To Atlanta!

So far, our trip to Atlanta has been fun.

We left home at 3pm, arriving at Union Station in about 40 minutes. We had our train tickets in hand already so we merely had to check our bags and head to our gate. We had lots of time to spare so we were able to individually go to the food court to find dinner.

Boarding was uneventful and the train departed on time although we were unable to get three seats nearby each other because of the distribution of previously boarded passengers.

While the Amtrak station in DC had free wifi, the train itself doesn't. I'm typing this using my broadband wireless but even that and my blackberry have sketchy connectivity because the train runs through some very backwoods, rural areas of Virginia. Occasionally we get within range as we pass a town or stop to exchange passengers at the more metropolitan areas, but that's the best we can hope for. On the good side, at least we have electrical outlets at our seats so we can recharge our devices.

Typing on the train has been more of a challenge than I though. There is a lot of lateral movement which effectively causes my keyboard to jump left or right by a character, creating some interesting but annoying typos. I apologize if I've missed correcting any here.

We're somewhere between Charottesvile and Lynchburg, VA, as I write this and we're approaching 10pm. The folks in front of us have finally put away their DVDs --they were listening over earphones for our consideration but were laughing out loud and nearly constantly so it wasn't much of a help. The young girl across from us who apparently lacks an indoor voice is currently snoozing so all is relatively quiet. All else is pretty good right now.

If we're on time, we should be rolling into Atlanta around 8:15am. More news then.

To Atlanta!

So far, our trip to Atlanta has been fun.

We left home at 3pm, arriving at Union Station in about 40 minutes. We had our train tickets in hand already so we merely had to check our bags and head to our gate. We had lots of time to spare so we were able to individually go to the food court to find dinner.

Boarding was uneventful and the train departed on time although we were unable to get three seats nearby each other because of the distribution of previously boarded passengers.

While the Amtrak station in DC had free wifi, the train itself doesn't. I'm typing this using my broadband wireless but even that and my blackberry have sketchy connectivity because the train runs through some very backwoods, rural areas of Virginia. Occasionally we get within range as we pass a town or stop to exchange passengers at the more metropolitan areas, but that's the best we can hope for. On the good side, at least we have electrical outlets at our seats so we can recharge our devices.

Typing on the train has been more of a challenge than I though. There is a lot of lateral movement which effectively causes my keyboard to jump left or right by a character, creating some interesting but annoying typos. I apologize if I've missed correcting any here.

We're somewhere between Charottesvile and Lynchburg, VA, as I write this and we're approaching 10pm. The folks in front of us have finally put away their DVDs --they were listening over earphones for our consideration but were laughing out loud and nearly constantly so it wasn't much of a help. The young girl across from us who apparently lacks an indoor voice is currently snoozing so all is relatively quiet. All else is pretty good right now.

If we're on time, we should be rolling into Atlanta around 8:15am. More news then.