Into Training for Detroit

This morning I bit the bullet and redeemed 80,000 Amtrak Guest Rewards points (most of which are actually transferred from my Diner's Club card representing years of purchases with it) to buy a round-trip Superliner Bedroom (the big room with its own integral shower/toilet compartment) on the California Zephyr between Emeryville and Chicago on our way to/from Detcon 1. That's a $3780 ticket, so I feel pretty good about buying it on points.

( Train Schedule Neepery )

A reassuring element of train travel over air is that these tickets are fully refundable until the departure of the booked trains; that is, if we change our minds, we get the points back. It's not like air travel where if you make one mistake, your money evaporates and you're stuck.

I'm looking forward to this trip. It will be our third (and fourth) times on the Zephyr. It's the first time we've gone east and west on the same route, but we couldn't work out a routing that would take us over one of the other routes (the only big east-west route we haven't done is the Empire Builder) and still fit the needs of the rest of our schedule.