Chapter 138: A Vacation First

Saturday, June 18, 1983

We were up around seven, if only because no one could sleep any longer. We had a quick breakfast, then lugged the suitcases out to our cars.

I would drive mine, and Mom would drive hers. When they got back, Mom would drive hers home and Dad would drive mine home. That was the only way we could make this work with all of the luggage and all of the people. They were taking the train back, which made me happy. It should be nice and relaxing and hopefully romantic for them to share the train ride free of crazy teenagers (or even one crazy teenager, as they’d had in their first life).

Mom and Dad’s suitcases, plus most of ours, went in her car. Ours had to go in the back seat. That would give me the whole trunk, minus one suitcase and my evidence case, for Jasmine’s and Paige’s luggage.

They were bringing a few nice outfits, but not suits, so ... hopefully, it’d be fine. Never underestimate the ability of girls to over-pack (nor boys, either, honestly), but I knew these particular girls, and they’d always managed well, even when we had plenty of room for extra luggage.

The nice thing about Amtrak, and traveling in the 1980s in general, was relaxed baggage limitations. I’m not even talking about post-9/11 security restrictions, just the way most airlines charged you through the nose for bags, and even then they had size and weight limits. It made total sense, but it was annoying.

Amtrak pretty much didn’t care within extremely broad limits. Whatever you had, they’d get it on the train, and the odds were very high you’d get it back on the other end.

Angie and I picked up Jasmine and Paige. They matched us with two large suitcases and one garment bag each. We’d each brought one duffel bag as well (Angie’s idea, and a great one). The odds were very high that we would leave Northwestern with more stuff than we’d arrived with. Seven weeks? Things would accumulate. For now, we’d packed everything, then unpacked things we needed for the train into the duffel bags. That guaranteed that they weren’t just full of extra things we’d brought.

We got to the train station around nine-thirty. I dropped the bags and girls off at the curb, then put the car in long-term parking, being very sure to carefully note the location and write it down for Dad.

By ten-fifteen we were on the train, luggage checked. We were in coach this time, since this wouldn’t be an overnight trip.

We pulled out around ten-thirty. By then, the four of us had gotten seats in the observation lounge so we could watch the city go by.

Paige loved it. So did the rest of us, but it was all new to her, and we could all see how excited she was. The scenery itself was pretty boring, for the most part, in the beginning. We saw the back sides of many industrial buildings, quite a few roads of various sizes, and eventually a number of petrochemical plants.

Paige remained interested for about half an hour, then said, “If we get up and walk around, do you think we can get back up here?”

The observation car was about two-thirds full.

I said, “I don’t know. Maybe?”

“I’d love to look around the rest of the train. We could stay here, but ... the scenery will probably be better later?”

“It will,” Angie said. “Especially as we get into Louisiana.”

“If we get back before noon, we’ll catch some people leaving for lunch.”

“I’m good for a while. We had a big breakfast.”

“Me, too,” Jas said.

Angie and I nodded. “Exploring it is!”

We got up and walked end to end. Paige was fascinated by all of it: the connections between cars, the sounds, the way the train swayed and shifted, the rooms and roomettes, the cafe, the dining car, and so on. Jasmine was too, if less. I gather French trains aren’t the same. That’s what I’d expect, really. I’d been on Russian trains, and they definitely weren’t the same. The cars we’d traveled in had been very nice, but not the same as Amtrak, not at all.

I’d warned all the girls about Amtrak’s sometimes hit-or-miss relationship with things like efficiency and maintenance and so forth. We’d see how this trip went. So far, this life had been better than the previous one in that regard.

Breakfast or not, the girls decided that all the hiking around the train was cause for lunch, so we headed for our seats to meet up with Mom and Dad. We found them there, holding hands and looking out the window.

“Well, hello, young man, and young ladies!” Dad said. “Are you having fun?”

Mom rolled her eyes just slightly at Dad, but smiled affectionately, too.

Paige took the lead. “Well, I am, and I’m the one who didn’t know what to expect.”

“Me, too,” Jasmine said. “It’s different, but similar. I like it! France is much smaller, of course, and we didn’t take a lot of overnight trains. Not that we are this time, but still. Many didn’t even have bedroom cars.”

“You knew we’d like it,” Angie said, nodding to me. I nodded along with her.

“Well, good!”

“I think we’re heading to the dining car,” I said. “We wanted to let you know.”

Mom and Dad looked at each other. “I think we’ll go in a bit. Thanks for letting us know!”

“Of course!” I said.

The four of us headed off. Once we were out of earshot, Angie said, “This summer, they’re either going to catch up on a lot of things they’ve missed, or they’re going to go stir-crazy.”

I nodded. “One or the other.”

Jas and Paige nodded, too. “Yeah,” Jas said. “I’m sure my parents will be busy, busy, busy. But I haven’t needed that much supervision for a while.”

Paige giggled. “I’ve needed less than I’ve gotten, honestly. Mine won’t know what to do with themselves. Or ... maybe they will. I hope they will!”

We checked in with the dining car hostess and were seated fairly quickly. The dining car wasn’t busy yet, and we had open tables around us.

I made the point again. “Don’t expect gourmet food, no matter how good it sounds. It might be good. It might be iffy. It might be half-frozen. It’s always a gamble.”

Jas giggled. “Well, that’s encouraging!”

“Hey, when I take a girl to a restaurant, I’d rather be honest.”

She leaned over and smooched me. “Thanks, boyfriend!”

We decided on burgers and sandwiches. Those were harder for Amtrak to screw up than the fancier entrées, most likely. Who knew?

The waitress took our order, and we watched out the windows as East Texas (or were we up to Southwest Louisiana?) rolled by. It was certainly more wild-looking outside.

“This is still awesome!” Paige said. “I mean, that we’re really doing this!”

“I know!” Angie said. “It’s really cool.”

“So...” Paige said. “I have intentionally not tried to figure this out. I like surprises. So ... when and where will we be when this thing stops? We don’t seem to be headed north at all.”

“You can’t go directly from Houston to Chicago,” I said. “We’re heading to New Orleans first.”

“Cool! Are we...?”

“We’re staying,” I said. “The times don’t line up. We’ll be there overnight.”

“Even more cool!” she said. “The last time I was there was Isidore Newman. That was a great trip.”

“Don’t be surprised if we wind up in the same hotel,” I said. “I suggested that place because we stayed there on a vacation.”

“I liked that place!” Jas said.

“Me, too!” Paige said.

“After that,” I said, “We take another train to Chicago. That one will be overnight, so we’ll have roomettes, probably, and Mom and Dad will have either a roomette or a room.”

“Probably a roomette,” Angie said, “though they’re a bit spoiled, so...”

“Yeah,” I said. “Which I approve of.”

Angie giggled. “Me, too.”

“When do we get there?” Jasmine said.

“Late morning, probably,” I said. “We leave New Orleans mid-afternoon.”

“That’ll be my longest-ever train ride,” Jasmine said.

“Me, too,” Paige said, sticking out her tongue.

Everyone chuckled.

“I know we talked about this,” Jas said, “but Paige obviously wasn’t paying attention...”

Paige stuck out her tongue again.

“So, what’s next after the train?”

Angie said, “My guess is that we’ll visit Grandmother and Grandfather...”

“A.K.A. The Professor,” I said.

“A.K.A. The Professor,” Angie said, sticking her tongue out, too. “That’ll likely be it for Monday. Tuesday ... some museum, most likely. Plus we need to drop off a lot of stuff with Uncle Robert and Aunt Monica. I’d guess we need to drive to Wisconsin on Wednesday or maybe Thursday. Stuff up there, then we’ll want to be back in Chicago by Sunday.”

“It sounds cool. I don’t know if we’ll go on all the family stuff...?” Paige said.

“I don’t know either,” I said. “You can always just be friends who came along because you’re going to Northwestern. My cousins already know Jasmine’s my girlfriend, and I think Grandma will be fine, for instance. But some things...”

Everyone nodded. Not in 1983, at the very least.

Our food came, and thankfully Amtrak hadn’t screwed any of it up. We ate, watched the scenery, and chatted about what we were seeing.

We headed back to the observation car after lunch, finding an empty table. In a repeat (I think unplanned) of our previous trip on this train, Angie pulled out a deck of cards and we played a few games to pass the time while watching the scenery and talking. Much of it centered around Northwestern. I had to watch for things I could not possibly have known. It was all too tempting to casually mention some facet of summer life there that would answer a question but would also get me in trouble.

Playing dumb can be harder than it seems, sometimes.

Also repeating last time, everyone paid much more attention to the scenery as we arrived in New Orleans. We’d all been there a year and a half ago or so, of course, but Jas and Paige hadn’t seen all that much of the city, and it wasn’t particularly familiar to Angie or me either.

This time we were expecting to stay overnight, so that was no surprise. Amtrak would hold the checked bags for us, so we just needed to bring our duffel bags.

The only option we had for a taxi that would hold the six of us was a limo, so we took that. Angie, Jasmine, and Paige all started to bounce a bit, so I had to follow suit. It’s not that I was an old hand at limos, but left to myself I’d probably have appeared to be one. I’d been in a limo three times in my first life, which was just enough to make it not ‘new.’ My guess, based on what I knew of her first high school life, was that Angie might have outdone me, but who knew? She certainly couldn’t have been in one in over twenty years.

Once we’d arrived at the hotel (the same one as before, as we’d guessed), Dad got us checked in. It turned out that our guesses were accurate, at least here. Angie and I were given one room, Paige and Jasmine the other. If they were next door and had a connecting door, well ... that was surely just a coincidence, right?

Mom and Dad’s room was down the hall, which made sense. They had a king bed, while we had two queens each, and hotels tend to connect rooms of the same type. Of course, two of us would fit just fine in a queen bed. Even if I was nearly at my full growth, I was still probably eighty pounds lighter now than I’d been at this point in my first life. I could remember being that heavy, but it wasn’t part of my life now, except that I had to remember that I didn’t have that cushion in terms of alcohol tolerance. That was important, since alcohol was likely to become more a part of my life in the next year or two.

The girls (including Mom) all wanted to ‘freshen up,’ so we made plans to meet in half an hour in the lobby, then dispersed to our rooms.

Within seconds, Angie and Paige had the connecting doors open, meeting in the middle for a kiss.

“I’ve been wanting to do that all day!” Angie said.

“Me, too!” Paige said.

“Sorry if we made you miss things,” Jas said.

“Nah. You two be you. We’ll be fine,” Paige said.