I prefer not to think of myself as cheap necessarily; I’ll own up to frugal. Frugal has been a long time coming for me. I didn’t always HAVE to be frugal, but since I have gotten used to being frugal by necessity, I don’t mind it so much. What’s the point to all of this? I made plans for a frugal jaunt from Chicago, Illinois, to Austin, Texas, for spring break 2008. The price of a train ride versus the price of flying made the decision pretty easy. Instead of 1200, I paid 500. Cool, huh? Read on.
Something happened to (Sl)amtrak in the last few years, and I am certain whatever happened was not good, or at least did not translate into good for its customers. The tracks are now owned by the freight lines. That means never getting to your destination on time and Amtrak never having to say they are sorry. I can deal with that when all the other alleged amenities of train travel are in place. There were floods in Missouri. I feel badly about that, but I can’t fight mother nature and neither can Amtrak. What I can fight (and will continue to fight) is this: I was told at 8 p.m. the night BEFORE our travel (reservations having been made 1-1/2 months earlier) that we would be shuffled from train to bus to train. Seems to me the Amtrak folks knew the flooding existed long before 8 p.m. the night before, but they left me without options as far as canceling my trip. Would any of them want to explain to teenage girls that the vacation we had talked about the 6 weeks previous was a no go because of some unforeseen circumstances and be told that AFTER tickets were purchased, plans were made, suitcases were packed and ready to go? I think not. A pox on Amtrak for their 20/20 hindsight and complete lack of foresight. Enter the train. Overcrowded, ran out of food, rude conductors, delay after delay after delay. Hauling several hundred pounds of luggage across poorly lit, pothole-covered parking lots to play hurry up and wait on a bus to Little Rock, Arkansas, where we SAT idle on the tracks for 6 hours. Ticket arrival time: 7 p.m. Saturday night. ACTUAL arrival time: 5 a.m. Sunday morning. Do the math – 10 hours late. There was no dinner served on the trip out, they ran out of food the next night, and the snack car served its mystery meat sandwiches until it, too, was all gone. The guy in the snack car was balding and rude and someone obviously had pissed in his Cheerios before the trip. Did we have fun on the trip? Sure…once we got to Austin. The trip itself was supposed to be a part of the adventure. I watched elderly people struggle to get off the train with their luggage in tow just as I watched Mr. Conductor slip away out of sight before God forbid anyone could ask for help. Rude? Oh, yeah. I personally got a speech from one of the men in the stupid conductor suits about how he had spent 8 days on a train because of the floods. Funny thing…I had said NOTHING to him personally until he attacked me and then I exacted my pound of flesh both personally and under the Amtrak umbrella of customer relations. It was not a hormonal rage. I would have admitted that. It was Mr. Conductor being an asshole, plain and simple. Squeaky wheels get the grease, so they say. I took my complaints to the next level. This squeaky wheel gets free travel — on Slamtrak. When I have several days with nothing to do but wait, and I want to start that next starvation diet, I will use the voucher — or not.
WW
