Our first Weekly Wednesday of 2012 started quite normally, with a train trip north to Seattle for Mariners game. We scored a table on the river side of the car:
Dad now gets to join us since he's retired :) He thoroughly enjoyed the ride:
He who chooses to sleep in public chooses also to get harassed a bit :)
The 3-hour trip allowed time for sightseeing:
And blogging our Solstice Stupidity adventure (love Amtrak's free wifi!):
We arrived without incident (aside from Mom chasing down the train with her jacket still on board) and headed to Safeco Field. The gates to Qwest Century Link Field were open, and since Eryn and I have never been, we took a quick peek inside:
It was so exciting that Eryn fell asleep:
Home of the Seahawks and the Sounders:
Free stuff on the way to the stadium!!
Great seats right behind homeplate:
Rally Monkey was chillin' in the empty seat:
Four guys in front of us arrived a bit late after stopping off to purchase these sandwiches:
Smelled amazing! We were all drooling, even the veggies in the group. We took pictures for Brad :)
This group shot got a lot of laughs. Nice one, Mom!
Better:
Despite my rally cap and our rally monkeys, we did not win:
We knew it was going to be a bad day when Oakland's lead-off batter hit a homer off the first pitch. Oh well, it's just a game.
Beautiful day in Seattle:
Rainier showed herself, too:
The game was really fast, so we had some time to kill before the train left for home. We hit our favorite thrift store across the street for some bargain hunting.
Eryn scored this cute summer/beach dress/coverup for just $3!
We made our way back to the train station and boarded for the trip south.
Everything was going smoothly until about 15 minutes north of Vancouver when there was this loud whoosh sound and we stopped quickly. A smokey smell filled the train from the emergency brakes, and we weren't sure what was happening.
An announcement came a few minutes later: "We've had an accident. We hit a trespasser at the bridge."
I gasped. Horrible, horrible news.
Because we were not near a road, we were required to stay on the train while the incident was investigated. Fortunately, it was only about 3 hours before we were rolling again.
After gasping and then praying for the person killed and the train conductor, my news blood kicked in - big time. I tried to reach all my news friends and ended up doing a phone interview with KGW. Thanks again to that wifi, we were able to watch the story on Dad's netbook computer at 10 p.m. while still waiting for the investigation to conclude.
Here's the follow-up story from Thursday:
The strangest thing was the reaction from those on board the train. One woman was crying and one man was on the phone yelling about how he makes too much money to be stuck on the train like that.
Otherwise, people were pretty much just going about their business: reading, sleeping, texting. I was very surprised at the apparent lack of concern that our train had just killed a woman. Strange.
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