Happy Holidays!

Christmas day and I'm posting a blog. Never thought it would come to this. Today I'm finally supposed to get on my train back to my parents' place in North Dakota. I checked on yesterday's train and it made it out of town just fine. It's only running five hours late, too, which isn't that bad for that route. If that holds true for my trip I will have over 30 hours of fun time on the Amtrak Empire Builder. Sounds like plenty of time for snowboard movies, books, magazines, beer, free food (perks of having to ride in a bedroom, though it cost 3x the price) and all sorts of miscellaneous mayhem. At this point I'll be lucky to make it home before the rest of my family goes back to their respective dwellings (the ones that did make it back are from the Twin Cities area of Minnesota).

One of my sisters was nice (naive?) enough to suggest that I drive home. When I got done laughing I relayed the message that the route I would take was closed. Things are starting to warm up and melt the snow away, but it's still a 1200-mile drive. That's 16 hours in good weather. Here's the last picture of my car before I finally drove it out last night:

The downside of 'dumping'

Half an hour of digging later I could actually drive the thing, all-season tires and all. Driving over the multiple mountain passes of Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana is not very high on my fun list, so I'm going to go ahead and wait on the train.

Here's hoping you all have a happy and safe holiday season and that you get to spend all the time you want with family and friends. Cheers!