Heather Christena Schmidt

I really and truly thought I was just a misanthropic, foul-mouthed bitch because of my surroundings. As much as I knew (and people told me) that the underside of humanity exists everywhere – not just L.A. – I hoped that as soon as I broke free from the western waters I would find myself less annoyed by people around me.

I was terribly terribly wrong. So wrong that I now realize this vacation is going to teach me a lot – mainly about myself and what has happened to my conceptions of the world since living in California.

Thus far, I have experienced the following “characters” during our 44 hour scenic train travel (that’s right, I’ve been on a train for 44 hours … no shower, plenty of sleep in our sleeping car, lot of sights):

(1) Most annoying lady on the planet

That’s right, I have found the most annoying woman on the planet. Maybe she’s just representative of annoying, middle-aged women everywhere; nonetheless, she was on the trip. Her annoyances included: talking so loudly during dinner the first night that we decided to take our meals in our sleeper cars lest we be forced to sit near her again; bitching in the middle of the night about the fact that the train was running about an hour late; and the icing on the cake, banging on the bathroom door while my 8 year old Pookie was (as she calls) “taking a whiz.”

(2) Kid who was lucky he got off when he did, because I was about to punch him

You know, in movies you see people traveling and there is always some annoying kid running around screaming like a maniac and hitting people. You think “haha, funny stuff – glad that doesn’t happen when I travel.” Well, somewhere around Albuquerque, that little asshole got on the train and was placed in the sleeping car next to us. The highlight was when the kid loudly sang a song in the Pee Wee Herman voice about his recent bowel movement.

(3) The Amish belcher

In the sleeper cab behind us, a man and his wife got on the train around Fullerton (California) and have been there the entire time. One thing to note is that they are Amish. Not like the colloquial application of the term and just out of date with their clothes and 1990s cell phones; these people are for real Amish. The husband apparently had some sort of intestinal issues, though, for I have never heard someone blow things out of the various orifices of their body as this guy did.

So we have about four more hours on this train, and while the experience of traveling across the country in it was amazing, I will probably never do it again. It’s just so long, and this bitch needs her shower time. Nonetheless, I have spaced out for the last two days and feel totally relaxed. Next stop, home sweet homecoming.