Warning: the following post may contain triggering language for some with a queasy constitution. Read at your own risk.
The answer is 80. The question, is how many RM people does it take to care for 775 people (of a certain age) on board the Rocky Mountaineer that left Vancouver on Tuesday. The 80 represents the people on board, two different classes of passengers. Guess which class we are in…Gold Leaf, of course! Did you have any doubt? It is the one with the dome glass ceiling, each car has its own kitchen staff and white cloth dining, two bathrooms, 4 staff members and 3 member culinary team. The silver leaf service…think economy, eat in your lap, airline food and a few less folks to powder your butt, but the liquor flows fast, so bottom line, the scenery is the same, just how much are you willing to pay. The overnight stays are Fairmont down to Travelodge…
So, with lots of moving (slow, I might add, as we are the youngsters on board) parts to be gathered in 30+ buses and to be taken to the Rocky Mountaineer train station, with 1.5 (average) pieces of luggage for each piled on board to be transferred to trucks to arrive at your daily destination and placed in your room prior to your arrive. The logistics of this operation is mind boggling for Robin and me. Organization and logistics are our secret love language….it is in our DNA. It was an early start to our morning, we were up for 5:30, on buses before 6:45, and on the train before 7:45. We were piped (yes, kilt wearing big pipe carrying fellow), fresh faced uniform wearing 20 somethings wearing the trade mark blue uniforms and ties float waving us out of the station…and they do this 4 days a week from Vancouver, April to October. There were only 65 positions this year for first year hires, over 2,000 people applied. Our 24 passenger cars (10 gold, 14 silver) two engines, and one power car Pulled out of Vancouver for the 8-9 hour ride to Kamloops. We are in car J03. We are mid car in seats 37, 38, 39, & 40…across the aisle from each other. We are the dividing line between front and back. They have created a very fair system for first and second seating, it flips back and forth daily. So, no unattractive Senior people whining.
Well, today we are the early birds. Breakfast at 9:00, lunch at 12:30. So, 40 of us walk down the spiral stairs case to the dining car. As we were first And we seated at in the first four top table. I don’t do backwards, so we were facing forward…Eddie/Joker surveyed the room. Somewhere between coffee and pancakes, the solo gentleman at the last table facing backwards on the train, but in plain view of Eddie (and an unfortunate couple that sat with him) Eddie calmly states…”we have a Barfer ”. A little background…apparently RM passengers are like whale watching boats. You shout out a wildlife sighting-bear black or brown, elk, moose, eagle, osprey along with clock position. Everyone rushes to get a picture…silly, since the train is moving and all. Anyway, Eddie announces to our table, Barfer at 11:00. Betcha no one had that on their wildlife bingo card. The host team was scrambling, additional personnel to include guest service manager for the 3 car area, medical, haz mat. Not sure what the poor couple that was seated with him did, but they disappeared mid meal, this gentleman was promptly masked and also disappear from the passenger numbers in our car. Batman and I had read all the information, Batman had watch countless hours of you tube videos and shows on the RM…we could never figure out what happened with Covid or passengers who become ill during the trip. Guess we will find out.
Sometime after lunch and after the third round of drinks were served….there was an announcement that the two toilets in our car had failed. Just prior to the announcement, I had been on the vestibule (fancy term for the open area on train’s platform) and saw the water (and other items) surging from under the doors onto the the carpet and the roving cleaning lady, locking the doors with a key and muttering “this is not good, this is bad, very bad”. Never good. So, we were instructed to go across the vestibule, open the door to the adjoining car, careful jumping the connective train plate, steer left around the kitchen to the other end of the silver car and use their toilets (think airline lavatories) If you required a gold leaf fix, down the rear spiral galley steps to the kitchen, through the working kitchen out the door, across the connective plate and gold vestibule and use those slightly nicer and bigger facilities. Given the logistics, we went silver…besides we wanted to see for ourselves the differences.
So, Breakfast Barfer, Lunch toilet suspension, sandwiched with great scenery, golden aspen, red maples and the ever present evergreens. Yes, we saw the burned out forests…but it was not the first in the last decade, nor will it be the last. It is Mother Nature’s way of renewal. The forest floor is alive with yellows and reds where previous years’ fire had been…so, we are about an hour out of Kamloops and the natives on or train car are getting restless. There she blows, another Barfer 7 rows back. Bar service was abrupt suspended. Instead of the 4 hostesses from the car and one Manager, we had 4 additional managers and the train’s medical officer, we had lots of flying rubber gloves, masks and defibrillators…and the poor roving cleaning lady thrown in for good measure. So, one mile from the train station we stop on the railroad tracks…here comes ambulance, and fire department. Wow! The little old lady made or may not have coded, 7 rows back…but of course, with HIPAA regulations, we may never know. Call this a first for all of this group…and come to to find out, for all of those bright faced kiddos that are on the crew, too. Bottom line, three slots opened on the train at meal time….hope there is good airport service from Kamloops to where ever your final destination might be.
Batman, Robin, Catwoman, and Joker…we are getting too old for this kind of stuff. Especially after a night at the DoubleTree Hilton Kamloops. How they keep their franchise serving Naan bread and chicken dicks with Indian seasoning is beyond me. Tomorrow, we are in Jasper and another Fairmont…thank goodness, if not a defibrillator might have to be used on the Joker….he does not do 2 star hotels.
No comments:
Post a Comment