Tammy's here

My girlfriend came to spend a few weeks with me this March.  This was not planned but came about as a result of an accident.  On Valentine's Day she slipped on an icy street when she got out of her van to check her mailbox for mail.  Tammy fell quick and hard and fractured her right shoulder, along with numerous other bruises from the fall.

That day she had her shoulder x-rayed and mri'd.  The xray showed the fracture and the mri showed more of the fracture and also the tears around the area.  Tammy couldn't lift her right arm.

Tammy had to wait over a week to see an orthopedic surgeon at the Mayo Clinic as most all of these surgeons were in Hawaii for a week for a 'conference'.     The surgeon's recommendation was rest and therapy, and no surgury.

As she can't work with her fractured shoulder, and was sitting at home with nothing to do, she decided to come spend a few weeks with me.

Last minute airfares to Kalispell are expensive so she gritted her teeth and took the train out to visit me.  Tammy doesn't care for the 25 hour train journey.

The weather forecast for her Minnesota departure was for a snowstorm - not what a person wanted when they had to drive 40 miles to the train station with one hand.  Fortunately the storm did not start before she left.  And the train was on time.

Tammy was off to a good start.

It didn't last.

The train lost time as it went on.  Then at Havre, MT the Amtrak train was stopped.  A BNSF freight train had derailed earlier that day in the mountains near Essex, Montana and the tracks were blocked. 

So the Amtrak passengers had to be transported on four buses between Havre and Whitefish - a five to six hour bus ride, made longer by a half hour break at Cut Bank, MT for the smokers to get their fix.  Oh joy.

The passengers were responsible for carrying their luggage from the train to the bus.  This was not an easy task for Tammy as she can only use one arm.

Fortunately Tammy has a cell phone so she could alert me to the change of plans.  The first time when I called the 1-800-USA-RAIL number this 'service disruption' had confused 'Julie' and I had to wait 20 minutes to talk with an Amtrak representative to learn what was going on.  The second time I called, when I wanted to get an exact arrival time, I waited on hold for a live Amtrak person for a half hour before giving up.

I drove to the station in Whitefish and Tammy arrived about ten minutes later in bus number 3.

*whew*  She made it.  It was after 11 pm, over two hours later than the normal arrival time.

This trip did not change her mind about her dislike of taking the train.  Also not helping were the former loggers from the Flathead Valley who had gotten on the train at Williston, ND to return home for their break from their North Dakota oil field jobs.  Their drinking and complaining got old real fast.