contact version of a truly violent game.

Saturday was a sport I could relate to, soccer as they quaintly call football, played by little kids is the same the world over. Everyone chases the ball and just kicks the hell out of the thing. Great fun and I have seen this done on 6 continents, truly a world game. Sadly the sport seems to be dropped before the kids get to be 16 as all the focus is on the parochial games of american football, baseball and basketball whose 'world' champions all happen to be from the US.

We stopped at a garage sale on the way home from the 'soccer' field and picked up a fusball table for 10 bucks, a true bargain.

Kate and the Football table

As it was the week before halloween and also Kate's birthday there was a lot of excitement and dressing up for parties. Kate had a fairy princess costume and Conor was a spy and looking very cool.

The Princess and the Spy.

Monday lunchtime it was back on the train to return to Morton, Il. Again I was not impressed with the running of the Amtrak service. I wrote the following while stuck in Albany:

Travelling back to Morton, Illinois I realised that the railways in Britain are not so bad after all. The clowns that run Amtrak do so for the benefit of the crew not the passengers. Either that or the crew are blindly following orders without question, and we all know where actions like that end up!

When boarding the train tickets are checked for destination and you are told which car to sit in, choice of seat is then up to the passenger. When tickets are collected a little slip of paper is poked into the overhead luggage rack stating your destination. The ticket collector seemed to get a bit upset when I swapped seats when a pair became available as this seemed to confuse him. Seems that you gotta stay put! So much for land of the free! can't even freely move around a train!

Unfortunately they seem to want to fill one car at atime as when I went to the 'cafe' car there was acompletely empty coach. I asked the crew if they could explain why and they told me that it would come off at Albany. Fair enough but why were the passengers for Albany not in that one but filling up the other coaches? Couldn't answer me and just kept saying that the car would be coming off at Albany and I was to stay in the seat for the entire trip as there would be no chance to change seat. Didn't quite understand that one either.

On reaching Albany they wandered through muttering something about getting off. Didn't quite catch it and if it was a train announcement then why not use the intercom, unless they couldn't figure out how it worked as on the way out I was woken pre-dawn by somebody hollering through it that breakfast would be served. After about 10 mins the train pulled out, travelled about 200yde, just enough to clear the platform and stopped. The lights went out. Guard cane through and stated that the train would stay here until 7:05, 1 hour and 45 mins and the lights would come on shortly as a couple of cars were being removed and replaced. Why they couldn't do this in the station and let passengers off for the duration is again beyond me. It is not a sif there was no room as there are 4 platforms and not a single train passed as we sat there doing nothing.

After all that we then reversed back into the station and left 25 minutes late.

Sorry British Rail, or whatever you are called these days, all is forgiven.