Two years ago, we took a cross-country Amtrak from Seattle home to Pittsburgh.

We haven’t taken the Amtrak since then, so a couple months ago, Amtrak started emailing us telling us that our points were going to expire soon, so we figured we needed to take an Amtrak trip to keep the accounts active.

We floated a few ideas for what to do, but ended up deciding on a day trip to Greensburg. The Pennsylvanian was reasonably timed, getting us there around 8 AM and leaving from there at 7:01 PM, getting us home by 8 PM. We decided on yesterday as the day for the trip, based on working around other commitments.

The train out was fine, until the train was literally pulling into the Greensburg station. Then came the first thunderstorm. We waited it out in the station before stopping for breakfast at a cafe right by the station (Steep Mountain Tea Company, which is a really nice place, and which has a fantastic name) and then set forth on our first plan: walking to the Meadowlark Nature and Art Park through Seton Hill University’s campus.

Of course, we were halfway through the campus when another thunderstorm struck, thoroughly soaking my (not waterproof) shoes and leaving me with wet socks for most the rest of the day. Given the storm projections, we switched plans and headed to the Westmoreland Museum of American Art instead.
(Highly, highly recommend the museum. It’s not too big, but it has great exhibits and super friendly staff.)

We left the museum to clear skies and to find lunch, and then started for the park again, but by this time, the temperature had hit its muggy horrible high of over 87F, and the walk ended up being on roads with no sidewalks or shoulders (and quite a bit of traffic) so we abandoned that idea about halfway through the walk. Ended up at the library instead (gorgeous building) until it was time to grab some quick dinner and then head back to the train station for our 7:01 train departure.

About 30 minutes before our train was supposed to arrive (slightly delayed, due at 7:15), torrential rain and 80 MPH winds hit the region. Our phones were constantly giving emergency alerts with flash flood and tornado warnings, and the station temporarily lost power twice. (Apparently a tornado touched down in Latrobe? That’s only 10 miles or so from where we were.)

We were super glad to be in the station (instead of out in the weather), but the winds stopped the train for almost an hour. And by the time it was ready to go again, there were trees and other debris over the track. The train was over 2 hours late getting into Latrobe (the stop before Greensburg), but little did we know what was coming…

According to some people who came to pick up passengers at Greensburg (and who were texting those passengers on the train), the train had to stop 7 times in the 10 mile stretch between Latrobe and Greensburg so the conductors could move trees off the tracks. A little before 11 PM, we could see the lights of the train from the station platform (like a quarter of a mile away)… and the train was then faced with a tree hanging over the tracks that the conductors couldn’t handle themselves, so they had to call in a team from Latrobe to clear the impediment.
(Literally, we were looking at this sight for an hour:)

The train finally pulled into Greensburg a bit after midnight (5 hours late, taking 3 hours to go 10 miles), and sat at the station for another half hour as it waited for the track between Greensburg and Pittsburgh to be cleared. We finally arrived into Pittsburgh at 1:25 AM, and ran to catch the last bus out of downtown at 1:40. (Not the best bus for us, since it’d involve a non-trivial walk at the end, but it was literally the last bus until after 4 AM, so we couldn’t be choosy.)

Of course, most of the way through the bus ride, it starts raining, so we had to finish our day with a nice half hour walking in the rain. (And I finished the day how it started: with thoroughly wet socks.) It feels like a very fitting end to the trip, somehow.

On the plus side: Free Amtrak snacks, and the crew was *so so so* nice, and kept apologizing profusely for the delay, which absolutely was not their fault. One of the conductors was only on his second week on the job, so he’s really getting in a trial by fire. We also met some really neat people as we waited on the platform with them for 5 hours, including the Greensburg stationmaster, who was great.

So it was… a trip. I think we have very much learned not to take Amtrak when storms are forecasted. It’s not the worst trip I’ve had (that would probably be the ski trip from hell where the rental car tire first leaked air and then popped completely, due largely to my mental state and work stress around that trip, which I had already not wanted to go on even before it started), but I definitely wouldn’t call it a good trip.

But at least we got a story to tell out of it?

(I guess evidence for the fact that I’m mentally in a better place now is that this trip didn’t stress me out as much as it just got me frustrated with my own decisions around the trip. I didn’t bring a spare pair of socks because I figured my shoes would be soaked anyway if it got to that point, and I figured the thunderstorms would be brief and not a problem since we could schedule our day around them.)

Also, again, huge kudos to Amtrak staff. They had one heck of a night, and did the best they could, and managed to get us home that (more or less) night, so I’ll count that a win given the circumstances.

First off, life’s photo journal and stats have both been updated. Yay stats.

So… like 75% of the souvenirs we brought back from the UK was tea biscuits (and like 20% was tea). I actually failed at acquiring any single biscuit (or decaf tea bags) from the four big grocery chains, but I had at least one thing from each store, and four things (custard creams, bourbon creams, shortbreads, and decaf tea) each from exactly three stores.

So this past weekend, we had a big taste-off of custard creams, bourbon creams, and decaf tea from Waitrose, Sainsbury, Tesco, and Marks & Spencer. Plus a last-minute addition of malted milk biscuits from Tesco and Marks & Spencer (which I had only acquired from two stores). (Also? One tube of biscuits holds fewer biscuits than you might expect, and I had to cut them in half to ensure enough for everyone. I guess I should’ve brought back doubles of everything.)

The results were interesting because, other than the poor Waitrose custard creams, every other biscuit and tea had at least one person who preferred it.

I’m also kind of amazed how much variation there is between stores on both the biscuits and tea. Most people had a clear favorite for both the bourbons and tea.

The designs are also interesting, because the patterns and fonts for both the custard creams and bourbons seem to be standardized (and maybe the malted milk biscuits, but I didn’t have others to check against)… except for Marks & Spencer, who insists on self-branding everything instead, but in a way that pays homage to the originals.

Lea linked these two articles about biscuit patterns and fonts, which are an interesting read, and also makes me think I should’ve sought out Yorkshire Tea Biscuits to bring some back, because their shape is hilarious.

Also, I still have a package of tea biscuits from Australia… I wonder if I should try and put together a UK vs Australia tasting, now.

(My TCG website has also been getting lots of updates, so if that interests you at all, check it out! I’ve probably covered about half my collection at this point.)

We had a trip to the UK, this time up to Scarborough and York.

For some reason, my travel anxiety was particularly bad this time around (maybe because the trip involved so many logistics: the usual airport bus, a flight, a tube ride, a walk, a 2 hour train ride, a 1 hour train ride, and then a walk to finally get to the first hotel), and the hotel had a “preferred” checkin time of “by 5 PM”, which we were already going to miss by around 30 minutes based on our booked train times. Unfortunately, the anxiety became somewhat of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

On the flight out, for the first time in my life, I forgot my boarding pass in the security bin. (I blame the fact that the scanners were broken, so they sent our bags through like 5 times, and my brain was not in a state to process things at that point.) I thought I’d lost my passport at one point (I put it in my pocket but not in the usual holder). And I tapped out of the tube “wrong” which made me worry that we’d be mischarged for the ride. (All things that wouldn’t have happened if my brain hadn’t been in a weird state.)

Then, of course, our 2-hour train arrived 6 minutes late for what was a 7 minute connection time… we did our best (the conductor told us to walk to the front of the C car which would put us right next to an overhead bridge, and then run for it) but arrived at our platform just in time to watch our next train pull out of the station, so we had an extra hour to burn before the next train.

(On the plus side, if you’re delayed more than 30 minutes on a train in the UK, you’re apparently eligible for a partial refund of your fare paid. Apparently a delay of 60 minutes would result in a full refund, but we missed the 60 minutes by arriving into our final station 2 minutes early, which is just par for the course with this trip.)

The transit back to the airport was fortunately uneventful, but I’m still kind of amazed at how easy transit in the UK is. A 2-hour (direct!) train ride followed by an 80 minute tube ride feels surprisingly effortless, and the general frequency of trains for those kinds of distances is so nice.

(Incidentally, I’m realizing that my brain experiences different travel anxiety for every “leg” of a journey, and separately tries to mitigate for each one, which is perhaps why the long list of different legs on the way out was so problematic. At least we didn’t have an airport transfer. Thus, therapy continues to be useful, even while I’m not actively going at the moment, because it gives me tools to better articulate my brain, which lets me start to figure out what to do about it. Go to therapy, everyone. It’s fantastic.)

Oh, and I also got food poisoning on our first full day there, so I spent like half the trip being unhappy and unable to really properly enjoy the British food, including the amazing breakfasts (and vegetarian haggis) from our first hotel. So that was great. (It was from Indian food, too, which turned me off having more Indian food for the entire trip. Boo.)

I also do not recommend going on an 8-mile hike the morning you wake up with severe food poisoning. Between my stomach and guts being in active revolt, and the dehydration making me want to faint every time I stopped walking, it was not a good time. 0/10 would not do again.

In any case (and other than the food poisoning), the trip was nice. We saw a partial eclipse in Scarborough (which mostly manifested itself as “outside is weirdly dark for early evening”), got to experience a British seaside town (really nice and clean and full of surprisingly expansive beaches), explored all of the old parts of York (including the Minster, which is extremely impressive), saw a friend, enjoyed (and brought back) tons of tea and tea biscuits, and ate tons of meal deals (which I still think are just about the best deal for tourists, and have a surprising amount of variety).

Also elderflower and lemon cake. I want more of that cake. We need more elderflower things in the US.

I’m also proud of the fact that my checked bag on the way home was 22.9 kilos out of the allowed 23 kilos. I was completely estimating without a scale or any real reference (other than the fact that the bag was 15 kilos on the way out) so I’m super glad we didn’t have to re-pack the bag at the airport.

Also also BA apparently switched the aircraft on the way back, so the seats we’d selected on checkin were not the seats we got. We weren’t the only ones, either… a bunch of families got separated, and there was a ton of moving around after boarding was complete. This ended up working out well for us, since the other person in our row moved to be with his wife, so we ended up with a row of 3 seats to ourselves on what was otherwise a mostly full flight. I just don’t understand why BA can’t seat people together when they’re on the same reservation. It wasn’t like there was a lack of rows to do it, since people were able to self-rearrange to make it happen. (At least BA has significantly better food and snacks than any US carrier. Mmm caramel chocolates and chocolate digestives.)

Photos, uh…. when I get to them. They’ll be at photos at some point, probably. (Or maybe not, because I’ve been bad at dealing with photos recently.)

Life (other than my self-sabotaging brain) is amazing.