Part 1: I've been riding on the railroad, all the livelong day...
Thursday morning, I got up at the crack of 6:00 am, and took my regular train downtown to Union Station. From there, though, it gets more interesting because today I'm not just trudging along Randolph to the office - I'm taking an Amtrak train to St. Louis! The train was scheduled to leave at 9:25, and since I am pathologically early to pretty much everything (I was even born early - I really think that this has something to do with this....) I was left with mucho time to kill. So I had breakfast and I bought a pile of magazines and I sat, waiting to board. It occured to me, sitting there, that if my one way economy ticket cost me only $23, what could it possibly cost to, say, upgrade? I am telling you, even though I wasn't yet firing on all cylinders, this was a pretty good idea, so I went to check it out. The upgrade to business class was only 35 additional dollars and I decided to do it. Let me tell you, I think this was the smartest decision I made all trip. 5 + hours on the train, but in business class, there were large cozy seats (with footrests!) lots of space, a free Chicago Tribune (and I HATE the Tribune! But the sight of the free issue made me very very happy) and beautiful, blissful silence, no screaming kids or annoying people on the phone. This was riding to St. Louis in STYLE.
So anyway. We're rolling along, leaving the station right on time. Lovely, I'm thinking. I don't have to drive, all I need to do is sit here, with my footrest, and relax. We were set to arrive in St. Louis at 3:00 something, plenty of time for me to eat, freshen up, take a nap, etc before the 8:00 show. Perfection itself, yes? What could possibly go wrong, right?
Yeah. Well, we got delayed outside Joliet for a bit (some weird track switcheroo type thing that required us to go in reverse for a while... fun) and then we arrived in Bloomington-Normal where our conductor informed us that we would be sitting there for "a while." All he would say was that there had been an "incident" involving another train and now "the authorities" and also "the coroner." Uh oh. The "little while" turned into to TWO HOURS sitting at the station in Bloomington-Normal, while the authorities cleared the tracks (or whatever) and I slowly became unglued. It was not pretty. All I could think of though was that if I missed the damn show, ie the entire reason I was going down to St. Louis in the first place, I would have just totally wasted this 5+ hour train ride. I don't deal with these sorts of things very calmly... but just as I was weighing the option of renting a damn car and driving to St. Louis, the conductor herded us all back on board (oh yes, they let us off to stretch and mill around) and... we were off again! Arrival time was now pushed back to around 5:00.
The rest of the ride was uneventful, although I spent lots of time gazing out the window, mentally urging the engineer to go faster, as in "Why are we going so SLOW? Let's GO, already!!" etc. And the scenery in downstate IL is less than thrilling, to say the least. Wide open spaces, farmland, the occasional cow... We passed over the Mississippi River (at least, I think it was the Mississippi River) and got a gorgeous view of the St. Louis skyline and I was elated that we had FINALLY arrived. But... it took another half hour (at least!) until we got anywhere near a station and I was getting anxious. At last, we were able to get off the train. I almost kissed the ground, but I didn't because you know, ew.
I checked into my hotel at 6:00. Quick dinner via room service allowed me to shower and generally chill the hell out before getting changed and heading out to the Fabulous Fox.
More to come...
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