We met on an AMTRAK train, the Empire Builder, after it left Portland, Oregon on the way to Chicago. After more than four weeks in the Pacific Northwest on this last leg of my job assignment, it was time to go home. The trip from Portland to Chicago would take nearly two days to arrive in Chicago's Union Station. From there, I planned to fly home in Raleigh, North Carolina.

I had chosen to ride the train to Chicago for one main reason: to "collect" one of the most difficult states to add to my collection of states, the state of North Dakota. It was the last of the 48 contiguous United States that I had not been in and the 49th out of all 50 states. During this summer work assignment I was supposed to go to Alaska as well, but my boss pulled rank on me and sent me to Idaho, instead. He went to Alaska and I got Idaho. That's another story within itself.

I had been based in the Portland area for most of the summer on this 4-month job assignment that started in June. There were long days of field work associated with this engineering assignment and 10-12 hour days were not uncommon. There were also weekends and idle days where I had lots of time between the individual site visits associated with this job assignment. I made a number of friends in the Portland area during that summer there. I didn't know it at the time, but I would be back again the following summers for different job assignments.

It was just after the Labor Day holiday and summer vacations were over for most people. After the final site visit, I spent several days hanging out with friends on the Columbia River, skied Mount Hood on the Palmer Glacier (is it "early skiing" or "late skiing" when you are skiing in late August and early September), and then climbed Mount Hood the day before I left. It was a clear morning the day of the climb and a bright sunny day all the way to the summit. By the time I got to the summit, clouds were visible coming over the coastal range to the west and high, thin cirrus clouds we arriving overhead. I knew rain was coming, but I bet on the weather forecast being correct that it wouldn't arrive until the evening. As I descended down the mountain to the parking lot serving the Timberline Lodge, the sunlight became more heavily filtered by the high clouds. I drove back to Portland and, as I approached the city, it began to rain. It was the first rain in months as the summer rainless pattern was particularly long in 1985.

I had a quick dinner and packed my suitcase and the small travel trunk that had brought for all of my climbing gear. In addition, I packed all the non-confidential reports I had accumulated during this last trip in the trunk. No need to haul it onto the train in my suitcase if I didn't need it. The next morning, I got up and had a late breakfast, packed the rental car and took it back to the Portland Airport. From there I took a taxi back to the Portland train station, checked my travel trunk and waited to get aboard the train. It was a relatively cloudy day with occasional light showers. But there were periods of cloud-filtered sunshine and occasional patches of blue sky. The day wasn't a total washout in Portland and the temperature was quite pleasant.

This was the first time in years that I had been on a train travelling some distance and it was the first time on the cross-country, double-decked Superliner cars. One could travel quite comfortably in the coach cars over the two days because the seats were wide and spacious (think flying in first class of any jet liner) and you could take care of basic grooming with the sinks in the onboard changing rooms. But if you wanted to shower or to clean up thoroughly, you needed access to one of the sleeper cars. The two-person roomette was the least expensive of the sleeper accommodations and had only the most basic of in-room capabilities. The bedrooms were made for two people in the sleeper cars and had toilets in the room (the newer Superliner II cars also have showers built-in to the toilet area. Just don't accidentally turn on the shower while trying to flush the toilet).

Generally speaking, people tend to stay in their "rooms" unless they are in the dining or in the observation lounges. I can't recall whether one could sit in the coach cars, but it was open seating going across the country. The coach cars were not full on this train back to Chicago. I couldn't tell how full the sleeper cars were, but my sense was that they weren't full either. Dining onboard in the dining car and the scenic view lounge cars were attractive features for this cross-country train.

We were finally called aboard the train. I saw my trunk being rolled up to the luggage car and I found the sleeper car where I needed to board the train. I presented my ticket to the conductor (paper tickets back then) and I was shown to my room on the second level of the sleeper car. It wasn't too tight a fit and two people could probably comfortably reside here for a couple of days as the world passed by. I got the basic instructions on the room features and was glad to know that I didn't have to figure out how to put the bed(s) out during the night (it's really easier than it looks at first). The Amtrak Attendant for the sleeper car would do that. It had an upper and lower bunk and I planned to use the lower one.

Because of the way the sleeper car was connected to the train, the window orientation was to the left side of the train as we travelled east. For the first part of the trip up the Columbia River Gorge, the scenery was on the right side of the train as it travelled up the Washington side of the Columbia River. If the weather held, I hoped to catch a glimpse of my friends on the Oregon side of the Columbia River. Although they couldn't see me, they knew I'd be on the train and they could wave. Such silliness. Anyway, I planned to move up to the scenic observation lounge towards the front of the train once we left the Portland, OR and Vancouver, WA stations and began our journey to meet up with the section of the train coming from Seattle.

I was in the midst of a divorce. My soon-to-be ex-wife had left me for a college grad student who was seven years younger than either of us. He had convinced her to let him move in with her after she had moved out of our house. And although there was still a possibility of reconciling, it seemed less likely as time went on. Like I said, the Idaho portion of the trip has its own story that includes him in a very strange sort of way. But I digress.

While I was staying in the Portland area, there were seemed to be opportunities to hook-up with some of the females with whom I had become friends. They knew the situation I was dealing with back home, but I never took advantage of the friendships that I had formed to see if there were other benefits to our friendships. (Note to feminists reading this: these were true friendships and I never "hit on" any of these women to use our friendship as a pathway to sex. I was to learn in subsequent years that many of these women appreciated this, though a couple of them expressed disappointment that I never did hit on them.)

Once the train was underway, I walked through the train to the scenic observation lounge car. We could get something to eat (as well as drink) in the lounge, but the true dining car was coming from the Seattle portion of the train. After ordering a drink and a snack, I settled down in a seat to look out over the river as we progressed up the Columbia River Gorge. When we reached the point along the Columbia River where my friends would be, the weather wasn't quite as promising as it had seemed in Portland. I could see a couple of boats anchored near the sandbar and a few people on the beach. But it wasn't the typical crowd that you could see on a warm and sunny day. I connected a telephoto lens to my camera to assist in my view but it didn't help much. I assumed that my friends decided that the weather was too iffy to come out on that day. Such can be the weather on the Gorge when the weather pattern starts to change.

There was a young woman who came and sat down in the chair next to me and she asked me what I was looking at.

"I'm looking to see if my friends are down at the beach on the river."

(to be continued)