AMTRAK HELL

Well, I'm stuck in Albany New York right now. I purchased a ticket from the Amtrak desk at Union station at precisely 8:15am Wednesday morning. The ticket that they issued me allowed for travel between Washington and Rochester NY including an hour layover at NY’s Penn station. Upon arriving at Penn station the big arrival/departure sign was displaying a message. My train wasn’t going to continue onto Rochester, it was terminating at Albany NY, with no other transportation options available. Ohhh…. Rough. I went first to the coffee place next to the Hudson news stand where I purchased a copy of this weeks economist, which featured an article about the new hit movie ‘Who killed the electric car? As psyched as I was on the article and the bagel lox and iced coffee I bought at some food kiosk; I really wanted to find out what the hell was up with the train ride to my sister’s wedding. I’m scheduled to be at some tux fitting appointment Thursday afternoon, and being late isn’t an option. Seeing the long ass line in front of the Amtrak counter I opted to call Amtrak on my cell phone in an attempt to divine what the hell was going on. So like there are all these floods across central New York right now. My uncle Jimmy in Schenevus NY lost the bridge connecting their driveway with the road and can’t get out. So rail service was canceled. Yippee.. I crashed with my cousin Amanda in Albany and we went out to a buncha bars and such in downtown Albany, NY. We met up with Alicia and her husband Claudio and went to Mahar's. What a crazy bar. If you drink 500 beers there they will give you a mug with your bar customer ID number written with a magic marker on it set into a shelf right behind the bar. And to boot the bar has a simple pc setup running some kind of bar software to count which beers you have had and which you still need to cross off your list. It prints a custom report each and every time you log in, WAY COOL!! Amanda and Sean both have tracked their tour of the world’s beers. This pub has 200 beers on the menu; it’s comparable to the brikskeller Inn in that respect. And so now I sit…. Trying to plot out a route that avoids the downed bridges and flooded out roads mucking up travel in central NY.