Home Contents ************************** Toledo to Chicago. I don't know if it was just the lighting, but it was so easy to find photos in Chicago. The building on the right was actually parallel to the camera, but the pattern made false perspective when framed close. More false perspective. Pigeons stand watch. The Chicago River. A restaurant across the river. Bicycle parking. Lunch crowd. Wavy steps in Union Station. Eighty-one years of travelers. Boy Scout occupation. Cornfield. The Southwest Chief throught the midwest. Go to June 16th.

Day 7 June 15th, 2007 Toledo, Chicago, and starting towards Los Angeles There wasn't much to talk about on the way to Chicago. As I've already said, I didn't feel like walking, and since the lounge on the Lakeshore Limited isn't like the one on the Superliners I didn't have much desire to go. I did spend time in the vestibule at the back of the train looking at and taking video of where I'd been. We got into Chicago at about noon, about two hours and fifteen minutes behind schedule. That worked just fine for me. My feet did NOT want to walk in Chicago. Besides that, it was a warm sunny day, not good for walking if you don't get a shower for the next three days. I walked around just a little and shot a few photos, but I wasn't venturing far. I took a short walk around a couple of blocks, but quickly returned to the Chicago River and spent most of my time there. I think that Chicago is a much more photographically interesting city than. There are interesting buildings and scenes everywhere, and it isn't such a mess that you can't isolate a good shot. They have the el trains to make the city streets interesting, and you can also walk down to the waterfront and get good overall shots of the city. New York has the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, and everything else is mashed in there with the rest. Chicago has space between things. One thing New York might be better for is the small scenes, like the guys selling shish-kabobs and stuff. I really need to practice taking those kind of street-scene photos. With the bad weather for scenics I would have probably been better off focusing on the small stuff. The train station in Chicago was built in 1925. When I entered and started down the stairs, I noticed that the steps were uneven. Looking closer I realized that they were worn by more than eighty years of passengers going up and down the stairs. It never even occurred to me that there would be that kind of wear in stone from people. The Southwest Chief left for Los Angeles on time that afternoon, and it was packed. I don't know if it was because it was Friday or just because it was summer, but all of the seats were taken again. Seating was assigned this time. I wish I knew why they did that on some trains and not others. Perhaps one day I'll ask. I was seated next to a guy who was going all the way to Los Angeles. The first thing he did was look around at some of the empty seats and ask the attendant was if we could spread out, but he was told that the train was going to fill up. He didn't know at the time how lucky he was getting seated with me. I left for the lounge and didn't come back for more than retrieving or depositing a charger in my backpack until we were entering Los Angeles. The lounge in the Southwest Chief was a pretty blue color this time, and it was full. There was a boy scout troup taking up half of the car. Our lounge attendant Karol informed me that they were heading to Raton New Mexico for some kind of major Boy Scout event. When I asked if they'd be getting a merit badge in tipping she just shook her head. The train stopped in the middle of Illinois near a dot on the map called Arlington. Apparently a freight train was losing some cargo and our train had to hold there until a hazmat team could check and see if the spill was some noxious chemical that would kill us all. They managed to pronounce all was safe after only about half an hour to an hour. I think this was the only delay where nobody complained. I guess when it's wait or possibly die, people are ok waiting. I had dinner at 8pm that night with a teacher from Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. He was was traveling to Phoenix to visit his parents. He became a fourth grade after fifteen years as a computer programmer. His employer closed up shop and he needed something to do in Kitty Hawk. He told me a funny story about how his students were doing the practice for a standardized test (break out your number 2 pencils). At the scheduled breaks, any of the kids who was still working on his test got a single M&M. Well, forty percent of the kids got one, leaving sixty percent that didn't. So he gets called in to the principal's office and when he asks why the principal says "Well, because little Timmy didn't get an M&M." The kid's parents took it all the way to the superintendent of schools. Jesus, so Timmy didn't get an M&M. Give me someone's head on a platter! This is a kid who's going to grow up and sue his employer someday. He had a layover in Chicago from 8am when his train from North Carolina got in until 3:15 when we left, and he did a little exploring (up to the top of the Sears Tower, which was a big deal for him since he doesn't like heights), Navy Pier, water taxi, etc. He said he met some people from Chicago on their lunch break and they went and had a few drinks. He had half a bottle of wine with dinner, and I think he may have had some in his room too, because by the end of dinner he was nicely toasted. At 10pm the lounge was still full of Boy Scouts. I hoped that they'd hit the sack and the room will fall into deserted quiet so I could take up residence on a couple of the chairs. At midnight the room was still full and I was feeling like I couldn't win. My feet were tired from walking, my butt was tired from sitting, and I was just plain tired. We were flying through Missouri at 86MPH. The room finally started thinning out at around eleven. I was already laying across a pod of seats, and I managed to fall asleep and sleep somewhere past Kansas City, Missouri. Go to June 16th.