A Long Night

This last Wednesday I took the 7:30 train home (the last one) instead of the 5:45. Last time I'll ever make that mistake.

The train started off late; about 45 minutes, due to mechanical problems. It seemd to be going rather slowly, and eventually stopped again. A couple times. Finally, we were told that we would need to get off at a town still in Wisconsin, and take a bus to our destination.

We pulled into this town (about halfway between Milwaukee and my stop) at about 10:45. Mind you, I was supposed to be home by 8:36 according to the normal schedule. I had called Joy to pick me up, as I thought that they had meant that we would need to get a bus ourselves and I had no idea whether one would go to my stop. Now that we got out, there was a bus waiting for us that they had called up.

So, all I needed to do was to call Joy and tell her that she didn't need to make the rest of the trip, right? I called about 5 times before the bus left, and she never picked up. As a result, I had to forego the bus in case she didn't realize that she didn't need to come the rest of the way.

About half an hour later, standing outside in cold because no buildings were open and there wasn't a whole lot around to cut down the wind, I finally got a call from Joy (whom I had been calling incessantly). Her phone had been on the whole time; the calls just weren't getting through. She even had called me a few times, and I only got them halfway through our conversation (which lasted until she arrived, since I was afraid that if I hung up we wouldn't be able to reconnect).

She finally pulled up around 11:30-11:45. I was violently shaking from the cold at this point, and continued randomly shivering all the way back home (where, after an hour and a half from the ordeal, my temperature was still only 96 something). We pulled in about 1:00, and I still had to be at the train station around 6 the next morning.

To add insult to injury, I found out that the 5:45 had gotten out late, so I could have taken it home after all.