Tuesday, September 11, 2001, the world, as we know it, changed irrevocably and horribly.

I was on a business trip to Mobile, Alabama at the time, with plans to fly home on Thursday. Knowing airlines probably would not be back to anything resembling normal by Thursday, and really wanting to get back to the Northwest, I arranged to ride the train home, starting Wednesday. It turned out to be a surreal adventure.

We are a train full of refuges with cell phones and laptops, getting home as best we can.

People periodically fret about how slowly we travel across the country, but for the most part we make temporary friendships and form temporary communities bounded by the doors at each end of the rail car. We read or are mesmerized by the unending rolling plains of stubble fields, corn, or cattle ranges. We wave at eastbound trains and listen to, or make up, rumors about what’s happening in the world outside of the train. Some people call family and co-workers, on their cell phones, for news. Others empty newspaper dispensing machines at each station stop, then share the rumpled remains with other passengers.

The train crew struggle to deal with double the normal number of passengers (about 430 on this train), when they are equipped to handle many fewer. They do this cheerfully and, for the most part, we appreciate their efforts and thank them.

We are lawyers, salesmen, teachers, pilots stranded without airplanes, doctors, retirees, newspaper reporters, and families. Yet we are all together crawling across the northern part of the country on ribbons of steel, watching the farms and towns pass by us.

We tell and listen to stories about where we were when the world came to a halt and where we are going, and what has happened to us along the way. This one was in NYC, mere blocks from the World Trade Center, doing research. Another is a cargo pilot, forced down in the Midwest. Others were on business to Mobile, Boca Raton, Baltimore, Boston.

At night we try to sleep, sharing close quarters with each other. Wandering in the night, one can find sleeping bodies on the floors, under the seats, in the observation car, in the lady’s lounge, the snack bar, and even on the baggage shelves.

We discover time - time to have a quiet conversation, time to read a book, time to take a nap, or time to see parts of the country we only imagined existed.

It becomes a game of sorts, to figure out how far behind we are on the schedule and how far we are from the next stop.Throughout the days and nights we either are sidelined for freight coming east, or we pass sidelined freight trains waiting on us (Amtrak does not own the rail lines, so passenger trains are low priority).

The evening of the third day, the train crew announce they have run out of food in the dining car before getting to our car. A college student organizes several people who collect money and call to a town, 60 miles down the rail, for pizza - 18 of them - to feed everyone on the car. The coordination goes without a hitch and the people who had only snack foods to look forward to have pizza for dinner.

On the last morning, the college student discovers a little girl, on our car, is celebrating her birthday. Again, he organizes and collects from people throughout the train. We get her a cake, a card and a pair of star-shaped sunglasses.At the next station, the cake is delivered on time. A successful surprise party erupts mid-car and we all sign the card with our names, where we started, and where we are going. It’s a birthday young Emma will not soon forget - nor shall we.We create a certificate of appreciation and present it to the student with a hardy ‘Hip Hoorah’ and handshakes all around.

At the end of the long journey across much of America, we tell each other, “Good luck.Take care.” Knowing we may never see each other again, yet rejoicing in the richness of knowing one and another, we shake hands and walk through the station doors to friends and family who are thankful to have us home once more.