chuljin
Lead Service Attendant
In retrospect, I could probably have maintained the separation between these 12 parts by, as Whooz did, making them separate posts in a single thread rather than separate threads, but I've already started down this path. 
Pictures from this part are here.
I got up a little early on Halloween day, because I wanted to explore a slightly larger area around BOS on my way to the 9:30 meeting time at BON. I got to BOS around 8am, and wandered as far as 3/4 mile from the station, taking many, many pictures, before going back to BOS. I'd woken so early I needed a little pick-me-up, so I S+'ed myself into the ClubAcela and had a couple cups of coffee and reviewed some of my notes, clarifying things I thought I'd not understand later.
I stayed a little longer than I intended, and had to high-tail it to BON for the 9:30 meeting time. I panicked when I got there at about 9:35 and saw no one from the group. I was sure I'd missed the preboarding. I got out my phone to check AU for somebody's, anybody's cell number to call and see what was up, then noticed that I'd remembered wrong, and we were supposed to meet at 10:30. So with the 55 minutes extra I now had, I went out and took a lot of pictures of the area around BON, mostly of the Zakim Bridge, the world's widest cable-stayed bridge.
Then back inside, where the group was starting to assemble. At last I met Stephen (Long Train Runnin'), with whom I'd been exchanging friendly banter on Twitter for many months. Taller than I expected. :lol: I noticed Rafi's surname (Saturday, not Friday [thanks Alan!]), and of course had to show off by saying 'Good morning! How are you?' in Armenian. I explained 'well, I *do* live in Glendale, CA...but that's about all I know'. He said 'don't worry...that's about all I know, too.' Soon, we pre-boarded train 693, the Downeaster, most of the group in our own car (which, when we started out, was barred off from the rest of the train), and splitters AAARGH! and I at the other end.
Consist for the trip both ways was: (POR end/693 front/696 back) 206, 82761, 82758, 82567, 82565, 48194, 90213 (BON end/693 back/696 front)
Soon we were off. Our train host (an almost-unique feature of the Downeaster) was the very funny Bob Rodman, who, on seeing us, said 'Oh, you guys are with the foamuh group!' 'No,' I said, 'the foamerr group.' Before long, because I am chuljin, I went to get a cheese and crackers. While I was in line, the conductor came on the PA to say 'Everyone, ask the cafe attendant to take off his mask!' A young woman in front of me laughed, and the attendant asked 'Oh, who laughed?'; her friend pointed at her and the attendant said 'See, he blamed you! Go ask the conductor how much he made for that.' On the menu, it was called 'cheese and fruit plate', suggesting it differed a little from the rest-of-Amtrak version. No. It differed *a lot*, and in a good way (warning: TMI follows): The rest-of-Amtrak version has two packets, three crackers each, of Carr's Table Water Crackers, two packets, two crackers each, of Wheatsworth wheat crackers, two prepackaged 'sticks' of Tillamook medium cheddar, a BonBel BabyBel, and a Gouda BabyBell. Well, the downeaster version has, besides three packs of different kinds of crackers, 4 hand-sliced slices each of pepper jack, cheddar, and swiss, and 4 slices of fresh pineapple. (The only unattractive part: underneath, for garnish, a leaf of lettuce which was dark and wilted). They also had hummus and crackers, of which I'd become a fan on the San Joaquins, so got that too. In this case, not as good as the rest-of-Amtrak version. The hummus itself is about the same, but I prefer the rest's pretzel chips than the ones included here. Soon Bob came by again and asked 'Did you hear about the fight on the train?' 'No, what happened?!' 'The conductor punched a ticket!' :lol: AAARGH! and I realized we'd missed Alan's presentation of the plans for the new Viewliners, so we went over there and he thoughtfully did it again. They looked interesting, especially the modularity. Back at our seats, the conductor (by the way, if you're one of the very few people who didn't notice, she's on the cover of the timetable ) came and told me, 'I'm sorry, Sir, you're not supposed to sit here.' I thought she was joking, but it turns out she was serious but mistaken. I showed her my ticket stub, and we had a good laugh. On the way, our group managed to buy out their entire stock of both Legal Seafood chowder and Downeaster playing cards.
We went back to the coach to detrain with the group, and as I got out, I noticed Alice way up in front of the train. At first I thought they'd let her out in a dumb place, but instead it was with the rest of us, but she raced over there because that's where the best pictures were. After a few group pictures with several people's cameras (remember GG-1's daughter Christine, with 6 cameras hanging from each arm, last year? ), including MrsFSS' confusion with a camera that complicatedly had a 'turn on' switch and a 'no, really turn on' button, I went right inside to downgrade my ticket for the trip back. It was painless and the agent even thoughtfully did some ARROW handwaving to preserve my AAA discount and save me $2.40. On going back outside, I noticed that where Alice had gone was where the party was, so a lot of us went over there, and took pictures of the two sets there dwelling, including me, Micah, Patrick, Alice, Stephen, etc. Back in front of the station, we all had an interesting conversation about, what else, photography.
The trip back on 693 was fun and uneventful. The highlight for me was Rafi's demonstration of ARROW. He brought up my Acela reservation, and it was interesting to see that, despite the fact that I changed it twice before printing the tickets, it was rather uninteresting except for (paraphrasing) AGENTS DON'T CHANGE THIS RESERVATION. He instead pulled up diesteldorf's reservation for a future trip, which was far more interesting, with many annotations about calls, etc.
Back at BON, we went over to Boston Beer Works for dinner. I dined with hessjm, Micah, and Mrs. Miller. In a hint of the bedlam to come, we were all asked to hand over credit cards before ordering *anything*. They still had Oktoberfest specials, so I got the sausage plate and, as the restaurant's name suggests, beer. We tried to start with buffalo wings, but didn't get them until after our meals had arrived, and Micah, in delightfully bitchy fashion (and I absolutely intend that as a compliment), asked our waitress 'so are we having the wings for dessert?' If only that were the worst of the service issues, at least at our table. Micah's mom got fries with her sandwich, and they were inedibly cold. We complained, and in the quickest service we got that night, they were replaced with almost as inedibly cold fries. When it was time to leave, it took forever to get the checks, and when we did, and approved of the amount we were asked to pay, took forever to get our cards back to do so. As we were leaving, Winnie told me 'I didn't even leave a tip.' and the manager, overhearing, said 'That's probably the right thing to do...she should have told us she was overwhelmed.' I don't think it was all on the waitress. They understaffed our room a little.
So thanks to an ad in the elevator at my hotel, I found out that Boston Bowl is right next door. So since we were among the youngest in the group (only Stephen and Anthony being younger IIRC) with nothing better to do in the big city on Saturday night, and had other things in common besides trains, Micah and I decided to bowl a couple games. So we went and took Mrs. Miller (who'd been sick and was getting sicker) back to their hotel, thence mine to unburden my pockets of today's giant stash of printed materials, then to the bowling alley. We rented a lane for two games, and shoes, which suprisingly came with socks with 'Boston Bowl' around the ankles. We were going to bowl just two games, but stuck around for a third, if nothing else than to observe the antics of the group two lanes down, a group of 8-10 mostly Japanese, but 1-2 white, most of whom had...er...interesting costumes, and all of whom had given themselves interesting names in the scoring computer (here verbatim): 'Johnny Depp', 'Sexy', 'Hot Shot', 'Hard Gay', 'Nerd', 'Canada', 'Caterpillar', 'Toilet', 'Ballerina', 'Flapper', and 'Rosie the Riveter'. :lol: 'Hard Gay', especially, looked like an over-the-top nightmare version of somebody atop a pride parade float. I won all three games, but the performance was not impressive in either relative or absolute terms: 75-63, 95-62, 85-62. Very respectable, actually...except this was bowling, not golf. Despite it being Boston, this was 'regular' bowling, not candlepin. Among other things, we here (and earlier at dinner) helped formulate a partial plan for my stay in NYC the end of the following week (see Part 11), as he'd gone to school there. Interestingly, when returning the shoes, we were invited to keep the socks...a nice souvenir.
He'd missed the last *regularly scheduled* shuttle, but the hotel people got a special one, and we parted company. Off to bed for me, early start and late end Sunday.
Next, in Part 6: Acela shop tour, followed by Part 7: Acela of a lifetime, later Sunday.
Pictures from this part are here.
I got up a little early on Halloween day, because I wanted to explore a slightly larger area around BOS on my way to the 9:30 meeting time at BON. I got to BOS around 8am, and wandered as far as 3/4 mile from the station, taking many, many pictures, before going back to BOS. I'd woken so early I needed a little pick-me-up, so I S+'ed myself into the ClubAcela and had a couple cups of coffee and reviewed some of my notes, clarifying things I thought I'd not understand later.
I stayed a little longer than I intended, and had to high-tail it to BON for the 9:30 meeting time. I panicked when I got there at about 9:35 and saw no one from the group. I was sure I'd missed the preboarding. I got out my phone to check AU for somebody's, anybody's cell number to call and see what was up, then noticed that I'd remembered wrong, and we were supposed to meet at 10:30. So with the 55 minutes extra I now had, I went out and took a lot of pictures of the area around BON, mostly of the Zakim Bridge, the world's widest cable-stayed bridge.
Then back inside, where the group was starting to assemble. At last I met Stephen (Long Train Runnin'), with whom I'd been exchanging friendly banter on Twitter for many months. Taller than I expected. :lol: I noticed Rafi's surname (Saturday, not Friday [thanks Alan!]), and of course had to show off by saying 'Good morning! How are you?' in Armenian. I explained 'well, I *do* live in Glendale, CA...but that's about all I know'. He said 'don't worry...that's about all I know, too.'
Soon, we pre-boarded train 693, the Downeaster, most of the group in our own car (which, when we started out, was barred off from the rest of the train), and splitters AAARGH! and I at the other end.Consist for the trip both ways was: (POR end/693 front/696 back) 206, 82761, 82758, 82567, 82565, 48194, 90213 (BON end/693 back/696 front)
Soon we were off. Our train host (an almost-unique feature of the Downeaster) was the very funny Bob Rodman, who, on seeing us, said 'Oh, you guys are with the foamuh group!' 'No,' I said, 'the foamerr group.'
Before long, because I am chuljin, I went to get a cheese and crackers. While I was in line, the conductor came on the PA to say 'Everyone, ask the cafe attendant to take off his mask!' A young woman in front of me laughed, and the attendant asked 'Oh, who laughed?'; her friend pointed at her and the attendant said 'See, he blamed you! Go ask the conductor how much he made for that.' On the menu, it was called 'cheese and fruit plate', suggesting it differed a little from the rest-of-Amtrak version. No. It differed *a lot*, and in a good way (warning: TMI follows): The rest-of-Amtrak version has two packets, three crackers each, of Carr's Table Water Crackers, two packets, two crackers each, of Wheatsworth wheat crackers, two prepackaged 'sticks' of Tillamook medium cheddar, a BonBel BabyBel, and a Gouda BabyBell. Well, the downeaster version has, besides three packs of different kinds of crackers, 4 hand-sliced slices each of pepper jack, cheddar, and swiss, and 4 slices of fresh pineapple. (The only unattractive part: underneath, for garnish, a leaf of lettuce which was dark and wilted). They also had hummus and crackers, of which I'd become a fan on the San Joaquins, so got that too. In this case, not as good as the rest-of-Amtrak version. The hummus itself is about the same, but I prefer the rest's pretzel chips than the ones included here. Soon Bob came by again and asked 'Did you hear about the fight on the train?' 'No, what happened?!' 'The conductor punched a ticket!' :lol: AAARGH! and I realized we'd missed Alan's presentation of the plans for the new Viewliners, so we went over there and he thoughtfully did it again. They looked interesting, especially the modularity. Back at our seats, the conductor (by the way, if you're one of the very few people who didn't notice, she's on the cover of the timetable ) came and told me, 'I'm sorry, Sir, you're not supposed to sit here.' I thought she was joking, but it turns out she was serious but mistaken. I showed her my ticket stub, and we had a good laugh. On the way, our group managed to buy out their entire stock of both Legal Seafood chowder and Downeaster playing cards. We went back to the coach to detrain with the group, and as I got out, I noticed Alice way up in front of the train. At first I thought they'd let her out in a dumb place, but instead it was with the rest of us, but she raced over there because that's where the best pictures were. After a few group pictures with several people's cameras (remember GG-1's daughter Christine, with 6 cameras hanging from each arm, last year?
), including MrsFSS' confusion with a camera that complicatedly had a 'turn on' switch and a 'no, really turn on' button, I went right inside to downgrade my ticket for the trip back. It was painless and the agent even thoughtfully did some ARROW handwaving to preserve my AAA discount and save me $2.40. On going back outside, I noticed that where Alice had gone was where the party was, so a lot of us went over there, and took pictures of the two sets there dwelling, including me, Micah, Patrick, Alice, Stephen, etc. Back in front of the station, we all had an interesting conversation about, what else, photography.The trip back on 693 was fun and uneventful. The highlight for me was Rafi's demonstration of ARROW. He brought up my Acela reservation, and it was interesting to see that, despite the fact that I changed it twice before printing the tickets, it was rather uninteresting except for (paraphrasing) AGENTS DON'T CHANGE THIS RESERVATION. He instead pulled up diesteldorf's reservation for a future trip, which was far more interesting, with many annotations about calls, etc.
Back at BON, we went over to Boston Beer Works for dinner. I dined with hessjm, Micah, and Mrs. Miller. In a hint of the bedlam to come, we were all asked to hand over credit cards before ordering *anything*. They still had Oktoberfest specials, so I got the sausage plate and, as the restaurant's name suggests, beer. We tried to start with buffalo wings, but didn't get them until after our meals had arrived, and Micah, in delightfully bitchy fashion (and I absolutely intend that as a compliment), asked our waitress 'so are we having the wings for dessert?' If only that were the worst of the service issues, at least at our table. Micah's mom got fries with her sandwich, and they were inedibly cold. We complained, and in the quickest service we got that night, they were replaced with almost as inedibly cold fries. When it was time to leave, it took forever to get the checks, and when we did, and approved of the amount we were asked to pay, took forever to get our cards back to do so. As we were leaving, Winnie told me 'I didn't even leave a tip.' and the manager, overhearing, said 'That's probably the right thing to do...she should have told us she was overwhelmed.' I don't think it was all on the waitress. They understaffed our room a little.
So thanks to an ad in the elevator at my hotel, I found out that Boston Bowl is right next door. So since we were among the youngest in the group (only Stephen and Anthony being younger IIRC) with nothing better to do in the big city on Saturday night, and had other things in common besides trains, Micah and I decided to bowl a couple games. So we went and took Mrs. Miller (who'd been sick and was getting sicker) back to their hotel, thence mine to unburden my pockets of today's giant stash of printed materials, then to the bowling alley. We rented a lane for two games, and shoes, which suprisingly came with socks with 'Boston Bowl' around the ankles. We were going to bowl just two games, but stuck around for a third, if nothing else than to observe the antics of the group two lanes down, a group of 8-10 mostly Japanese, but 1-2 white, most of whom had...er...interesting costumes, and all of whom had given themselves interesting names in the scoring computer (here verbatim): 'Johnny Depp', 'Sexy', 'Hot Shot', 'Hard Gay', 'Nerd', 'Canada', 'Caterpillar', 'Toilet', 'Ballerina', 'Flapper', and 'Rosie the Riveter'. :lol: 'Hard Gay', especially, looked like an over-the-top nightmare version of somebody atop a pride parade float.
I won all three games, but the performance was not impressive in either relative or absolute terms: 75-63, 95-62, 85-62. Very respectable, actually...except this was bowling, not golf. Despite it being Boston, this was 'regular' bowling, not candlepin. Among other things, we here (and earlier at dinner) helped formulate a partial plan for my stay in NYC the end of the following week (see Part 11), as he'd gone to school there. Interestingly, when returning the shoes, we were invited to keep the socks...a nice souvenir. He'd missed the last *regularly scheduled* shuttle, but the hotel people got a special one, and we parted company. Off to bed for me, early start and late end Sunday.
Next, in Part 6: Acela shop tour, followed by Part 7: Acela of a lifetime, later Sunday.
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