Characters

Back home again in Indiana, I keep thinking about the train - the Cardinal Route from Chicago to NYC and back again. It was a LONG ride. An accident (our train hit someone!), slow speeds, mountains, and odd hours piled up to create annoying delays. But we made it through. Tired, but full of interesting experiences. Specifically with the people I met along the way.

There was a 21-year-old college student - feminist and anti-war bumper stickers plastered all over her laptop, combat boots, too many bags, and an attitude - that boarded the train with me in Cincinnati. Somehow we became friends along the route and shared conversation and coffee in the cafe car. I learned about her life, her boyfriend, her religion, her family....it's amazing what strangers will share with you.

Then there were the two men who boarded the train in West Virginia, a case of Budweiser stashed in their bags. Josh sat next to me and persisted in flirting with me the whole ride, calling me sweetheart and telling me he'd be better for me than my boyfriend waiting back home. Joseph sat across the aisle and spewed nonstop nonsense about the military, hunting, pot, his wife, Bunny, and all sorts of other vomit. At times I escaped to the cafe car just to get away from his incessant verbal garbage.

There were also the characters camped out in the cafe car - sipping beer, coffee and Mountain Dew. There was the visual artist who tried to convince his seatmates of the magical powers of mushrooms. There was the woman who was convinced that our train was cursed - citing the early morning accident, the delays, the train number and other factors to create the spell she believed was cast upon our train. And the group of men at the end of the car who downed Bud Light and talked about relationships, work, family, religion and politics. Eavesdropping on their conversations filled me with fodder for many stories!

There was the woman who locked herself in the bathroom before we even left the terminal in NYC, her yelling and banging to get out echoing through the car. To assist her, I simply told her to unlock the door.

Then there was the young guy on his way home to Kentucky from Maine after working his fifth summer at an arts camp. He had been traveling, he said, when he wasn't working at the camp. After his brief stop at home, he was heading for California.

Oh and I cannot forget the retired couple sitting in front of me who boarded the train in Philadelphia. They were headed on a cross-country train ride (all the way to Seattle), just for fun. The man (I wish I could remember his name) was fascinated with the train and could not sit still. He jumped around from car to car searching for information about the technology of the train, our route, the reasons for our delays, our speed, and more. He asked the conductors and other staff continuous questions, and made a point to get to know everyone in his vicinity. His wife, constantly checking her GPS device to figure out where we were and how fast we were going, did laps up and down the aisles from one car to another. She needed her exercise, she said, and had to get it when she could. In Cincinnati, this pair exited the train with me to pick up "Mother," as the man called her, to travel with them the rest of the way across the country.

And then there were the random meetings, the conversations I overheard, the passengers who constantly walked past my seat on their way to the bathroom or the cafe car. There was the screaming child at the front of the car, the woman who walked in on a man in the bathroom because he hadn't locked the door, the man who kept staring at me from a few seats ahead, the smokers, aching for the next cigarette break, and the man and his daughter leaving the train in Philadelphia, arguing about who would carry the extra bag.

These were characters, alright. And even though the train ride was LONG and exhausting and the delays were a hassle and an annoyance, I'd do it again for the experience, for the scenery and, most importantly, for the people you meet on the Cardinal train.