This statement above may seem obvious to many people, but I was one of the few people who traveled during the bomb cyclone. I had a good reason though. My final destination was to go Houston to help the victims of Hurricane Harvey as a service trip with my college, I just had to get to my college first.
I got a train ticket that was supposed to leave the New Rochelle Train Station at 1:19 pm, since the roads were bad I got an Uber at around 11:30 to pick me up. I live about 30 minutes from the train station on a normal day. I budgeted over an hour for this uber ride, so I could make my train on time.
The drive to the train station was horrendous because of the roads, but my Uber driver knew what he was doing and I felt incredibly secure as a passenger in that car. It was my train that was the problem.
My train kept on getting delayed more and more as the minutes went on. The first delay said it would come in at around 1:35 p.m. and that was understandable because of the snow and they were being cautious. It was the fact that they kept on adding more and more delays to this train that made me freak out.
I was not sure if I was going to make it to Delaware, and as the train kept on getting more and more delayed, I began to freak out. I was dead set positive that this train was going to get canceled because of the inclement weather. All of the other trains after had been canceled.
I began to have this full blown out panic attack. I asked people that worked at the train station, my mom, and even called up Amtrak to find out where this train was and if there was a possibility of it getting canceled. The lady on the phone said to me that there was a mechanical error on the train and that’s why it was so delayed.
After the nice lady on the phone told me this, I began to freak out even more. THERE WAS SOMETHING WRONG WITH THE TRAIN THAT IS SUPPOSED TO GET ME FROM POINT A TO POINT B DURING A SNOW HURRICANE! To me freaking out was the only natural option because I was set to go on a broken train.
As I called my mom with this news, the train kept on getting delayed more and more. My anxiety rose through the roof, and I was on the verge of tears. I felt like I was never going to make it to Delaware to go on this trip that would mark the first time I had ever left the East Coast.
In addition, this trip, in general, is a big deal. It’s about giving back and this is the first time that I’ve had an opportunity to give back directly to a community. Especially a community that is still in need for help from a massive Hurricane.
Hurricane Harvey affected so many lives and caused massive flooding in Houston. Floods destroyed a lot of people’s homes and these people lost things that are irreplaceable. When I found out about this trip, I knew I had to go and make a difference because my goal in life is to change the world.
A big reason why Houston was heavily flooded after the hurricane was because Houston is in a floodplain, which means that waters from wherever the main body of water is, overflow. Cities were never supposed to be built in floodplains, but they were.
To compensate, the government provides flood insurance, and in short, the system is corrupt and needs to be reworked.
As a result, a lot of people cannot afford to rebuild their homes, and that’s where my trip comes in. What I’m doing on this trip is basically helping these homes for these people slowly become re-livable. I’m volunteering as a member of the Blue Hen Leadership Program, and getting accepted to go on this trip was such an honor because so many people wanted to go.
My flight to Houston was January 5th early in the morning, from Baltimore. The faculty advisor of the trip said that we should all meet on campus at 5 am on January 5th. That meant that I had to get to campus the night before and stay with someone.
That’s why I was traveling during the snow hurricane and the reason to why I had to keep my hopes high during my train being constantly delayed. My train ended up being over 2 1/2 hours late. In addition, it took my train an extra twenty minutes to pull into the station.
I was positive one of my feet had gotten frostbite. I had a spare pair of socks and as soon I got onto the train, I changed the socks on my right foot. For some reason, my left foot wasn’t that cold, but my right foot was so cold that it hurt.
I spent the first twenty minutes of my train ride looking like a weirdo because I was rubbing my foot. To be fair, my foot was on the verge of freezing off.
My train was going at a snail's pace, and all of the other trains were operating just fine. I asked the people around me about the mechanical delay, and it turns out that the train had a frozen engine. WHAT?
The train that I relied on getting me from point A to point B had a frozen engine. They had to fix it and apparently, it took over an hour TO REPLACE AN ENGINE. How does an engine freeze?
Oh yeah because of the frigid temperatures that were tormenting the northeast at the time, and the snowstorm put moisture on it somehow, and caused it to freeze.
I didn’t end up getting to the house I was staying at around 7:00 p.m., and the rest of the night was fun.
Overall, I spent over 10 hours traveling that day when it really should’ve taken me five. Also, I only got five hours of sleep. It was a great day.
Moral of the story: never travel during a snowstorm.
