Riding the rails was an experience I knew I would enjoy and now that I am decompressing from the fun, I am now trying to evaluate what I saw, did and generally accomplished. Originally, my plan was to illustrate what I was seeing and doing with drawings, I was so sure that I could make it work. I was very disappointed to find out that I could not draw, even a little bit on the train, it was just too rough. Also, I could not focus and see the stuff I might draw as the panorama moved too quickly to take it in. Now I am not abandoning the idea just rethinking the execution of it. Just now I am beginning the process of printing out the blogs so I can see what I have said so far and where I want to terminate this thread. There are unused photos still in the file and things I did not address on the trip that need to be talked about. One thing about the experience, you had a chance to see how other people did with the same stuff. Observation is a good teacher, it also brings on the “What were they thinking” process too! For a visual person just one hour in a waiting room or depot gives material for years of images to work on and I suppose is one of the other innumerable experiences that one will get from traveling.
The next thing in the process is to plan for the second part of the trip. But now I have done one I can see what I did right, wrong and totally missed the mark. It will be fun to see how I can adapt the process as I go along. In retrospect, all the planning, working on a calendar, dummy input of information into the Amtrak site, all panned out quite nicely. Each of the legs of the trip worked well, including the stops in each of the cities. The original idea was so that I could make good connections but what it turned out to be was a good time to rest, recoup and get my bearings even if it was just over night. It seems this might be a plan to continue along with booking into the same chain of hotels for the various perks and customer points that will lead to sometime down the line a free night or nights. Although pricey, booking a room rather than a roomette or coach was a good and valid idea. ( I might add even though it was mostly serendipity, the roomette on the lower part of the car was also a good thing.)
The planning for the next trip, the dummy input into the website, and spacing on the calendar is well on its way and has even been tentively scheduled. Again, I am faced with a problem of the beginning of the trip. This time it’s getting from Moline to Chicago, in the original plan formulated when it looked as if Moline would be getting Amtrak service it would have been a piece of cake and a nice trip. But since that is at a stand-still I will have to work out transport to Chicago in time to catch the train on the day that I leave. Right now this trip will be shorter than the first as there is no planned layovers except in Chicago again since the connection is off by several hours and Amtrak will not make the booking.
At this point in time( 2 days after getting back from the first trip) I might have solved the luggage problem, some of the clothing problems and maybe some of the organizational packing problems but we will see when the orders get here.
Now we see how our hero wraps up this adventure and tries to pull in all the loose ends.
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