We arrived around 1am the night of Friday, July 30th. The drive wasn’t bad, even though driving in the dark and in the rain is not only boring but also nerve wracking. We attempted listening to the audio book Cujo, by Stephen King, but just couldn’t get into it. We spent most of the time talking, laughing over silly stuff, and wishing we were already there. We only stopped for bathroom breaks and gas, putting our drive time around 7 hours. Maybe because of the anticipation, or maybe because of the dark, but for whatever reason it really felt more like 10+ hours.
Our original plan of staying in a hotel right downtown was changed last minute due to some extended family being gracious enough to offer their uptown home to us. They were going to be out of town on their own weekend vacation, so they told us we could stay at their place. This was great for so many reasons! First just having the comforts of “home” is nice. Also staying with family, instead of a hotel saved us a few hundred dollars, not only because of the cost of the room, but mainly because of the ridiculous parking fee’s in downtown Chicago. Last but certainly not least, they have a gorgeous home and we felt we could truly relax while there.
Saturday, July 31, I awoke early, around 6:30am. I got up and wandered into the kitchen and found cereal, bananas and milk. I flipped on the TV and enjoyed some background noise while I ate and figured out our game plan for the day. We needed to take the L train downtown, then take the Metra train to McCormick Place to get to the health and fitness expo so that not only could I meet my friend, Julie, but also so we could pick up our race packet and timing chip. I knew this would be an experience for us because we’ve never taken the train in Chicago before.
Larry woke up, ate breakfast and we enjoyed the early morning out on the back deck, which was adorned with the most beautiful flowers and plants I’d seen. It didn’t even feel like we were staying in the city, felt more like some private little cottage or bungalow. After we looked up our train schedules and directions, we showered and got dressed.
We headed out of the house plenty early enough to find the train terminal, which had us walking about 3-4 blocks. Normally I would welcome the walk, but given the fact that it felt like a thousand degrees out and that tomorrow I would be running 13.1 miles, I wanted to keep all leg movement to a serious minimum. Today was supposed to be a serious rest day! We found the terminal, which was right on the street (not what I expected) and right on the corner of the “rough crowd.” Visualize the home boyz, teeth full of grillz, paper bags around their 40s, shootin’ the breeze (or each other!), ladies with hiked up skirts, and older folk pushing their groceries carts of cans, talking to themselves and their imaginary friends. We quickly learned that in Chicago, there are many parts of the city where there's just a few block's difference between safe and potentially dangerous. While there were some “interesting” people on this stretch of the street, they pretty much kept to themselves and we carried ourselves like we knew where we were going. This was all quite the hilarious experience looking back NOW, but then??? Not so much!
I couldn’t figure how to scan my train card, couldn’t figure out the stupid turnstile, and couldn’t figure out how to get through, period! So much for looking like we knew what we were doing! We’re not stupid by any means; we had just never done this before. There was an entire line of not-so-patient, not-so-nice “regulars” behind me, who were not so happy with the obvious out of town girl in front of them (ME!) who didn’t know WHAT THE HELL she was doing and was going to cause them to miss their train. I figured it would be no problem to turn around and ask one of these “nice” people behind me to help me out. Yikes. I was greeted with a large black woman who had the most annoying steamed up look on her face, eye narrowed at me, TORQUED written all over her face. I was all, “Excuse me, could you be kind enough to tell me how to scan this card so we can get through” and I swear before I even got the words out, she yelled, “IT SAYS ENTER! GOOOO!” OMG, I never turned around so fast in my life. These people scared me! Can you say ordeal? We finally made it through the damn turnstiles and made our way up the zillion flights of stairs to the platform. Didn’t I say I wanted to do the least amount of legwork? Yeah forget that. My legs were ALREADY tired and we hadn’t even started our day yet.
We got upstairs and I asked a “normal looking” 20-something year old man if we were on the correct train platform for downtown (red line). He looked at my print out and confirmed we were in the right place, which was a relief. Once the train stopped and picked us up and we found a seat (or a pole in Larry’s case), he explained to us the next train stop we’d not only want to get off at, but then explained we needed to transfer to the brown line to get downtown. It seemed complicated, but once we figured it out, it was all quite easy. So far. I was so happy we finally ran into a nice person who was so helpful and went out of his way to make sure we were getting onto the correct trains. Little did I know that several hours later on the way back FROM the expo, we would see this same “normal looking” 20-something year old man screaming at the top of his lungs all kinds of profanities and ranting and raving like a maniac at the train staff for making him miss a certain train. Ooooh, I’m staying outta his way!
We made it downtown and next, needed to find the Metra train station, which I swear, no one in Chicago knew about. Part of downtown was blocked off for the filming of Transformers 3 and the streets were packed with people and their cameras wanting to get a shot of whatever famous celebrity might have been at the scene. There were Hollywood catering trucks everywhere, men in white aprons and food trays bustling in and out of buildings, cars honking like crazy, and people walking every which way, nearly all having a coffee cup glued to their hand and a cell phone attached to their ear. Here we were in the middle of it all, looking at our phones for GPS, looking at our directions trying to figure out in all the confusion how to get to the other train station. We asked a CTA employee who was guarding the blocked road to verify the directions we had and she ended up sending us 4 blocks into the WRONG direction. My legs were tired and I was starting to get CRABBY! I swear after several more loops around the block and asking 3 more people directions, we finally found a police officer to tell us the Metra train station was just around the corner, under ground.
We made our way down to what seemed like a whole different world. It was nice! It was like an underground airport only for trains! It was a long terminal with restaurants, gift shops, bars, and lounge places. It was clean and cool and wait!!! Confusing! How do we know what train to take? Wait…where ARE the trains? We don’t see any, anywhere! Where is a schedule? What do you mean we need tickets? What tickets? Where do we find the tickets? How much are the tickets? Where do you even get on and off at? Oy! We made our way up to a ticket counter where we told the guy we had no idea what we needed to do and his attitude seriously upset me. All I’m going to say is that he was an ASS with a capital A, and I wanted nothing to do with these rude Chicago people anymore. NOT EVERYONE lives here and KNOWS WTF to do, excuse ME! After he gave us our tickets, we still had no idea where the train platforms were. We found an “information” counter and were greeted by, guess who? Yes! Another RUDE CITY EMPLOYEE who looked us like we were aliens. She had a stone cold face, pursed ruby red lips and eyes narrowed flat. WHAT IS UP WITH ALL THE NARROWED MEAN EYES IN THIS CITY?!?!?!?!?!
Long story even longer, we finally made it down a dark stairway, through some doors to a platform. Several minutes later we were on a nice clean train, sitting side by side in real seats and on our way underground to the expo at McCormick Place. The train conductor came by and punched our tickets and we were able to relax our minds (and our legs!!!!) for several minutes.
The good news…the train took us right under McCormick Place so we didn’t have to walk around the city anymore. We walked up a few flights of stairs and were smack in the middle of a huge convention center were thousands of other people were off to get their race packets as well. Ahhh…the first time all morning I felt like we belonged somewhere. I knew we were surrounded by people who were there for the same reasons we were! Yay comradery! Now I felt relaxed and ready to find my friend, Julie.
By the way, have I mentioned that I’ve known Julie for 15 years but this was to be our first time EVER meeting?! Wait…is that her? Sitting over there on a ledge looking through her race packet and good bag? I can’t quite tell, but I think it’s her. I’m not quite sure but I start to walk over anyway. I get up to this person and say, ‘Heyyyyy You!”
She looks up, and………
Where is Part Two?!?!
ReplyDeleteI have it done and I saved it, but now can't find it on my laptop!!!!!!!! I'm hoping I saved it in a strange place.
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