The next day the train was still running late, not making up any time, which really pissed off some of the smokers on it since they can’t smoke on the train and on most stops they wouldn’t be allowed off for a quick few minutes to smoke up. And I do mean pissed, they were bitching to no end from like 3AM until whenever one of them got off. It was getting me stressful because I was getting tired of hearing them bitch and bitch over and over. I can completely understand their concerns and wanting to smoke up on every stop, but they didn’t have to bitch half as much as they did. And personally, I’m against them having to “need” to smoke. It’s not like a lifeline, very far from one. I understand and sympathize that they can smoke in less and less places, but in counterpoint they were also the ones who decided to go on a train which is smoke free, and therefore should be able to deal with not being able to smoke all the fucking time. If you can’t go more than two hours without “needing” a cigarette then you need help. If you can’t help feeling the need for one for a train ride, there’s something wrong. I don’t agree with people doing things for whatever reasons not being able to stop for a moment of time for whatever reason. Myself, I drink on occasion, but in no way do I ever “need” to. I really like it, and do try to whenever I can and have the money to do so, but if I ever felt the need to not drink for whatever reason, I could stop and have absolutely no problem with it. I can go on and off as I please, so I just don’t understand why others can’t do the same. It boggles my mind.
What didn’t help is that we kept losing time since we were sharing the tracks with Union Pacific, which gave smokers good arguments stating that “we can’t smoke at stops to save time yet we’re stopped here for twenty minutes waiting for another train.” I was so happy when we finally arrived at Chicago, however we got there really late. We were supposed to get there at like 2:20PM, and we got there at 7PM. I didn’t care too much on how late we would be as long as I got there and had enough time to go to an ATM and eat before my next train, hopefully shave as well (there’s no way I could do it in a moving train). My train was set to leave at 7:20PM though, so I didn’t have the time to do those two very quick things. I’m probably not going to ride a train such long distance again because of that, since I went from having five hours to kill in Chicago to not even being able to get a bite to eat between trains and almost not being able to get on my other train.
On the second train, I sadly once again had to share a seat. Luckily, the guy I was sitting with was on the outside, so I got to sit on the inside with the outlet. Once the café car opened up, I got a burger and a soda there (all I could afford with the high prices of crappy food) then proceeded to play SM solitare and work on this very vacation journal. Eventually I started to get tired and put the laptop away and fell asleep.