'Shhh!' on a full train in the New Year

I am back in North Dakota after spending the holidays with Tammy in Minnesota.  To all my Minnesota friends who I did not contact when in Minnesota... sorry.  I had good intentions to call or see you, but between spending time with Tammy and the cold Minnesota weather I rarely went outside.

As to the Minnesota weather... the Minnesotans should worry more about global cooling than global warming.  My October visit to Minnesota had cold temperatures and plenty of snow.  This visit had snow (naturally) but also very cold temperatures.  Sub zero temperatures.  Tammy and I went to see the movie, Avatar, (in 3-D) and the temperature outside was -18 degrees.  High temperatures that never got above zero - ya, we had a number of those days.  Well below normal temperatures.

When I left Minnesota the train to Red Wing, MN ended up being 2 hours late and never arrived until almost 11 pm.  It took us almost an hour to drive to Red Wing and in that time the train lost another 25 minutes so I was in Red Wing forty minutes before the train.

The train unloaded five people from two cars.  The conductor made sure first one then the other of the two cars stopped in front of the station so the passengers didn't have to trudge over train tracks and through the snow to get off and on the train.

I left Sunday night so I expected the train to be relatively empty.  Who would be traveling a Sunday night in January?

I think only two people on got on the train in Red Wing.  The conductor assigned us seats as the train was full.  Huh?!   Okay, maybe lots of people were traveling to Minneapolis and I would get a better seat after we arrived there.

Lots of people got off at the Minneapolis station but lots of people then boarded the train. Huh?!   Before the passengers boarded in Minneapolis the train attendant moved people to free up pairs of seats to make it easier for couples to sit together.  I had an aisle seat next to another passenger so I didn't have to move.

Why all the people traveling on a Sunday night?  Everyone would be arriving at their destination Monday morning or later.  I found that many of the passengers were going to Grand Forks.  Why there?  The university started Monday and these people didn't want to get there any sooner than necessary.  The train was scheduled to arrive at 4:52 am.

I used to travel that way when I lived in Minnesota.  Several times I returned from vacation at four or five in the morning before heading to work at eight or nine.  That is the providence of the younger people.  And I preferred to be on vacation than in Minnesota.  For me now, the reverse is true.  I rather be in Montana than on vacation.

Also lots of people were getting off the train in Minot.  Minot usually is a busy stop.  I don't know why Minot was busier than usual.  The people getting off the train in Minot didn't look like college students.

My seat mate got off at Grand Forks.  He was a faculty researcher returning to the medical department at the University after spending the holidays in Chicago.  He was sleeping across the two seats when I boarded the train and the conductor had to wake him to move so I could sit down.  In the hour it took for the train to reach Minneapolis an incoming phone call woke him and he talked until we left Minneapolis.

I just love cell phones. 

My seat mate was oriental and spoke in Chinese or Vietnamese or whatever which was good as it was easier to tune out his conversation not knowing what he was speaking about.  After he ended his phone call he and I ended up talking.  We talked about my life, my past life at IBM, his past job as a researcher in the pharmaceutical industry, and his current job at UND as a medical researcher until 2:45 am when he went to sleep.  I read for another hour or two before sitting back and going to sleep.  The train attendant never turned off the car's lights until some time after the researcher and I ended our conversation.

Sometimes when I get excited I speak in a louder voice.  But this night when we talked we spoke quietly.  So quiet that between his accent and soft voice I had to occasionally ask him to repeat words. Early on in our conversation a young woman sitting in the row behind us with her boyfriend or husband got up and asked us to talk quieter or not at all as she claimed the sound and pitch of our voices was annoying and was keeping her awake.

It must be me she was talking about as other women in the past have complained that the sound and pitch of my voice grated on them.    These other women turned out to be strange and self absorbed people so it wasn't just the sound of my voice they had problems with.  Therefore, as this was a public place and I can't change how my voice sounds, I merely tried to keep my voice low.  He was getting off at Grand Forks so if we didn't talk now, we'd never talk.

Later another flaky young woman, sitting in the two seats in front of us, started "shhhing" occasionally.  Again we weren't talking loud, weren't done with our conversation, so we kept talking quietly.  This woman later moved to the seats in the row ahead of her which were empty.  When the train attendant came by he told her she was sitting in reserved seats.  She told him she moved because we were talking so he let her stay there and changed her old seats to reserved seats.  We had been talking very quietly so he never said anything to us and let us continue talking.  Besides, the train's lights were still on.

Many people can't or have trouble sleeping when traveling.  I may sound harsh, but that is something they have to work on rather than expecting other people to cater to them.  Otherwise instead of ignoring it I would have had the overweight woman snoring loudly in the seat across the aisle from mine change to another position to stop snoring.  People who snore should not lay on their back when sleeping around other people.  But, I tuned her out and went to sleep.

The young woman, and the black guy in the seats across the aisle, were both going to Minot.  She told him she was connected to the military, hated living in Minot and couldn't wait to leave.  Another flaky woman.   He had gotten out of the military but stayed in Minot because there are lots of jobs there.

My brother was there to meet me when the train arrived into Minot well over two hours late. The two plus feet of snow that fell in Minot during the Christmas blizzard still covered lots of things.  Many cars parked in the train station's parking lot were still buried under snow.  I saw many huge and tall piles of snow during the drive to my brother's house.