Two stops does not equal express

Once again I found myself on an "express" train this morning which got me thinking about the definition of express. Now usually the Chicago El only runs express because somewhere, earlier along the line it got delayed. This morning's express lasted from Armitage to Merch Mart, which means it skipped all of two stops. This is not my idea of express. One of these days I want to be on the train home and hear the conductor say at Clark and Lake that the train will be running express to Montrose. Now that would be a true express experience. (For those of you not familiar with either Chicago or the Brown line specifically here is a link to the trian schedules.)

Keeping my imagination alive, one commute at a time

Every once in a while when I am waiting for the southbound train in the morning the northbound brown line will come through. I stare at the doors as they open, invitingly, and listen to the pre-recorded announcements that it is a "Brown Line to Kimball, Brown Line to Kimball". And every once in awhile I wonder what it would be like to slip through the doors and head in the opposite direction of my life. In reality Kimball is only 3, maybe 4, stops north of my own, but something about those doors sliding open at 7:15 a.m. makes me believe that it is actually a portal into a whole new world. A tempting world of unknown destinations and new surprises. I'm not sure if the desire to head in opposite directions is more strong on Friday's when I'm outfitted in my jeans and sneakers, ready to explore or Monday-Thursday when I am adorned in my pseudo corporate casual clothing feeling like an alien attempting to impersonate a productive member of society.

This morning, Friday, in my jeans and slip on sneakers, the northbound train rolled in as I waited with my coffee. The doors slid open and for a moment that felt like a millennium long second I thought about stepping through. I imagined what it would be like to step through and head the other way, I fantasized about the doors closing and magically being transported on to an Amtrak train out of this city, this state, this time zone. I dreamed of new worlds and landscapes, mountains and salty, ocean air. And just as the imagery was starting to crystallize around the edges, just as it was starting to become a tangible idea that I could grasp and make real, the ding of the doors closing shot through and dissolved the whole thing. As I slowly turned away I could hear the train starting back up again, could hear it heading towards its familiar home of Kimball, just to turn around and head back again in a continuous loop to become someone elses southbound adventure. With it went my dreams of sandy beaches and snow capped mountain vistas. But only for today. For I know that once again, next week, or the one after, I will be standing on my platform waiting for my life to start that day and a northbound train will come with its inviting doors and promises of new things. And maybe if I wait long enough, it really will turn into a train out of this town.

Give me rush hour any day

Today I got on the train at 7 am to go to work. I worked from 8 until 7 pm. Then I got back on the train at 7:30 pm to come home. The city, like all cities I suppose, is in the midst of its construction season which means that randomly at "off-peak" hours there is only one viable set of tracks for both north and south bound trains. Apparently 8:00 pm on a Tuesday is an off-peak time. I sat somewhere between Belmont and Southport for 25 minutes. At the back of my car was a mother (a term I loosely use after an eleven hour work day) with a screaming child. I did not turn around to see how old the child was, and my age guessing skills are weak at best, but from its pitch and clarity I'm guessing under four years old. After six screams in a row I heard the mother encouragingly say something along the lines of "Wow, that was a good one, what a great scream" to which the child screamed again in gleeful response. This went on for the entire time we were stopped and all the way to Western where they got off.

I have never pretended to understand children. What I do understand is that being a parent is hard god damn work. Kids, even when done right, are a difficult, trying, and complicated experience. Today, more than others, made me glad that the kids I do know (1.0, 2.0, Jett, etc.) are being raised by folks that I truly believe are going to do a damn fine job (and hopefully will never encourage their kids to scream at the top of their lungs repeatedly in an enclosed form of public transportation). And it also made me glad that my apartment was empty when I got home.

Train evacuations and weddings

This morning at the Armitage stop (for those not in Chicago, this is not really anywhere near enough to my work for me to walk from) my train was evacuated. First it was stopped and after a few minutes we got the "sick passenger" announcement. Then a few moments later we were all asked to leave the train. 7:55 on the brown line meant a full ass train emptied out on to the platform. Eventually they rolled the train back so another train could get by (which was way too full to even try and squeeze on) but in the mean time I stood on the platform with this immense crowd as a red line train pulled by on the outer track. The red line was possibly even more crowded than the train I just stepped off and as it pulled by it stopped right across from me. It was like animals in a zoo...on both sides. We just stared at each other, separated by glass, wind and 10 feet of electric track, trapped in our own worlds dangerously overlapping the worlds of those around us. Eventually my (now empty) train took care of getting the passenger to the paramedics and rolled back up to let us all back on. Ironically I ended up in the same seat, with the same guy next to me and the same guy standing in the corner, like this weird 20 minutes or so had never happened.

Two weekends ago (sorry no transition, just follow the random jump) I went to Oregon to see a dear friend I haven't seen since my move to the windy city in the summer of 2006. To make a long story short her and her fiance decided to get married while I was there. It was absolutely amazing. I can now add "Ability to plan and execute wedding in under 72 hours" to my resume. And while they did the deed in the local courthouse this was no jeans and t-shirt affair. Full blown gown for the bride, tux for the groom, and maid of honor dress for me. The best part? Two hours later we are all kicked back in jeans having Chinese for lunch. Pics courtesy of the happy couple can be found here and if you want the full crazy detail you can check out mine here (but beware, I took a ton!). It was by far the best wedding I have ever been to (sorry to anyone else's I may have attended) mostly because it was my first real close friend to get married and I got to be an intimate part of it. I still think Vegas is in my future if I decide to take that trek (and of course find someone to take it with!) but if I can't do that, I might have to steal their style.

Last weekend I spent some good old fashioned me time holed up on my couch watching more college ball than was probably necessary. For Easter I ate girl scout cookies. It was fantastic. The Stanford/Marquette game was a nail biter and I can't wait to do it all again this weekend, though this time I might have to get down to the Rail for some brunch and bball action - CBS is starting to tick me off and they have at least half a dozen tvs for my viewing entertainment.

For anyone who still hasn't heard the internet boy date saga let me provide the final update/summary. Sent anonymous missed connection about boy I was interested in. Got busted when said boy actually found the post. Set up date. Had date. Date lasted 16 hours (get your mind out of the gutter, it was actually quite PG...okay maybe PG-13), awkward morning actually went better than expected, had hope for future interactions. Waited for phone call. Phone didn't ring. I called after 4 days and left obligatory "Had good time, hope you did to, we should do it again some time" message. Ran into boy at bar later that night (while with another friend). Had slightly inebriated conversation while outside that consisted of him relaying pretty much all the classic not interested lines in the book, "I have to work, going to parents, I'll call you". Spent some time being bummed, wondering what went wrong, what I did wrong, etc. Got over it and working towards moving on. Tallying it under entertaining stories for later in life.

(Another random jump) Currently listening to Sara Bareilles thanks to Tim and Yael Naim thanks to the damn mac book air commercial. And that's my update for tonight, work is getting back into crazy busy for me so that's why my blogging has been a bit slow (and that whole planning and executing a wedding thing was pretty exhausting). I'll try to do more at home till it gets warm enough to be outside.

Trains (and where they take you)

I moved to Chicago in the summer of 2006 and quickly discovered a host of things that I was newly afraid of that had never crossed my mind before. One was pigeons. They are dirty, scary little rats with wings and if you work in the loop they are like mini, dive bombing airplanes. There seems to be no rhyme or reason behind their flight patterns except to converge directly towards your head in large numbers.

The second thing I found myself newly frightened of was the train. I came from a city with a shabby public transportation system that I hadn't ridden in about a decade. My hometown is a car and bike city so that was my familiar territory, well the car part at least. My only other experience with mass public transpo was in DC - where the Metro is clean, color coordinated and relatively easy to understand after the first ride or two.

So in 2006 I came, dragging everything that I could fit in a four door Ford Taurus and plunked myself right in the heart of Downtown Chicago. I had a sublet that allowed me to walk to work and get the lay of the land while I decided whether or not to call the Windy City my home (and while my job decided whether or not to pay me past August).

My apartment was on the the third floor, which in case you are not familiar with the El system meant I was eye level with the train and all it's noisy, sparking glory. I walked to work under a shower of sparks and amidst the squeals of metal on metal every day. Random water from gods know where dripped randomly on my head whenever I was caught under the tracks at a stoplight. It was loud. It was intimidating. And I never wanted to have to ride it.

Lucky for me I was blessed with a friend that has an amazing heart, an unlimited amount of patience, and a car. For the first few weeks she would drive downtown to pick me up, take me out to neighborhoods that at least had a semblance of silence and then zip back down Lakeshore to take me home. The first few times it wasn't even brought up that there was any other way for me to escape the concrete jungle of the loop. After a while though it started to come up in conversation.... "Well, would it make more sense for me to take the train to you?" I would ask hesitantly..."whatever you are comfortable with" she would reply. I actually admitted the first few times that I was still too afraid to take the train. I had this idea that I would end up going the wrong direction and get horribly lost, never to find my apartment again, and die a miserable quiet death in a back alley somewhere...what can I say I have a writer's imagination.

Finally I worked up the nerve and declared I was taking the train out to her house! For those of you that live in Chicago here comes the fantastic part of this story.....She lives on the Brown line. For those readers unfamiliar with the Chicago El system let me explain. Most El lines run throughout the city with the loop being the mid point. This is where the fear generated that I could end up going the wrong direction and land myself in the middle of nowhere. The brown line on the other hand starts at the loop and runs north. You can not get on the train the wrong way from the loop. And the loop is where I was starting from. It's also somewhat safe to say that out of all the different routes and colors of train lines, the brown line runs along what may be considered the "safer" sections of the city. And to top it off, her house is 3 blocks from the Montrose station. Needless to say, once I did it I felt slightly silly for all the procrastination.

Fast forward - I now ride the train (again the brown line) everyday to and from work. I love my train ride. It's a guaranteed 30 - 45 minutes of wake up time each morning. I'm far enough north that I'm pretty secure in the fact that I will get a seat in the morning and I most definitely never have to watch 3 full trains cruise by until there is spot for me. At night it's a little trickier, but leaving at 4:30 helps me get a seat probably greater than 50% of the time which is okay by me. I love not driving, hell I even plan dates around the train (as I no longer own that trusty four door Ford).

My train at night is the "Brown Line to Kimball" and my stop is three stops before the much mentioned Kimball. I think it's important to know where your public transportation goes so last night as my stop rolled up and the doors opened to the wintry evening I stayed planted in my plastic seat. I rode all the way out to the end of the line, checked out the turnabout (which made me think of a train graveyard...not sure why) and slipped out the doors as the conductor announced end of the line, everybody off. I walked across the platform into the waiting train next to me with the "Loop" sign securely in place and headed back south. Three stops later at my familiar stop I headed out the doors and into the night. How far I've come from those early days....but I'm still completely afraid of pigeons.

Zones

A couple of weeks ago, maybe even a month or so, a friend pointed out to me a new tag showing up around Lincoln Square. On every parking meter we saw were these bright yellow stickers that said "Zone 6" on them...after lengthy debate that most certainly centered around fantastic German beer from our neighborhood Hutenbar, we decided they couldn't possibly be tags, no tagger has that much patience or predictability. These stickers were methodically placed everywhere and were conventionally stuck at perfectly straight angles. I wondered if it was some new kind of parking system they would eventually introduce. But by the time our beers were done I had pretty much moved the idea and the ponderment to the back of my brain where I store most of my random, useless data.



Fast forward to today. I got off the train and saw all along Wabash Ave. little blue stickers! These were not just on the parking meters (for downtown they have the parking station, not the individual meters) but on the street signs as well. These, just like my little yellow friends up north, were the same size and font but said "Zone 1" instead. For some reason my last DC trip popped into my brain where the taxi system works on zones for the figuring of fares....way to many f's in that one.... So now I'm wondering if Chicago is trying to institute the same method? Will our transportation now be dependant on zones instead of distance? Am I just totally making all this shit up? Anyone in the Chicago area, or who has more time than me to surf the wide Internet world and figure it out for me, let me know what the new "Zones" are all about.

Lunch Hour

My partner in crime at work is out for the morning so I was forced to fend for myself during lunch. I headed down to Corner Bakery for my usual ham and swiss panini - I am horribly unoriginal with food once I find something I like. I decided to shake it up a little (small steps) and get the half sandwich half cup of soup -> Wednesday - Sunday is baked potato which might be one of my favorite types of soup.

Turns out there was a terrorist sabotage attack on Corner Bakery's cup supply and most of the customers walked away with leaking sodas (damn those terrorists!). I was one of the chosen few who had a perfectly fine cup (I think I might sell it on eBay later) so was entertained throughout my meal watching group after group get downstairs only to realize their diet cokes were leaking all over their "I'm on vacation from the burbs" outfits.

Eventually a manager type guy started making rounds in the basement dining area asking how everyones food was and offering up replacement cups to anyone who hadn't trotted back upstairs for a new one already. At this point I have realized that while my coke is happily staying inside my cup, I think there might be lettuce mixed in with my green onions on the top of my soup. As he heads toward me with that look of "how are you doing today" inquiry plastered across his face, I debated whether or not to point out this obvious mixing of vegetables. But as he hit my table, smiled and joked with me about my souvenir cup I lost the nerve, figuring the more vegetable life in my diet the better.

Done with my meal, I headed up and out to hide under the awning from the sprinkles of rain that were dusting the Chicago streets while I smoked my after dinner cigarette. To me this act is almost up there with ritual, and I enjoy it immensely. As I tried to cup my burning ember away from the crowd and kept my respectable distance from the revolving door (Hey I may be a smoker but I am not a total asshole) I watched as the same manager type guy had to head out and extricate a homeless man from their outdoor seating. I overheard the manager call the homeless man "buddy", doubting that in any universe, simulated or not, those two would ever be "buddies".

With the rain stopped and my cigarette done, I headed back to the office. Dealt with two groups of people walking the wrong way on the sidewalk*. They must be from Europe. And headed into Staples were I bought 3 bottles of Elmer's glue, 3 boxes of 24 count crayons, and 4 folders. Do I need these things? No. But when you can buy 12 oz. of glue, 72 crayons, and 8 places to hold paper with a single dollar and get 45 cents back, it's a crime not to.

*There are certain rules when one decides to present themselves in public. One is that you walk on the right side of the sidewalk (as opposed to left) this way traffic can flow smoothly much like on the roads. Second is that when on an escalator - standers stand on the right so walkers can pass on the left, again much like driving. It is on my list of great annoyances when others in the world do not recognize these rules.

A great way to start the day

So I do have a post debate summary in the works but at 5:15 last night it disappeared. Got up, followed the second star to the right, and flew away never to be seen again, so I'm taking a break from it and will come back to it later today. So for now I would like to share the entertaining start to today that I had...

Running late I get on the train one stop north of my usual point of departure (I'm dog sitting) and settle into my single chair. All of a sudden I feel my phone buzzing in my purse. "Oh no, this can't be good" I think. Who would call me at 7:30 in the morning unless something is wrong. So I pull out my phone and see that I have a text message. The following is the back and forth conversation I had that pretty much took me all the way to work this morning (all misspellings left intact)....

Coworker's message: Been waiting 4 a bus 4 25 min am prolly gonna be late. Pls sit at my desk and pretend to be me, thanks

My reply: Sure, but i just got on the train myself so not sure what good i'd be :)

Coworker: Oh dear! 1st one to work is a rotten egg!

Me: You're on!

Coworker: Finally a bus! Why did u sell ur car? U cld be giving rides

Me: Ah yes, silly, silly, me. How did you know it has always been my dream to be a chauffer?

Coworker: Hey no sass it is too Gargamel* early! Tee hee I slay me.

Me: Tehehe! I think that is the first time i have laughed out loud on my morning commute, thanks! And then my day started....


* Gargamel was a phrase I used with a group of friends when I was younger as a replacement for "god damn". I don't know how it started or why, especially since I was not allowed to watch Smurfs when I was a kid, something about the fact that there was only one Smurfette for the whole village of male Smurfs went against everything my mother believed in regarding equality and rights for women....