As I posted in the August travel plans forum, I was booked on Train 14 for OKJ to PDX on August 5th. I never got that far because Train 5 from DEN on August 1st was canceled and so I went by bus from DEN to PDX instead.
My return from PDX on Train 11 of August 12th to DAV was altered by the bridge fire into PDX>KFS, KFS-SAC, SAC-DAV. That made sense and then that was canceled with no substitute.
With last-minute fares on other routes/modes at overheated summer prices I turned to the carrier of last resort and booked PDX>RDR on Greyhound (which had recently added a second trip on that route). RDR>SAC was on Amtrak Thruway and SAC>DAV was on the Capitol Corridor. Here are some notes on the trip:
Thursday, August 12 – Greyhound agent in their Portland storefront office confirmed that they would be running the entire Seattle<>Los Angeles route. She hadn’t heard yet whether it would arrive from Seattle on time. My brother drove me over to the boarding point north of the Union Station and the bus had arrived. It was a recycled BOLT bus still painted in that color scheme.
We departed about on time at 6:45 p.m. with a close to full load. At Salem the passengers boarding offset those alighting; at Corvallis the load began to lighten and from Eugene-Springfield I had a seat to myself. That was aided by the tv monitor that hung over the adjacent seat; boarding passengers scouting for seats avoided it. At Roseburg we made a double-stop – downtown first and then the truck/food stop – and a guy in the back of the bus who had ignored the driver’s announcement started shouting obscenities about his impression that the driver had missed the truck/food stop.
Friday, August 13 – From Medford to Redding across Siskiyou Summit and the state line in the middle of the night there was a single seat for anyone who wanted it.
At Weed there was an uproar that woke about everyone. A man who had just been released from the hospital lost feeling in his legs and had to have help reaching and using the bathroom. He had trouble speaking. The driver was about to put him off but two young men offered to help him down the aisle and into the bathroom. I didn’t get a complete picture of most of this because I was on the other end of the bus but we lost over 40 minutes. He felt embarrassed and apologized to other passengers but the only comments were supportive. I was reminded of my observations that Greyhound passengers are often helpful to each other, more so than airline passengers.
It sounds terrible to say it, but this actually helped me by reducing the time for my connection in Redding’s intermodal center to less than an hour. The Amtrak Thruway gate was only about 150 feet from the Greyhound bus. Not much was happening there but I dragged my suitcase to the bench and watched the arriving Greyhound passengers disperse and early birds for the Thruway bus arrive. The air was warm and smoky. During the Greyhound rest stop and driver change a drug courier, nervously eyeing me, met a local purchaser at the next further gate for the “last mile” distribution. Then the courier returned to the Los Angeles-bound bus.
At 6:05 a.m. the Thruway bus to Sacramento and Stockton via the former Southern Pacific East Side line’s Sacramento Valley points departed on time. There were about half a dozen passengers starting out but by the time we arrived in Sacramento the bus was contributing about two dozen passengers to train connections. Amtrak ran some of us to the waiting
Capitol Corridor in an electric cart and the train was on its way.
In Davis I rolled my suitcase the short distance to the renovated Hilton Garden Inn, expecting to drop off my baggage and to their credit they volunteered that they had a room available for an early check-in. That pleasant surprise characterized much of my visit to the college town. It was also more comfortable than expected. A cool breeze in evenings took the edge off of afternoon high temperatures and pushed out the smoke.
I checked with the Amtrak agent and their computer showed that Train 6 was expected to be operated on the 17th. For a few days it had been flagged on the reservation web page as canceled without an alternative. Given my experience with the revisions to westbound cancellations I would not have been surprised.
The eastbound
California Zephyr turned out to be a further string of experiences, to be reported in some other thread.
