I was surprised to have been woken up at nine.
Jhary was going to wake me at eight when he and Tiffany left, although I'd stated my preference as being woken up at nine, it couldn't reasonably happen if he were out of the house at the time. Tiffany, however, had decided not to go to her first class, so I got a much-needed extra hour of sleep.
I went to the bathroom and brushed my teeth. This trip has been exactly long enough: not so long that I'm fussy it's not over, but not so short I'm peevish that it can't go on longer. I'm tired -- not from lack of sleep, or lack of graciousness on the part of my hosts, but of having to be just as socially "on" at this stop as I was at the first, second, or any intermediate stop. Yes, they'd forgive me bitchiness if I dished it out, but... they deserve better than that. And I am excited to see them... but I miss my husband. I miss my cats, I miss my bed, I miss my humble little brown house tucked in its corner of North Berkeley. I miss my friends back home.
It's exactly time. Another week and I'd be insufferable.
Quarter of ten comes. I gather my things. The plan is to have breakfast, come back for my stuff, stow it at Union Station for a couple hours while I have lunch in the Loop with Kadlin and maybe a little sightseeing, then be back at the station in plenty of time to make the train.
The cold snap followed me here from Minnesota: where I'd been happy in just a windbreaker the other day, today called for the down coat and furry hat. Having girded my loins, I picked up a set of keys from Jhary and Tiffany, who swore they wouldn't be there when I got back, and strolled down Belmont towards the L station.
Alan said he'd meet me here, with the baby, and hell, I expected him to come by train, so I loitered where people exit the L.
A red four-door sedan pulled up across the street. "Hey, Lorrie!"
Ah ha! He drove! Well, with a baby, that really made sense. And hey, look, his wife MG was with him! Luckily, I had happened to pick one of the very few restaurants in the area that featured its own parking lot: Ann Sather's Swedish Diner. Jhary and Tiffany were solidly behind the breakfasts here. Personally, I'll take most any opportunity to enjoy lingonberries, so here we were.
Alan, MG, and I caught each other up on our lives. In the way of parents, their lives mostly consisted of "baby" and related topics. We swapped tales of old times, inquired of previous mutual contacts, and had a lovely brunch.
Alan enjoyed Swedish pancakes, which looked like crêpes to me. They featured a dollop of lingonberry preserve for a topping, and you could also add strawberries or ice cream, if you liked. Ariel, the baby, was content to look beatific in the way all happy, healthy babies can. MG and I went for fish: she with salmon in a dill sauce, I with a piece of orange roughy. These came with salad or soup, and MG had a lentil soup I actually enjoyed (the first lentil soup I've ever enjoyed), and I chose to have lingonberry vinaigrette on my salad, and I liked that so much, I bought a bottle to take home on the train with me.
Afterwards, I had the happy family gather together for a group shot.
Alan then volunteered to drive my bag and I to the train station to make my life infinitely easier, so we drove back the two blocks to Jhary and Tiffany's house. I was surprised to find them still there, but Tiffany had apparently declared a mental health day and was staying home from all her rehearsals, classes, and whatnot. She finally consented to let me take a picture of her, one of the few ever released to the public. Here goes!
After another set of farewells, I lugged the Large Bag of Doom down to the curb, where Alan helped me heft it into his sedan, accompanied by another Fond Farewell at Union Station.
But I wouldn't need a silly old luggage locker today. No, I was in the sleeping car. As far as Amtrak cares, that's first class. I went to their Metropolitan Lounge, a little place they have for sleeping car passengers in all their major stations -- there're free soft drinks, a bank of sit-down payphones with modem jacks and, o happy day, free luggage check for carry-on bags.
I quickly took everything I'd need for the next couple hours out of my backpack and into my Coat of Many Pockets, then stashed both bags with thanks. I was free! Next, I called Kadlin -- yup, still up for lunch.
I L'd over to the Honorable Richard J. Daley Plaza, the one with that big Picasso horse sculpture in front, dodged some sort of vocal competition for wee ones in the lobby, and finally met Kadlin, who suggested we head to Marshall Field's for lunch -- I agreed.
Directly opposite Daley Plaza is the First Methodist Church of Chicago. I only mention it as one of Chicago's many architecturally unique buildings; it struck me as oddest. For the bottom twenty or so floors, it was a standard-looking sandstone skyscraper, yay.
Then, the top one-third to one-half of the building looked like some bizarre graft: it was the top of a cathedral attached to the bottom of a skyscraper. Most surreal.
Marshall Fields is one of those grande dames of department stores, like Macy's or Bloomingdale's, but the world has moved on, and the time for upscale department stores has essentially passed, at least insofar as downtown anchor stores, with all their grandeur, are concerned. The Fields family sold the stores to the same company that owns Target, for example, and there's a slightly tacky aura that pervades even here. A department store like this used to take a whole office building -- Higbee's in Cleveland took nine floors for merchandise, for example, then another on top for restaurants and offices. This one had been squashed to a forlorn shadow of its former self, the remainder slated for use as offices and condominiums.
The seventh floor, though, was a food court whose management had been outsourced and was actually pretty decent. Stations skirted the edges offering noodles, soups, salads, and grilled items. I ordered some chicken pad thai, and Kadlin had a salad. Unfortunately, their idea of 'pad thai' involved, er, odd things done to spaghetti noodles, with chili paste intended to substitute for the actual flavor of Thai cuisine, so I wasn't all that impressed. Then again, it's Thai in Chicago, I should be happy they even thought of chili paste. Mostly, this goes to show how ready I am to go home, though.
We didn't have much time left for Kadlin to do much more than point out buildings as we hustled her back to her office, and I had no intention of being late for the train to California, so I clomped down the stairs to the Blue Line L.
As I descended to the Blue Line platform, I heard bluesy trumpet music wafting up the stairs, fitting my melancholy mood -- while happy to go home, yes, it still meant this pleasant, though manic, idyll was over. The trumpet player, his busker's license clearly visible, smiled at me and said I looked nice as I strolled by him to wait for the train. I coyly smiled back, then prudently hid just outside his line of sight until the train was nearly due.
I fished two quarters out of my pocket and pitched them into the trumpet player's case with another shyly coy smile. He laughed, and lauded me again, to which I sadly informed him I was quite unavailable for reasons I left vague (the husband thing, the couple thousand mile thing...), but I blessed him with another winning grin in answer to his shrug and casual, "Hey, it's worth a shot... 'cos you never know, you know?"
I laughed and agreed as the doors closed behind me. No, you never do know. And hey, even a cheap compliment is worth fifty cents.
I pulled up Earthlink's 800 number and checked the old mail back at Amtrak's Lounge of Snoot, then did the last web page update I could conceivably squeeze in -- unless there's enough time for me to upload during a layover, or if I go really insane and guilty and try using the train's own telephone. They called for boarding, I rescued my carry-ons, and boarded the train... it was strange, but the next couple days' routine, familiar to me from my trip east, was actually quite restful -- because of its very constancy. The train moves, people are friendly, food happens on schedule, and I have exactly as much time to myself as I want.
To clarify, briefly, a point that several correspondents have raised in the past week: Yes, this is the exact same route that was involved in that derailment last week that killed that guy. No, I wasn't there. No, I'm not creeped out -- I just figure that means it won't strike again on the same line so soon. Besides, I wasn't going to fly after all this.
This sleeper car featured tacky burnt orange decor (eck). I pulled out the compartment's table to write another journal entry...
And pulled it right on out of its socket. Hrm. "Whoso pulleth this tray table from this compartment is rightwise Queen of All Amtrak?"
Probably not. Time to find the attendant. This table, made of plastic unlike the one in the car I'd ridden in on the Sunset Limited (that had been metal), had cracked around the hinge, allowing the pin that held it in place to fall out at the slightest provocation. Dave arrived and immediately tried to set things to rights, even though he hadn't finished making his initial rounds of the car yet. He was so sweet, trying to fix it and all -- I'll have to make sure to tip him well Wednesday morning. He had to partially disassemble my compartment, and eventually had to result to a crowbar, but eventually I was back in service -- I just had to be more careful than the previous occupant. Dave said that this was the very first Superliner Sleeper ever to roll off an assembly line and be pressed into service, a fact I verified later by looking at the train's exterior. Yup, 32001. That explained why the table was touchy, and a build date of 1979 nearly excused the burnt orange and avocado decor.
Ponderously, the train pulled from the station and rattled and banged down the track. The fellow across the hall was quite talkative, and we shared a couple conversations as suburban Chicago faded away to farmland. Yup, those plains are flat, although there's still the occasional tree or low, rolling rise to distract the eye.
Dinner was called, and I rose from yet another journal entry addressed to You, O Constant Reader, to heed its siren song. It was salmon with some sort of sour-cream based sauce that involved green onions and dill, flanked by onioned green beans to one side and blandly prepared yellow corn, with a baked potato riding drogue. My dinner companions all had the steak instead, although we did all indulge in the turtle ice cream pie.
The train rolled on. The last bits of twilight saw us crossing the Mississippi for my last time this journey, out of Illinois and into Iowa. I tried to take a picture, but it came out in one hundred twenty-eight beautiful shades of, er, well, black.
After dinner and sufficient journal-poking, I made my bed, curled up with Pratchett, and eventually fell asleep... but not until Iowa, cite of that crash, was well past, proven by the presence of Omaha, Nebraska.
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