Results tagged “amtrak”

Early Sunday evening, KING5-TV reports, two women had taken four dogs out for a walk near the train tracks (not to be confused with light rail track) just outside of Seattle, when one dog ran off and onto the train tracks just as a Chicago-bound Amtrak train was approaching. Moments later, the eastbound train struck and killed the dog and injured one of the women who raced after it. The injured woman was brought onboard the train and taken to the Edmonds Station, where paramedics whisked her away to Harborview.

We can vouch for this because we've been IMing with a friend of ours who is on the Amtrak Cascades train to Portland, and other than getting false disconnection notices, it's working like a charm. We filled him on the Seattle Metblogs story about Seattle atheists buying ads on Metro. That seemed like a good use of WiFi. Tell Portland! The atheists are coming!

As we were delivering people to the airport on Monday morning--by the power of Subaru!--one of our passengers glanced up at the light rail line under construction and said, "This ought to be the last winter you have to shuttle people to the airport." Which we were pleased about. But then we got to thinking.

Yesterday, we looked up at the clock tower and noticed we had just enough time to duck in for coffee before heading off to...Wait a minute! We what!?!

Amtrak has some good prices going fast for its fall fare sale. You have to order your tickets by Friday, August 8, and you can get to such exotic locales as Wenatchee ($19), Spokane ($37), and Portland ($24). Whitefish, Montana, is just $67 and...let's see...multiply the denumberator...323 hours away. Those are all one-way prices, and you gotta travel between September 2 and December 11, 2008. Still, $48 r/t to Portland is not bad, though we advise you to invest the savings in business class, or, if you decide to stick it out in coach, a beer helmet.

One of the sadder stories we heard yesterday, from a friend who was on the Portland-Seattle train, was about the 17-year-old Kent girl who was hit and killed by a southbound Amtrak as she crossed the tracks. The Seattle Times blame-placers let you know the culprit right in the headline: "Train kills girl, 17, who was talking on phone."