Best-Laid Schemes

Icicles out my window

You know that good line from Robert Burns, "The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men gang aft agley" (from To a Mouse, on Turning Her Up in Her Nest with the Plough).  Well, I wouldn't say such schemes often go awry, as the line indicates, but they certainly do sometimes.  And so it seems I'm not going to be away until the end of the month after all as I so stated in my last posting.

Wanting to be gone from here for at least part of yet another harsh winter, I had picked a date to travel when the holiday rush would be over and a family birthday had passed.  I figured if deep winter had already set in, there might be something of a January thaw.  I totally cleared my calendar, reserved a rental car at my destination, cleaned out all perishables from the fridge, notified the post office...

Rather than fly which I considered too iffy in winter, not wanting a flight cancelled because of some storm, I planned to take the train.  If you've got the time, trains are perfect.  There's no having to go through that airport mishmash, or being strapped into a highly uncomfortable narrow seat, or wishing you were on the ground rather than in the air.  Instead, trains plough through.  They soldier on.  They're already on the ground, a comforting thought.  And with a roomette, you have a little nook to yourself where there's room to move around.

So, this past Tuesday with just an hour before I was to get a ride to the Amtrak station some miles away, I had word from Amtrak telling me my train had been cancelled.  I was not completely surprised since they had cancelled the same train the day before--the Lake Shore Limited from Boston (and New York) to Chicago ... where I was to make connections to the Southwest Chief which would deliver me to New Mexico, my destination.

In fact, the brutal cold of this arctic vortex along with a blizzard or two en route meant that earlier trains (on both lines) had been up to 12 hours late reaching their destination, with three passenger trains stuck overnight in northern Illinois.  I certainly didn't want to be in a similar situation where it would be too cold to even get off the train and stand in line for a rescue bus, even if such a bus could reach the train.  Or to have the train run out of food.  Or the toilets and sinks flood.  Or the heating give out.

As one friend said, "On the bright side, it's kind of nice to know that there are some things in life we can do absolutely nothing about.  We humans haven't taken over the universe quite yet."

Rather than mess with the rest of January--or even February--I'm rescheduling for March!