I said it. I really did. "We've had enough troubles with travel. Nothing's going to go wrong with the train! We've filled our quota."
So, yeah, it's basically all my fault.
We boarded the train from Ft. Lauderdale to Deland at exactly 9:00 AM. That was when it started moving. We were supposed to arrive in Deland at 3:00 PM. However, it took a bit longer than that.
Just outside Deland, we came to a stop. People looked around, confused. We were in a woody area... there was no train station here. We sat there and waited for them to explain for about half an hour, until the PA system finally crackled on.
"We need a green signal to keep moving, but we currently have a red signal. It seems that the drawbridge is stuck open, and we can't cross it. We are predicted to move again in... about an hour."
Groans. I was still optimistic at this point.
"It's okay. After an hour, we'll be moving again!"
We didn't.
We soon learned (by "soon" I mean about three hours since the announcement) that the mechanics had no idea how to fix it. And so, they call another mechanic, who was about an hour away, to fix it.
We waited.
People were getting irate. They yelled at the attendants, mumbled angrily amongst themselves, and some tried to distract themselves with other things.
An hour and a half later, we were still stuck.
It was around 8:30 PM that I finally started to lose my patience. Some sort of allergy of mine was acting up since 9:00 AM, making my eyes itch like mad, and I kept sneezing. We still don't know what I was allergic to. I was shaking from malnutrition, and it was getting cold, thanks to the air conditioning. I actually wore my winter coat. In Florida!
After a while, we found that mechanics still didn't know what they were doing. They started cranking the bridge down by hand, which took quite some time. Finally, they announced that the bridge was down, and we were moving again. The time we started moving was 10:50 PM. We got to the station at 11:00 PM.
Time spent on train: 14 hours
Time spent completely still at the bridge: 8 hours
Time that I stayed patient: 11.5 hours
The train ran out of booze before 8:30 PM.
 FN Pixie · Thu Dec 24, 2009 @ 03:20pm · 1 Comments |
