Chicago

Dear Chewey,

I forgot to tell you this before I left, but it was so crazy that I thought you might enjoy the story…

When I left work on Thursday for the final time, I was feeling a lot of things, as you know. I sat in my car and stared at my 1950s-era building for about ten minutes, realizing it would be the last time I’d ever see it. After a deep inhale and exhale, I finally started the car. The music kicked in immediately, and the song playing was “Last Train to London” right at the very beginning, too. Isn’t that crazy?! Anyway, as sad as that song can be, it gave me great peace with my decision to take this adventure.

Ok, on to Day 2, which I think is technically Day 3 because, frankly, the days and nights bleed together when it comes to this overnight train travel stuff.

As expected, I missed my connection in Chicago to get to New York and it wasn’t a minor miss, either. We arrived in Chicago at 1 a.m. today. There were about thirty of us who all missed our connections to various destinations out of Chicago. First, they herded us into a large room that looked eerily like the kind of place they take families of victims after a derailment, so it was a bit sad-looking. I was fighting some horrific nausea, almost certainly induced by the three helpings of train beef stew I’d consumed two hours prior. I call it train beef stew” because nothing created “fresh” on the train bears even the slightest resemblance to its home-cooked counterpart.

Around 3 a.m., the Amtrak manager gathered all thirty of us, by now eerily similar in appearance to a crew of extras on “The Walking Dead”and we followed him to a charter bus that took us to the hotel where we stayed last night. It was a beautiful location (pictures below), but hard to enjoy given that my eyes were involuntarily crossed from exhaustion. I did, however, manage to snap a picture of the view from my hotel (again, pictures below).

I fell asleep around 4 a.m. and woke up at 8 to get back on our charter bus to return to the train station, where I’ve been for the last twelve hours.

Chicago Union Station is a work of art and served as the setting for one of the best movie scenes in history when The Untouchables captured their star witness against Al Capone. My time here has been less cinematic.

I spent most of my day carrying the luggage of an incredibly sweet elderly woman named Betty, who had apparently forgotten to book her second leg out of Chicago. My career skills came in handy, as I spent several hours negotiating with Amtrak management to get Betty on a sold-out train to Little Rock, Arkansas.

While it was rewarding to help Betty, my mental bandwidth was down to millimeters when I was approached by Tark, a non-English-speaking man who had apparently ridden with me from New Mexico to Chicago. Tark had also failed to purchase the second leg of his trip so back to the Amtrak customer service department I went.

Now I’m sitting on one of the many beautiful but horrifically uncomfortable wooden benches that line Union Station’s Great Hall, writing you this letter. My train isn’t here until 9:40 p.m., and then I’ll be another twenty-hour ride to New York City. I’m very tired, but on the bright side, Betty tells me that my chakra is bright or something like that so I’ve got that going for me.

I love you, Chewbacca. Aunt Britt tells me that you’re sleeping on the floor mat next to my bathroom, hoping I’ll come out. Don’t do that. Don’t be sad. This isn’t forever, and you’ll be stronger if you just try to enjoy the people who love you there.

I’ll write tomorrow.

Love,

Dad