I'm Sick of This!

It's 6 am and here I am typing in the dark again. I've been up since 3 am. That's when I felt David kicking me - “I need to go to the bathroom”. No problem. We get up, I guard the door since he can't unlock it by himself. Awhile later, he emerges and I sent him back to the room while I visited the facilities. I walk back to the room and there's David on the top bunk, throwing up all over the top bunk, all over the bottom bunk, and all over everything in between. Sigh. The attendant is summoned and together we bag and tag the room. I got David changed into fresh clothes and fortunately I was wearing sleeping clothes so my own jeans and shirt are still clean. We seal the puke room off and get moved to a larger room, this one with a bathroom in the room itself. It's a shower/bathroom combination which will make clean-up easier and David does need to worship the white throne a few more times, although by now it's pretty much just dry heaves. By 5 am, he seem to have- hopefully- settled down. Time will tell. Me, I guess I'm up. I tried sleeping (the bottom bunk is big enough for both of us) but every time David twitched, I was upright and concerned. The only bright spot in the the whole deal is that I was able to text Mom and wake her up at 12 am her time (I assume she was asleep... she may have been scrubbing carpets at that hour. I dunno).

Storm's a Brewing- the last supper

We're just left Dodge City, KS. Youngest son and I were here back in November for a falconry meet. We used our Coleman pop-up camper and camped for $10/night instead of paying $85/night for motel. It was fun and it's the first time I've really used the Coleman in freezing conditions. Every trip seems to have its emergency moments and the moment then was when I turned on the propane bottle and smelled gas. We ended up getting bubbles from the regulator but were able to find a new regulator at the local- excellent, too- hardware store. So, all ended well there, although I got the new regulator on just as it was getting too dark to see.

Here on the train, it's still dark and all I can see are headlights meeting us every few minutes. I can see reflections of snow on the ground, but that's about it. Guess I'll wrap this up until later on in the adventure.

A Sick Little Boy

Later: We are HOME!!!! It was a long, long night. David threw up a few more times including one incident where he was thirsty. I handed him an 8 oz bottle of water and said “Rinse your mouth out and spit first.” He went to the bathroom to do that. A few seconds later I peered around and said “Just sip a little now.” David turned to look at me with an empty bottle in his hand. An instant later, all that water was in the toilet, freshly thrown up. Somewhere along the way, the poor kid also got diarrhea and had a “blow out”. Between La Junta and Trinidad, I convinced him to take a shower in our private shower and get cleaned up. He did. Just outside Trinidad... another blow-out. We now had no more clean clothes and almost an hour to go to Raton. We did eventually make it, where Mom picked us up and we eventually made it home. David's asleep now. I've been up since 3 am, more or less, but I've gone thru the wall and may actually never sleep again now. A very rough ending to an otherwise great trip.

Between Trinidad and Raton, from the train

It's good to be home.