There is a famous quote.  (Not famous enough evidently, because I can't quite remember it.) But I was pondering it yesterday as I got ready to go out. It was something about: When you have eliminated all of the improbabilities, then what you have left is the merely impossible.

I don't have it right.

I think Sherlock Holmes said it.

Anyway, that's the gist of it. I read it when I was young and impressionable, so it is pretty much what I believe in life, I decided.

I also decided that such a belief is what was responsible for time warps hovering over my dining room tables and my latest discovery: invisible toiletries.

Actually, even finishing the game isn't everything sometimes. Especially if the game you are attempting to play is Arkham Horror.

I have noticed that the very first time you play a game, you really focus on things. Long after the game is done, long after you have played it again - perhaps hundreds of times - you remember things about the first one.

For instance, I still remember the world map of the first Civ II game I played and how I blockaded the enemy with destroyers across fully half of the world.

=sigh=

Those were the good old days!

So it makes sense, I guess, that I will forever remember nostalgically the psychologist character I played in my first Arkham Horror game and mourn the fact that I never got to ride the motorcycle Artifact that she drew.

Arkham Horror is a board game that - when played by 4 people and of which two of the people have never played before so need to have EVERYTHING in the game spelled out, specified, and explained -  takes roughly 6 months to play.

Of course I exaggerate. It didn't and doesn't take six months each time. For example, if you lose, it could end up only being a day or two long.  The first night we spent over an hour on the required set up, which involves a large board, your character markers, and nine or eleven stacks of cards and cardboard discs, of which you get 3 of some and choose and turn two back in, 5 of the other of which you keep three,  and two, and a marker disc which you don't actually use, and well I see your eyes are glazed over so I will go on.

I don't  know about anyone else, but our family is really into games and so we quite happily sat around the table "decking out"* our game pieces and discussing the principles and philosophy behind the game. (Which is too involved to go into here.)

*"Decking out" - verb. A term coined by our 4 year old daughter to describe what you do with a deck of cards that results in you having some cards and your son having some cards and her having the rest of them -prior to her winning whatever game we were playing due to her having. . .=duh=. . .all the cards.

I don't know if it has come up before, but Hugh has two cats.

Which is why when it got to be eleven o'clock (which is actually one o'clock in Iowa time. . .and I personally go to bed between 8:30 and 8:33 pm Iowa time. . .which means I was up WAAAY  past my bedtime!), and we called a halt, we had to move the entire table into Hugh's bedroom to keep it safe from marauding paws.

Not an easy process but we managed. The guys managed. The next night we took up where we had left off, but we were really too tired to play more than 4 hours on it so it didn't get a really good run that night. And then they put the table away.

Unfortunately, the next night when they were bringing the table back out to resume the game, the drop leaf on it dropped.

So we were back "decking out" the game again, and again discussing our strategy. I actually didn't mind starting all over again, except I lost the character that I had gotten quite fond of, and ended up with a wimpy girl that I had trouble empathizing with. (I don't think I mentioned it, but my psychologist packed a Colt 45.)

We played the game that night until we were pretty sure we would have lost and everyone was really sleepy. (I was really sleepy). It went quite fast. . . I think mainly because we drew a really bad monster and he got us very quickly.

Thinking about it now, we fought the good fight, but I sure wished I had had my motorcycle.

Because I sure do.

I was reading in my journal about our latest Vancouver trip (I can't say latest trip because last week I flew down and back to Florida). (Down on Wednesday, back on Thursday.) (But that's another story.)

Anyway, in my journal I wrote: "We are sitting here at the Train Depot Restaurant in LaCrosse. There is some amazingly beautiful jazz playing in the background - old timey railroad jazz/blues -just took a minute to sit and listen...an out of time moment."

Have you ever had. . . umm. . . well, I call it "out of time" moments, where for just a while, everything stops, and you look around and you are suddenly experiencing Life, The Universe, and Everything. 

I see I have a hard time writing about it seriously because it sounds corny when I put it down.

But it's like a moment of Total Awareness or something.  It's a very happy experience when I have one. It usually happens when I am traveling somewhere (I think because travel jolts you out of your complacent acceptance of everyday life).  

And it's inextricably tied to music.

In my journal I write about the time in Texas with the kids playing in the camp's swimming pool, and me sitting by the edge, (watching the clouds for an imminent thunderstorm, waiting to call them in) to the sound of Patsy Cline's "Crazy".

An out of time, perfectly balanced, perfectly happy moment. 

You can't engineer or predict it.

Just savor it when it happens.

I wanted to write today, because it's been really busy and I thought I might have a few interesting or mildly amusing anecdotes to tell. Unfortunately, things just keep on happening, so I don't really have time to do them justice right now. I could write a list...but personally I don't like reading lists, so I will spare you that.

I did get all of my trip to Vancouver journaled (in my journal, donchaknow) so I can upload that at my leisure.

Which I will.

When I have leisure.

Since we've been home, we've been working on a few art projects. This is R-'s latest painting:

When we left LaCrosse we left behind 50 below zero wind chill.

So we were good and cold. Funnily enough, so was the train. Amtrak had been having trouble with the dormitory car in Chicago, it kept shorting out the train, so eventually they left it. This put the sleeper car next up, right behind the baggage car and the engine. The reason you have the dorm car after the baggage car is because the door on that end only goes through the lower level. On the other cars, the doors go through the upper level. This meant that the door on the front end of our car faced into the wind which was strong enough to produce much more than a mere 50 below wind chill.

And the door on a passenger car isn't really a sealed door, because you have people going through them regularly and often. They are sliding doors with only a rubber gasket around them.  There's no way to seal them. Even duct tape doesn't do a good job of sealing a frozen door against the wind of a train doing 60 to 70 mph.

We know this.

Furthermore, duct tape along with bath towels will not keep the snow out, although it will allow it to make cool drifts down the hall. This we also know.


I slept in the top bunk, and I asked for extra blankets, and we were farther down the car than most people, so we spent a relatively comfy night. (Not entirely comfy, because for some reason, probably excitement, we neither one of us could sleep. )  But other people who were closer to the front of the car had a totally miserable night. They like to froze to death! So the next morning, they were moved back next to us. Also, it got a little warmer inside the car the next day, because our sleeper had been in storage in Chicago and it took several hours to warm it up.

The train usually tries to take the more "un-scenic" parts of the trip during the night and save the really cool views for the daytime, but of course we were almost 5 hours behind ourselves and although they were moving out lickety-split, we still did North Dakota in the daytime. Personally, I find the plains and the snow swept vistas beautiful and inspiring.

We have often said that I am likely a reincarnated prairie dog, and R- is a reincarnated bison. He much prefers hills and mountains. (When he read this over, he corrected me: I love the valleys in the hills and mountains!) 

I love prairies and deserts. So I loved the views and took about 500 pictures of hills of drifted snow. Problem is, in looking at them, I find that if you have seen one hill in North Dakota, you really HAVE seen them all. (These pictures totally are in the same class as the 24 pictures of a dolphin in midair. )

It was a good trip but the train had trouble from the get-go. They were trying to make up time, and went at a very fast clip, but it was brutally cold and the equipment was taking a beating. When we went through one of the passes, the horn on the engine froze, and they were out with a blowtorch trying to thaw it. We lost hours there. Eventually we were over 7 hours behind and there was just no way to make that up. So they took us off the train in Spokane and put us on a bus to Seattle, where we caught our bus to Vancouver, BC.

We were really late getting in to Vancouver and evidently the train people there couldn't care less. They would not tell Hugh Betcha when we would be arriving so all afternoon he made trips to the station every 15 minutes because the phone was in my purse.

Yeah. =sigh=

Well, there I would be on the bus, zoning. There would be this lovely musical interlude, and I would think; what nice music. Then I would realize it was someone's phone. Then I would remember it was MY phone. Then I would scramble for my purse, dig frantically through the detritus of a woman on a trip to another country and prepared for anything.  I would paw it out, fumble it open, position my finger on the answer button, and it would go dead. The little viewscreen would reproachfully tell me YOU MISSED A CALL FROM D-!!! And then inform me that if I kept this up, it was going to close down its little batteries.

=sigh=

This happened twice, and finally I got smart and HELD THE THING IN MY HAND.  We got through then, and all was cool.

We were in Vancouver, we were united with Hugh Betcha and we were on our way to the airport to pick up Super Smash Brother. All was right in the world.

We got to the Amtrak station in LaCrosse about an hour before they opened, but luckily there was a little cafe at the end of the building which was open. They let us sit in there and write in our journals and visit with them.

The station in LaCrosse has, like all railway stations, seen better days. It is in surprisingly good shape, but parts of it have been purchased by the city which rents it out to other businesses. There was the Railway Cafe at the far end. A little pizza and ribs takeout was next, then a small Lounge, followed by a longish hallway which led to the station proper and also had stairs going up to the next level.

R- checked that out. He got to the top of the stairs just as a man came out of the Computer Keys office to burp. Really. I was sitting on the bench at the bottom of the stairs and was quite surprised. But evidently not more so than R- . . .nor, of course, the man who apologized and turned around and went back through the door.

Anyway, up on that level were the professional offices. The Internet Guru; The Massage Parlor slash  Herbal Doctor slash Fluid Removal slash Inca Shaman. We are hoping the "Fluid Removal" was more in the lines of prescribing you a diuretic tea and hopefully not dragging you to the top of a pyramid, ripping out your heart and letting the blood drain.

But we're not saying.

Because we didn't go in.

Eventually the station master came to open the doors, and to inform us that the train, supposedly due in less than an hour, had not left Chicago yet...something like a 5 hour trip in good weather. We weren't upset. We figured we had done 12 hour layovers before, this would be a piece of cake.

And truthfully, it was. Because the Lounge down the hallway had local songwriters performing their own work. This happened only once a month, and it was on this evening that they were singing. So we went on down, got some drinks, got some chicken wings, and listened to the writers jammin. They were GOOD! The guy who organized it was from Nashville, big in the Nashville scene, evidently, and retired here...uh...in the frozen north?...yes...and had organized these sessions to encourage the local talent. Is that cool or what?

And it was so entertaining! It was obvious, as the night wore on, that these people were all friends...essentially, we had crashed a party. But everyone was most welcoming, and they all, at some time or other in the evening, made a point of coming over and visiting with us at our table. We didn't feel out of place or like we were intruding - they were so gracious, they made us feel like honored guests.

Eventually though, we had to leave the party; it turned midnight and the train pulled in and we got on and headed west into the dark, and the wind, and the snow.

LaCrosse Wisconsin is an extremely pretty place. It is on the Mississippi River and so it has bluffs, and waterways, and bald eagles, and quaint houseboats, and quaint ice fishing houses.

In addition, every person we talked to in the city was charming. I mean they were really lovely. They could not have been more friendly, helpful, or accommodating. If we had not already found our home in Winterset, I would be all for moving there, just so I could go in and talk to the little girl who works at Walgreens more often.

It was also very cold. Many degrees below zero and dusted with snow when we got there (a preview of the first of the wave of three snowstorms) (with blizzards in the forecast) (which didn't happen, thankfully) (...uh...where was I?)

Cold. Really most sincerely cold.

We got up there three days before our train was due, so we explored the city. And all the stuff on the news was about how it was umpty degrees below zero with a wind chill of God-awful.

Now, prior to us leaving for the trip, we had purchased clothes fit for our adventures. To be specific, we got long underwear. We really had no idea if we would NEED this or if it would be only in an extremity sort of thing, like if the train got stopped because of an avalanche (again). But son-of-a-gun, we used them right out of the chute. See, our train didn't come in until 7 in the evening which meant that the station didn't open until 6:30 and we had to check out of the hotel by noon. As you can see, we had a lot of time to fill, which we planned to do by walking around downtown LaCrosse, checking out the parks, the hardware store, the clock store and the antique stores.

So we bundled up in our long johns, our mufflers, donned the wooly hats out of our car's survival box and wrapped ourselves in our heavy and long winter coats. We were ready!

The parks were pretty, but we didn't see any bald eagles there, just ducks and geese. The clock store was interesting, the antique stores were so-so, (because we were on the outward swing of the trip and we did not want to find any antique-y thing we would have to carry to Canada with us).

The hardware store was cool.

R- and I love hardware stores, we always have. When we go on trips we check out any available rock shops and hardware stores. We just like them. This one was so great because it was really old fashioned, with fixtures that dated probably from the time they invented hardware stores. One wall was a mass of small boxes in a cubbyhole-like arrangement, with a rolling ladder that went in front. You climbed up and accessed what you wanted in the boxes that way. Neat.



When we left the hardware store, though, the manager was standing outside the door on the sidewalk talking to two people and it was only when we were out on the sidewalk ourselves, that we saw it was a TV cameraman and a girl pointing a microphone. We apologized profusely for blundering in on them. No problem we were assured, they were all finished, and the girl pointed the microphone towards us and asked if we minded being interviewed? So we got on the local  news, I guess. Not that we could tell, because we were leaving for Canada and didn't watch TV that night.

She  asked why we were walking around downtown on such a cold day? I told her it wasn't often we had temperatures of 40 degrees below, and we didn't want to waste it.

The girl asked R- if he had dressed differently for this record breaking cold? He said "Well,  I have long underwear on!" 

So that went well, we thought.

We're back from Vancouver, BC, Canada, where we spent almost 2 weeks with Hugh Betcha and Super Smash Brother touring the city, eating at fabulous places...(sans spiders, I'll admit)...and checking out the games.

We almost played Arkham Horror.  More on that anon.

But first, check out the picture. This is exactly what that building looked like that morning. Well, not so grainy or small; I seem to recall it was a lot bigger, now that I think of it.

Anyway, the light was awesome, the fog was so beautiful, I was so pleased to get even a suggestion of how incredible the sight was:

Our plans were to take the Empire Builder out to Vancouver...this entails catching something to get us to Chicago to get on the train, traveling to Seattle and boarding a bus up to Canada, (because that is how Amtrak gets you to Vancouver from Seattle.) We talked it over and decided we'd rather not go to Chicago and decided to catch the train at LaCrosse, Wisconsin. 

This sounds like a good plan, doesn't it? After all, it is only a 5 hour drive from our house through southern Minnesota to LaCrosse, and this on interstate highways. We monitored the weather closely for the two weeks prior to our departure. All systems go. No major storms, the Rockies were clear. Alberta was balmy. Oklahoma was doing okay. Kentucky and Tennessee were good to go. Montana was ...Montana. There was an occluded front over the Bahama's and a high pressure front stalled out over the Yorkshire Downs. We were as two little prairie dogs sitting up on our burrow, scanning the sky with all of our advanced technology and our whiskers quivering.

We were set to get our train on Tuesday at 7:14 pm. (I love it that the Amtrak schedule is so clear and precise...if they could have put fractions of seconds in...if people actually had watches that could tell them this, they would so do it!) (But I digress.)

Saturday night, we went to bed with a nation clear from coast to coast, busily planning for Obama's inauguration, and dreaming of sugarplums. Sunday morning we woke up and about 5 major winter events (this is what they call really bad storms nowadays) were bearing down on respectively: our house, the highway up to Minnesota, and the town we were heading for.

The weather person, (and I tell you truly, we didn't have anything to do with this), looked into the camera and said very meaningfully, "If you have any travel plans for the coming week; for instance, if you are heading to Minnesota or LaCrosse, Wisconsin - and you know who we mean- you should leave today!"

Okay, so maybe she didn't say that about "you know who we mean,"  but then, she didn't need to. It took all of 5 minutes to decide we would be leaving in half an hour, so we got up, got packed and left.

You know, I am kind of proud of the fact that we can move very fast if we have to. Imagine. Getting all packed for a 3 week trip in only half an hour!

Of course, after we left,  I spent the first 3 hours trying to think of what we forgot.

We only had to turn back once.

I am a little wiped out today...we thought we were feeling better, so yesterday we went up to Des Moines and went shopping. I think we overdid it.

I know of only one person in the entire state of Iowa who did not get this bug. My cousin is currently cowering in Knoxville, hoping it will not find her.

I would not give her odds on remaining healthy.