So Basil hops a train to go from Stamford, Connecticut to Chicago, Illinois…

I don’t think he realized it was going to take 2 days!

Basil left yesterday morning and then arrived in Washington, DC in the early afternoon. That was a 4 hour train ride. He then waited a couple hours in Washington before hopping on a train to Chicago…which takes 17 hours and 35 minutes!

In total, Basil traveled 836 miles (or 1,345 km).

Now, Basil did send in a report, but he did it via chat/email over his satellite Internet connection, and when Basil sends in reports or tries to write anything, it’s sketchy at best. He can write some of the cleanest/slickest code this side of Microsoft employees, but ask him to write an explanation of it, or communicate in a form other than bits and bytes and the donkey’s lost. So, take everything I’m reporting on his behalf with a hefty grain of salt.

Basil’s trip from Stamford to Washington was uneventful. He slept for most of the time, and aside from waking up to an empty cabin (all the passengers seemed crushed into the cabins in front of him and behind him) things went fine. People did seem to run away from him holding their noses as they disembarked from the train…

In Washington, Basil says he hooked up with a fellow by the name of Dick Cheney on the way to Chicago.

I said, “THE Dick Cheney?”

Basil retored, “Yes. Dick Cheney.”

Please note: Basil’s knowledge of US politics (or any politics for that matter) is next to nil. So it’s highly unlikely that he was sitting with Dick Cheney. Still…

The two of them rode to Chicago together in the bar car, enjoying gin martinis and pretzels.

During the trip, Basil got into what he calls a “miscommunication” with another passenger when he went into the snack car. He assumed the snack car meant anything inside it was fair game for consumption, and when he started chewing on a lady’s straw hat things went quickly downhill.

He could only describe her as, “tall, blond and Swedish…” and apparently she was quite offended when Basil chomped a chunk out of her hat. The security on the train immediately took Basil to the “prison car” and interrogated him. Now Basil is known to exaggerate particularly when he’s stuffed with martinis and pretzels, but he claims to have sat in the prison car for a couple of hours.

Security was concerned that an International incident might erupt over the hat eating, but luckily Dick Cheney was there to negotiate a peaceful resolution to the conflict.

The security personnel released Basil under Dick’s supervision and the two of them made it safely to Chicago this morning. It sounds like Basil got a few hours of shut-eye and so he should be raring to go in Chicago!

Liz Strauss takes over now, and we’ll have to wait and see what adventures she and Basil get into next!

(Related Tags: dick cheney, trains, humor, liz strauss, martinis)