The opening night of the convention we held our Company Appreciation Night on the Charlie Russell Chew Choo. Company appreciation night is to show our appreciation (duh) for the companies our members do business with, and who sponsor many of the events at our convention. It gives the company reps face time with our agents, and is usually a fun evening.
This year since the convention was in Lewistown, we had dinner on the Charlie Russell Chew Choo. It's about 3 hours on a train (thankfully air conditioned!) that leaves - literally - from the middle of nowhere about 8 miles outside of Lewistown.
We bussed everyone there from the hotel. That was fun. Have you any idea how hard it is to get people on buses? Seriously. I have no idea how many times I had to holler "I need FOUR MORE PEOPLE ON THIS BUS." Finally I just started grabbing people and shoving them on. :) I got quite a few comments of "You're as bad as Roger." To which I always replied "Well, I was trained by the master! Do you want to make the train or not???"
It really was a lot of fun. Dinner was fabulous, excellent prime rib and baked potato, beautiful scenery! We didn't see too much wildlife, some bald eagles and antelope and deer. That's about it. But it was a fun and relaxing evening.
Even when the young agents took over the bar car. Ooops. And one of my coworkers had to make a mad dash through the cars to the engine in order to take the microphone away from one of the more, uh, overzealous young agents that had too much to drink and started to do a one-man radio show...Yikes.
Halfway back to Lewistown, we heard all these loud noises coming from outside the train. Everyone jumped and exclaimed, especially when we looked out the window and saw we were being robbed!
They stopped the train, got on, and "robbed" us. The train provides fake $7 dollar bills. There were even old-west "ladies of the evening" that got on the train and kissed the gentlemen before robbing them. :)
It was hilarious. Once they finished with us, they got off the train and proceeded to fight over the money. The women won, naturally!
