The Tennessee Train Ride....that did not check the bucket list

So, Michael and I decide it would be fun to take the kids on a "train ride" in Chattanooga....Senna says an authentic train ride is on her bucket list.   Let's do this.    We meet up, pay way more than any train ride of its' time would have cost, but so be it...they will love it.   Senna screams: "I can check my bucket list!!!"

We are walking into the station and a train comes in, horn blowing, kids jumping....and one older enough man squirming with excitement, giving me the don't-leave-your-kid-alone vibe.   

Load up the 6-pack of kids (regrettably not beer), and off we are for the epic ride through the mountains of Tennessee.   We said.   A nice tutorial from the speaker telling us about the old railway system as the kids are each crawling under the gum laden, funk infested, foulness absorbing cloth seats...   They are screaming, yelling, wrestling, hiding....not really any attention to the memorable historic train ride.   No surprise.   I remember nothing about the train ride except the creeper, the disgusting seats and the hilarious image of the kids mauling Michael at the end of the "trip".   

We make it to the 'turn around point' of the trip (10 minutes after we start) and decide it is a better idea to keep the orangutans on crack inside the car as opposed to letting them out in the wild of the train refurbishing station (with the fear of possibly never seeing Sebastian again).    

The longest 25 minutes in history and the whistle blows for the rest of the adventurers *said in jest* to climb back on the train.   This time the concerning right-out-of-the-movie-likely-pedophile finds his seat much closer to our swarm of children.   Now I'm front and center between us and him - the barricade is up and no child will be left to the creeper.   

I successfully keep the kids on the other side of the bad movie and we make it back to the station realtively unscathed minus Senna saying "Ok, sorry, a real train ride is still on my bucket list".....    Unscathed in theory.   I am pretty sure Michael, Abby and myself are much closer to going postal than we were when this started.    Michael is then blessed with some icing on the cake (nom nom)...Senna, Sterling and Axel think it will be fun to harass him to insanity (and Beyond!! (Buzz Lightyear style)).   I have to take a photo.    

Pretty sure the most entertaining part of the whole experience was much later (for me at least)...when I went to lob over the photo of the barbarians going after the innocent bystander (aka Papa)...and I was genuinely entertained, laughing out loud as I zoomed in losing focus on the subject and noticing Mila's impressive left hook.   

Cheers to the moments... good, bad and everything in between.