So about 6 months ago, I was planning on making a trip to Provo for the BYU engineering and technology career fair and after taking the bus on the previous trip, taking the train seemed like a decent change of pace. Let's just say that I was wrong. Dead wrong. My trip to Provo at the end of January and beginning of February was, by far, the worst travel experience that I've had in my entire life up to this point. If it had been any worse I probably would have gone postal in the middle of the Salt Lake Amtrak station. It was bad.
The ticket-buying experience wasn't too bad; in fact I'd venture to say that it was the best part of this trip. It definitely went downhill after that. About 3 days before I was set to depart, I found out that Union Station in downtown Denver was going to be closing for renovations the day after I left and that my return train was going to show up at some other random place 3 blocks down the road. As it turned out, that really didn't matter.
So, I show up at Union Station about 2 hours before my train was supposed to leave because my dad works downtown and it was fairly convenient for him to drop me off. I sit around and read a book while listening to the announcements that aren't even remotely comprehensible. On a side note, Union Station was an acoustic nightmare, which is probably one of the biggest reasons they needed renovations. Since I had no idea what was going on, I decided that I would go out onto the tracks at about the time my train was supposed to be there. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but when I got outside there were no trains or people or signs of life. The best part is that the doors through which I went locked as I left, so I was left to walk around the half-mile back to the front door of Union Station. Keep in mind that this was in late January and it was snowing with gale-force winds blowing snow right into my face.
After making my way back to the front door of the station, I asked one of the attendants what the heck was going on, since my train should have left half an hour ago by that point. He told me that the train was going to be delayed and that it was going to be another 2 hours on the profoundly uncomfortable wooden benches in the station. I decided to take a nap, which actually turned out alright.
So after showing up at 6 am and waiting for about 4.5 hours, my train came, I got on, and we crawled forward at a pace that I could almost have walked. Seriously, until we got out of Denver, we were averaging about 10 mph. Once we got out of Denver, we ramped it up to about 30. If there was any significant opportunity cost to my time, this would have been absolutely unacceptable. The ride itself wasn't too bad, though I didn't really eat anything because the food was so ridiculously expensive, which was probably part of the reason the train went so ridiculously slow. Between the station and the train, I probably slept 17 hours that day.
Then the fun really started.
When the 13-hour journey (literally) had finally run it's course, I got off the train and my friend, Steve picked me up from the train station. I returned to my former home in Sam's Town, and after about 10 minutes of trying to account for my stuff I realized that I had left my new, stainless steel wallet with my driver's license, credit cards, about $200 in cash, and in an incredibly stupid move, my social security card on the train. Somehow, after spending most of 13 hours in a seated daze, I wanted to remove the brick that was poking into my right buttock. This would have worked out just fine if I had put my wallet in the backpack that was sitting in the seat right next to me. But no, I just threw it in the seat right next to the backpack that would have ensured its safe arrival. Clearly not my most intellectually clear moment.
I called the main Amtrak line and then the Salt Lake Amtrak station. They said they'd look for my wallet, but surprise, surprise, they didn't find it. So, at this juncture, I'm 500 miles away from home with no money, having not really eaten much in the last 18 hours. Luckily, the Domino's in this college town was open late and my mom forked out her credit card number, or I would have been on a 4-day involuntary fast.
Oh, but it gets better.
After my dad had express-mailed (for $18) me a big wad of money that I was obligated to pay him back (plus $18), I went to the career fair and didn't find anything, because there are no jobs. At some point during my 4-day stay in Provo, I got a computer-generated voice message from Amtrak telling me that my train back to Denver was still sitting in San Francisco and was going to be delayed indefinitely. This was about when I was contemplating going postal in the Salt Lake Amtrak station.
At this point, I decided that, even if I could eventually get back to Denver on the Amtrak train, I didn't want to endure another 13-hour ordeal with untold horse-puckey throughout. I decided that I'd much rather just eat my Amtrak ticket price and get a flight on Southwest Airlines. (Let that be a lesson to you, kids. Sunk costs are sunk.) The ticket price on such short notice was like 80 or 100 dollars. I really don't remember, but I was definitely willing to pay it to get the heck out of this situation. The only problem was that, since I had lost my wallet, I had no form of government-issued photo identification. If there had been anyone within an arm's reach at this point, I would have strangled them.
This was one of the few times in my life that I was glad I ended up getting engaged to fiancée #2. We had planned on having a reception/ring ceremony in Boston, where she was from, then flying straight to Vancouver, BC, where we would have our honeymoon, then flying back to Salt Lake and starting up school again. Clearly, this didn't work out, but in order to fly from Vancouver, BC to Salt Lake City, UT, one must have a valid passport. In the process of wedding planning, I made my way down to the Utah County clerk's office, completed my passport application, and got my passport about two weeks later (without paying the expedition fee :). With this in mind, I booked a flight out of Salt Lake City and called my dad, who expressed me (for another $18) my passport so that I could get on my flight. I got another computer-generated message and email telling me that my Amtrak train would come a couple days after it was supposed to have come, but I had already made my decision by then.
So all pretty much went according to plan with my flight. Steve again took me to the airport, and I reimbursed him for his time and gas, to the tune to $10. I checked in, showed the gate-rapists my passport, had my junk fondled, got on the plane, and arrived safely back in Denver. As another interesting side note, the entire University of Utah women's basketball team was on this flight with me. Apparently the lower-budget sports don't get charter flights, like football would.
I mention this now, as opposed to 4 months ago, because yesterday (June 30th) I received a flat-rate envelope from FedEx containing a manilla envelope, which contained the five cards that were in my wallet on the Amtrak train. There was no further explanation, but it's fairly obvious what happened. Someone, either a patron or an Amtrak employee, took the cards out of my wallet and stashed them somewhere out of the way, while keeping the wallet and cash that was inside it. This is why there were no fraudulent charges on my credit cards, nor any accounts created in my name. All of my cards were riding around in an Amtrak passenger car until someone was thoroughly cleaning out the car and stumbled upon them.
The moral of the story: Rail is for freight, not passengers. Screw you, Amtrak! I will shortly celebrate your demise.
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