The author's children pose with a familiar rodent.

By John Estey

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At about 50,000 feet in the air somewhere over the state of Texas en route to a New Orleans vacation, I had noticed something weird — the palms of my hands were dripping sweat.

It was at that moment that I finally gave up on all macho pretensions and admitted to myself that I, like 25 million other Americans, suffered from aviophobia. I learned later that aviophobia, or a “fear of flying,” is suffered by one in 10 Americans — not that it helped me at the time. But thanks to some stress-relieving breathing exercises, not to mention a few Bloody Marys, I made it through the trip there and back just fine. Still, months later, when my wife suggested we take the train to visit her mother in southern California and show our kids Disneyland, I jumped out of my chair and nearly shrieked, “That sounds like a TERRIFIC idea!”

Soon, thereafter, I loaded up the car with my wife, 7-year-old son and 4-year-old daughter and merrily left Humboldt County on the six-hour drive to the train station in Oakland, Calif. After spending the night at a friend’s home, we hit the train station at 8 a.m. sharp for our 9 a.m. train to Los Angeles. The good folks at Amtrak had told us to get there an hour early. All of us were full of good spirits and energy as we eagerly awaited the train. The kids were chattering, filled with excitement over the concept of their first real train trip. Four hours later, with still no train in sight, they were lying face down on the cement.

There had been a train wreck somewhere near Chicago the night before, and now there was an inspection of all the lines across the country to “ensure safety.” As I sat on the bench in the train station I could have sworn that I saw a plane leave Oakland flying to L.A. and then return again-twice. The travel gods were already mocking me.

When the train finally arrived our good spirits returned. Settling into the coach car with all the other passengers, there was a buzz in the air. Amtrak calls this particular train the “Coast Starlight,” and claims it is a “progressive party” that runs up and down the western coast of the United States. Everyone in the noisy, chatty car seemed willing to live up to the billing. It certainly was a refreshing change of pace from dreary freeway travel. Sitting on the upper deck of the train, I got the oddly voyeuristic thrill of looking into countless backyards, watching folks barbecue, garden and sunbathe. Little kids playing basketball waved at us, as we roared past. I read in the complimentary magazine that each day approximately 61,000 guests travel on Amtrak.

“This is the way to go. To hell with airplanes,” I thought to myself as we approached San Jose.

The descent into hell

Suddenly the train jerked, and then ground to a halt. A few minutes later a voice over the public address system said, “It seems a couple of kids were playing ‘chicken’ with the train, folks. They didn’t get hit, but we’ve got to check the train out before we get started again. We’ll get rolling again just as soon as we’re sure she’s OK.” Roughly an hour later, we started up again, but were now a full six hours behind. We were scheduled to catch a connecting train at the L.A. station to Orange County, but now we were clearly going to miss it.

“It’s no problem,” said the conductor. “There will be a bus to take you there.”

When we finally rolled into Los Angeles around 1 a.m., my wife and I had to carry the two sleeping children and our massive amount of luggage about a half mile to where our bus awaited. Exhausted, we settled in for the 45-minute trip to Orange County, grateful to have finally “arrived.” We should have known better. The freeway was closed for construction.

So two hours later, after taking mostly surface streets from L.A. to Orange County, the bus dropped my wife, my two bleary-eyed kids and I off at a deserted and dark Irvine Station. I found the station’s lone security guard and together we managed to land what appeared to be the last working taxicab driver of the night. A $50 cab ride to my mother-in-law’s house later, we finally ended our journey —19 hours after it had begun. We’d taken the worst the travel gods could dish out and survived— or so I thought.

The week in Southern California was nice, as was the trip to Disneyland. We left the House of Mouse just as you are supposed to - physically and financially exhausted. My wife, whose middle name should be changed to “Upgrade,” called the folks at Amtrak, and after hearing what happened to us on our trip down they very graciously changed our seats to a first-class sleeping car. With visions of wine-tasting events, bunk beds for the kids, mints on the pillow and the like, the awful trip down quickly faded from our minds.

After arriving at the station in Los Angeles for our trip back, we eagerly made ourselves at home in our lower-deck suite for four. The kids were in their underwear bouncing on the beds before we left the station. Before I kicked off my shoes, I made a quick visit to our car’s porter to ask if he could turn off the heater in the hot little room, since the control was snapped off the wall and I couldn’t turn it off. He said it was no problem, and he’d turn it off once we left the station. Pacified, I went back to our room and settled in for the trip.

Of course, the heat never went off. The heater just kept blasting and blasting, and since the windows don’t open on a train we just baked. We kept the room door propped open in hopes of cooling the room off, but down the short corridor were the bathrooms, and they were becoming noticeably pungent as the day went on. We had no choice but to put on our sweaty clothes and flee to the club car.

The chocolate bar

It was becoming late in the day, and the thrill of the first-class experience had definitely worn off. I ordered a $20 round of drinks for my family, and, at my little girl’s insistence, a chocolate bar for her, as well. As a parent I know what a big slab of chocolate can do to a 35-pound child, but I figured it was our last day of vacation — what the hell. I handed it to her and said, “You go, girl.” The wife shot me a look.

Time passed, and so did another $20 round of drinks. We figured it was time to give the sauna, ah, I mean our room, another try. It was only few more hours until we reached Oakland. We could “tough it out.” We all started down the narrow path down the center of the club car with my daughter and her chocolate-smeared face in the lead. Suddenly, a man’s foot jutted out in front of her. She tripped, and with the help of the train’s momentum, flew roughly five feet though the air. Her momentum finally stopped when the side of her head met a metal corner of a wall.

The scream was like a jaguar caught in some type of machinery.

We grabbed some ice to put on the baseball-sized lump that immediately appeared on the side of her head and rushed back to our coach. As we headed down the stairs that led to our room the septic smell hit us like a huge wave crashing on the beach. The stench of the bathrooms had become a living thing in our absence, and aided by the blasting heater, it now ruled as King. I slammed the room door closed, and I swear I could almost feel its evil power pushing back as I did so. After many tears, ice packs and rocking from her mother, my daughter’s screams quieted to moans and then finally into a sweaty sleep. I checked my watch — we were now only an hour from Oakland. “We just might make it,” I said.

That’s when the train stopped.

“We’ve hit a car,” the loudspeaker crackled. “Not to worry though folks, there was no one in it. Seems it was parked on the tracks. The good news is no one was hurt, and the driver is OK. The bad news is we’re going to be here a little while.” I suddenly thought of the advertising line for those “Alien” movies: “In space, no one can hear you scream.” I bit my lip hard, and went to check the situation.

About seven cars back a crowd of passengers was crowding around the windows, looking below. I squeezed in, and saw in the darkness and rain outside the flashing lights of emergency vehicles spinning, but no car, just a lump of something. I squinted hard, and saw that it was the car after all, but only a piece of it. There was the steering wheel, the bucket seat and the gearshift, but nothing else. It was like someone had taken a mighty laser to a pick-up truck and sliced out a small section. It made an eerie and horrible sight. I looked on the other side of the train to see the rest of the truck, but there was nothing. The only thing I could see was the bar where the driver had gotten so drunk that he didn’t notice his truck parked on the tracks outside. At least that was the rumor among the passengers peering out the windows. Feeling suicidal, I went back to my room in the Hell Car.

The conductor kept hope alive, telling us every hour that it would “be another hour” before we got the train rolling again. We had been due in at Oakland at 7 p.m., and it was now after 10 p.m. with no hope in sight. The highlight of the past few hours was being towed onto a siding somewhere down the line. It seems our brakes were frozen, and major repairs were now required. I peered out the window at the surrounding wetlands and wondered: if we walked away from the train could we make it to the road and a telephone? It looked like a bad idea. “Bodies of man and family found in mudflats of San Francisco Bay,” the headline would probably read.

The room was unbearable, but when they detached the locomotive from the train and took it to Oakland for repairs leaving us on the siding, it cut all the power to the rest of the train and mercifully turned off the heater. Now we were stuck in pitch-black darkness with only the backed-up septic system to keep us company. Without power, the toilets wouldn’t even be able to flush. I hunted down our long-lost porter, and pleaded for a new room since we were going to be stuck on the train for the night. He said he’d get back to me.

Return of the bar

An hour later he returned and said, “All right, grab your stuff and follow me.” He took us upstairs and up to another porter’s car. We got two rooms side-by-side of each other that were like telephone booths lying on their sides — each with a bunk bed. The new porter grabbed my arm as I held my sleeping daughter.

“Don’t even think about using that upper bunk,” he snarled. “I’ve got fresh passengers boarding in Sacramento and I’m not remaking that bed!”

I weakly nodded compliance, and my daughter and I curled up on the single lower bunk. Maybe I could get an hour sleep before dawn. Perhaps 10 minutes later, my daughter started to cough. Since her injury I had become increasingly worried about her. I sat up, and grabbed a flashlight to see if she was all right and nearly screamed. All over the bunk and dripping down her mouth was blood. Lots of it. I then saw it was all over me, as well. In a full-blown panic I yelled for my wife across the aisle to come quick. How would we get her to a doctor? What would we do? My mind was reeling.

“She’s spitting up blood!”

My wife sat her up and looked closely at her, and then at me.

“She’s throwing up the chocolate bar you gave her earlier, Einstein. Now help me clean her up and let’s try to go back to sleep.”

I could’ve wept, but as I cleaned up the mess I noticed my eyes were stinging anyway. Somebody was smoking a cigarette and filling the airtight train car with smoke! I couldn’t believe it.

I snapped. My heart went cold and dark. I decided to hunt down and commit multiple felonies upon this obvious spawn of Satan. As I crept through the darkness I realized the smoke was coming from downstairs, where the bathrooms were located. I switched off my little flashlight and descended the narrow stairs into complete blackness. There, hovering in the dark, was the orange glow of the cigarette.

I snapped on the flashlight and hissed, “There’s no smoking on the train!”

Standing there holding the cigarette, blinking at me in the spotlight, was a very small Asian man. He looked to be at least 80. He smiled, and said something in a foreign language to me.

“There’s no smoking on this train,” I said again, but now in a tiny voice.

He smiled again, reached in his pocket, pulled out his pack of smokes and offered me one.

I almost took it, and hell, I don’t even smoke. But instead I just turned and walked back to my soiled bunk with a feeling of defeat I’d never experienced before. I knew now what the tortured feel when they beg their captors for death. I was done.

When the train pulled into Oakland Station early the next morning, we all stumbled off the train. As we stepped off, a young mother and her son were boarding.

“Mommy, what’s that bad smell?”

“Nothing honey, just come on.”

I stopped, turned to her and said, “You know, lady, it’s not too late to take a plane.”

Her eyes widened, and she looked at me as if I were some kind of an asshole.

She was right.