This is going to be completely unbelievable – I know that before I start typing this out.  I swear that not one single piece of this is even in the least bit exaggerated.  It all happend right after my previous post.

I got on the train to come home today, like I always do.  In case you’re not familiar with the structure of a train car, when you walk in the door, you’re standing in the downstairs portion.  Off to the right or left is a set of stairs that leads up to the middle level.  The middle level has four sets of seats.  Each set has two rows that face each other and two of those sets have tables.  There’s an aisle splitting the sets down the middle and at one end of the aisle there’s a door going to the next car and at the other end there are more stairs leading up to the upstairs level.  I usually sit up there but today there was a table completely open on the middle level.  Never stay on the bottom.

Here, I tried to sketch it in Paint (what a joke) – hopefully this will help.  The arrows are pointing the direction that the seats are facing.  There are two seats for each rectangle – split in half by the black line under the arrow.

So I’m sitting, facing forward, on the right side of the train in the front (where the star is).  This guy that rides the train almost every day sits in the seat across from me and next to the aisle.  He’s kind of annoying and loud so when he sat down I thought, “Great.”  Across the aisle from us, facing forward, is a guy listening to his iPod, minding his own business.  Across from him is another guy playing a video game on his iPod with the volume up so we can all listen to it.  Behind me is a couple on their way to Oceanside for a weekend get-away.  I don’t remember who was in the other two seats across the aisle from them, and there were two people sitting in the “jump seats” in front of me.

Ok, so to the fun part.

I get on at Tustin.  We stop at Irvine.  Uneventful.  Laguna Niguel/Mission Viejo is where the fun starts.  The guy with the iPod gets off (lucky sucker).  About 12 women in various stages of drunkenness get on the train and head upstairs.  They’re loud and obnoxious and no doubt annoying the commuters upstairs because they’re annoying us and we’re not even up there.  The train conductor asked for their tickets to find out that they tried to pull a fast one on him and only bought half as many tickets as they should have and that they are on the wrong train – they really wanted the Amtrak.  Oh well.

Next, we pull into San Juan Capistrano.  The guy with the iPod gets up to get off.  He has a big ol’ backpack that he swings around to put on his shoulder, narrowly missing the guy sitting across from me.  As it’s swinging around something is coming from the back of it.  He grabs the case of Mobile Motor Oil he’s carrying and gets off the train.  It all happened so fast that I didn’t realize what was going on until he was off.  The lady behind me said, “What WAS that?”  I looked at her and said that I didn’t know and then looked down to see that my OPEN laptop bag was wet.  Really wet.  She asked if it was motor oil or if it was the chew spit that he’d been collecting in a water bottle.  WHAT?  My laptop bag is black so the only way to figure out what it is and then determine how to clean it up is to lean over and smell it.  I thought I was going to hurl.  It was CHEW SPIT.  And there was enough of it in my bag to create a puddle in the bottom.  Seriously.  Not even joking.  But it gets better.

By this time we’re getting close to San Clemente.  I’m still sitting there trying to comprehend what’s going on.  After we leave the San Clemente station, I ask the not-so-annoying-anymore guy across from me to watch my things so that I can go down and get some paper towels out of the bathroom.  He offers to go for me but I’m already up so I head downstairs.

Apparently, this crazy man got on the train by accident in San Clemente and he’s pacing back and forth trying to figure out how to get the doors open so he can get off the train.  He was beyond drunk.  And so were the three friends of his that he had helped onto the train (reason for being stuck).  I get past him and fling open the bathroom door.  The door is wide enough to fit a wheel chair (just to give some perspective).  Inside the bathroom is a woman sitting on the toilet.  She understandably freaks out, stands up and slams the door in my face, locking it.  DUH!  Why didn’t you try that to begin with?  So I stand there waiting for her to get out.  She comes out swearing at me in some language I’ve never heard.  I grab a handful of paper towels and head back to my seat.  I wipe out what I can and then take my hand sanitizer and drench my bag in it.  The smell will not go away so now my bag smells like chew spit mixed with alcohol.

We’re now somewhere in the middle of Camp Pendleton and the guy across from me is going over the whole story with me and we’re cracking up.  The couple behind me is laughing too.  As we pull into Oceanside, I look over at the pier and the beautiful ocean, grateful that this is almost over and then, just in the nick of time, I glance over at a couple of surfers in the parking lot pulling a “surfer change.”  They have towels around their waists and are changing from their wetsuits to their clothes.  One of them looks at the train and pulls his towel open, flashing us all.  Thanks dude.

Seriously.  All in one trip.

I need a new bag.