How not to start a trip

Right now I'm sitting on a train outside of Meridian, Mississippi at around 12:30 am listening to lute music, so all is more or less as it should be. I could stand to get some sleep, but 1) I can't find my sleep mask which would help and 2) I maybe half seriously want to be up to have a moment of silent tribute in Laurel, Mississippi when we stop there. Birthplace of Leontyne Price and all.

I would put the beginning of the trip as the moment I lay down on my couch to sleep the night before departing and realized I had pinkeye. A trip to the mirror confirmed it. I thought: this will not do. I had it a year or so ago and it's uncomfortable and you really would not want to spend a day on a train with it. 

There were some vigamox eye drops left in the medicine cabinet, doubtless expired I thought, but what was I going to do? I had to get some sleep and there was no way to go to the doctor the next day, so I dosed myself and went to bed. 

They seem to have worked actually but the trip so far has been the kind of thing that might be presaged by a sudden case of pinkeye. 

Basically we ran over someone. Just outside of DC. There was too much of a remove between the passengers and the situation to get very traumatized about it but it instantly turned into a 7-hour delay. 

I found this out by texting with a friend who googled it up.  Amtrak Staff didn't make the smallest effort to give us any idea what was going on. Sitting on a train where nobody is saying why you're sitting still is like being held hostage by bumbling incompetents. 

Finally we lurched south and I took a benzo (having polished off the tiny airport bottles of rum I smuggled on hours before) and put on my sleep mask and useless neck pillow thingy and got some relatively comfortable sleep. I think I had gritted my teeth into a powder. 

Sometimes you make up time. We lost another three hours somewhere. 

My seatmate is a nice enough guy, fairly uninteresting to me as I imagine I am to him. (A while after I dropped into the conversation that I'm "indoorsy" he asked if I had done much backpacking and I refrained from expressing surprise a the verbal form of that common object.)