I Hear the Train A-Comin'

So I was in a bit of a hurry today, as I am prone to be, and I rushed out of the grocery store with the jubilant thought that Yes! Yes! I can get dinner on the table BEFORE Tyler, Randy and Sawyer head off in one direction and the girls and I go in the other.

And then . . . I saw them. The lights. The red lights. They were flashing. Snap! Why does a train have to be coming NOW??

I don't know much about trains or conductors or engineers, but I've always sort of assumed that a switch is flipped (ha ha--I accidentally wrote "flip is switched" and didn't catch it for a minute) at a particular time when a train is about to cross traffic. That is, when the train is approaching a railroad crossing I would think that the gates would be activated when the train is a certain number of feet away, and I would further assume that the distance is determined based on how quickly the train is traveling. Or maybe that's just me.

I've decided I might have been mistaken all this time. I believe it may be up to the individual conductor/engineer to decide when to alert the general public that a train is headed their way. And I have determined, based on extensive research (i.e., the number of times I've been caught at the train tracks near our house) that some conductors are on a power trip. I think they love that we in our puny little motorcars are at the mercy of them in their big, powerful locomotives. That's how it appears to me, anyway.

See, when I got to the railroad crossing I was the second car in line to cross the tracks, so I had a nice, clear view in both directions. But before I'd had that nice, clear view, I'd had to travel I don't know how many feet from the grocery store to the crossing so I'd had all that time to watch the lights flashing, warning me of the impending arrival of the oncoming train. (I'm sure the distance from the store to the tracks is germane to this conversation but, as I am woefully inadequate at estimating distance I can't with any accuracy say whether the distance is 50 feet or 500 feet. Live with it.)

The point is, when I arrived at the tracks, drumming my fingers on the steering wheel and hoping against hope that I was going to be treated to a view of the very fast-moving Amtrak that occasionally passes by, instead I was treated to a view of . . . nothing. Look the other way. Zip. Oooh, great, this is one of those tests where the gates go down for just a few seconds and immediately revert back into place. Alright!! Except . . . no, they're not reverting. The gates are not reverting! Why aren't the gates reverting??!

And then I saw the world's slowest train chugging down the tracks--and I use the term "chugging" just as I would when I refer to my dinosaur laptop. I'm pretty sure I heard the prelude and sang two full verses and the chorus of Steven Curtis Chapman's The Great Adventure while I watched the train's approach, and I couldn't help but think the conductor was sitting up on his perch, laughing his head off or maybe even chuckling with evil glee as he though about all the people (like me) sitting in our idle cars, drumming our fingers on the steering wheel and cursing our fate.

Isn't that awful? Why would I think that? I don't even know the person and I assume he/she is trying to make our lives miserable just for kicks. Almost as soon as I had the thought I banished it from my mind.

Almost.