TORMENTED BY TRAINS

Well I finally made a snap decision to take that holiday that I was 
talking about months ago. Bairnsdale went out again because the 
area was on fire earlier this week (causing the train line to 
close), and now it's busy getting flooded by extreme rainfall. The 
week after there's yet another planned closure of the line all 
through melbourne for the whole weekend. But because all the 
predicted rain ended up hitting that end of the state, my earlier 
backup plan of visiting Kerang became a dry option again, and not 
too hot either. So I twiddled some plans and finally booked things 
in.

And now I wish I hadn't. For one thing, in the past the country 
services had unreserved carriages which I used so that I could 
change my mind about which service to take. No longer, it seems 
that level of accomodating behaviour was a victim of the pandemic. 
Except for the stretch between Melbourne and Bendigo, everything 
needs to be booked in advance, which means that I've got to fuss 
about making an alternate booking if I miss the train, which is 
especially hard because most of the rural stations aren't attended 
so you can't buy tickets at them.

So that adds frankly a lot more stress than I anticipated. Then 
there's the motel/hotel bookings. I rang up to book the room at the 
motel after double checking that the room with a bath (my little 
booking obsession) was still available. Nope, someone rang up just 
a few minutes earlier and booked it! There was a caravan park with 
a cabin that had a bath for a similar price, but walking 2.5Km out 
of town along the unpaved side of a highway at 10PM at night is a 
bit much even for someone as crazy as me. So I gave in and took one 
of their regular rooms with a shower.

I'd already decided to only stay one night there anyway and instead 
stay a couple of nights at Pyramid Hill, where I do believe I might 
be able to visit a hill that looks like a pyramid, albeit probably 
not much else of note. Anyway it's half the cost staying in the pub 
there so I figured I might as well get an extra night for my money 
and a bit of a break between the long train journeys. I've always 
been a bit curious about staying at an old fashioned hotel in one 
of these small country towns too.

But of course those bookings are more things to worry about, and I 
had the chicken-and-egg problem of which to book first - trains or 
accomodation. Picking the latter, the 15min of head-scratching at 
the railway station ticket office in town (apparantly not open 
tomorrow, in spite of what the website V/Line says, so I'm glad I 
went in a day early) while all my reservations were figured out was 
a nervous wait to say the least.

Still after looking at some of the things I want to see (almost 
forgot about those for a while!) I still feel like it _might_ be 
worthwhile. I did also realise late that because I have to check 
out of the first room at 10AM, that means I've got to carry my bag 
around all day until I get to Pyramid Hill in the evening, so I'll 
see how that goes. A corresponding lightening effort meant the 
ditching of my digital camera, so I wont be sharing any holiday 
shots with you until I get my darkroom set up one day.

I might be talking at you still though because in one of my 
projects that I didn't bother writing up, I got that eeePC 701 set 
up with current (but very lightweight) Linux, a fresh BIOS battery 
(_under_ the motherboard, grumble grumble), and even a set of four 
fresh(er) working cells in the main battery. Hopefully I've got 
enough energy to set it downloading the entirity of the internet 
(or at least the best bits) overnight using the free WiFi at that 
motel tonight too.

But just to shake any growing sense of confidence, there's been a 
track dislodgement on the first line I'm due to travel on, and 
various services have been canceled or transmuted into buses. Not 
my service, yet, but the updates keep changing, even apparantly in 
contradiction of the indicated update time. I really think I had 
the right idea before with day trips by car. To be fair, I think 
some of the trains are even older than my car is!

Now the motel's supposed to call me by about now with the number of 
the room I'm going to be in because I'm arriving so late they won't 
be about to let me in themselves. Let's see if it happens... Not
yet.

 - The Free Thinker