I wake up because the sun is shining directly into my eyes, because I didn't close the curtains last night. Even though we were late when I went to bed, we arrive in St. Paul, Minnesota, another servicing stop, right on time at 7:05. Soon afterward, a Minneapolis Star Tribune gets slid under my door, and I get dressed and go out onto the platform, where it's downright chilly, considering it's mid-May. I go into the station and, mainly just because it's there, buy the other newspaper, the St. Paul Pioneer Press.
Some freight cars are added to the end of the train, as is an extra coach car for St. Paul-Chicago service. Shortly before departure, the conductor makes an important announcement over the P.A. system: there's been a derailment just north of Union Station in Chicago, so this train will be rerouted south of La Crosse, Wisconsin, which means passengers for all the stops beyond La Crosse except Chicago will have to get off the train in La Crosse and take the bus. And suddenly, the cryptic comment I overheard on the Minot station platform makes sense, and I'm glad I bought a railroad map at a Rand McNally store last month solely for the use of this trip.
Paragraph with heavy train geek content that many people may want to skip: Amtrak's Empire Builder runs over the classic Empire Builder route except between St. Paul and Chicago. Between St. Paul and La Crosse, it uses the old Soo Line route that runs along the west side of the Mississippi; between La Crosse and Chicago, it uses the old Milwaukee Road route (the route of the Chicago-Minneapolis Hiawatha trains). The old Builder ran over the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy route between St. Paul and Chicago, along the east side of the Mississippi to Savanna, Illinois, where it turned east-southeast towards Chicago. So today, the Builder will be on its historic route between La Crosse and Chicago. After two mergers in 30 years, it's now the BNSF Railway, which is what the conductors were referring to in Minot.
For some reason, the train loses about a half hour by Winona, Minnesota. Then just getting into La Crosse is interesting, because the train has to pull past the Mississippi bridge and back across the river and into La Crosse, where there are two buses waiting in the parking lot, not to mention a couple of people taking pictures of the backup operation. It apparently takes a long time to be sure everybody who's not going to Chicago has gotten off the train, but the Builder finally pulls out of the La Crosse station, still gong backward, at 11:57 A.M., an hour and 12 minutes late. There follows an intricate series of maneuvers, both backward and forward, to get the train so that it's going forward on the detour route, and finally, at 12:29, the train is on its way once and for all.
There are a couple more picture-takers at a grade crossing south of La Crosse, plus plenty of other people in small towns along the route who look a little surprised to see an Amtrak train go by. This is obviously a big freight route, and we're going pretty fast most of the way. Savanna, Illinois, at 3:17; Rochelle, Illinois, at 4:27, where there's a lot of people in this park to watch the train go by.
The conductor gets on the P.A. system every 15 minutes or so to update the train's expected arrival time and update the connections, although he finally admits that Chicago is only giving him information about one train, train 354 to Michigan, which will be held for connecting passengers, and everybody else should go to the station services counter. The final prediction is that the train will get in at 6:15, after stopping in the yard to lose the freight cars, but as it turns out, we fly over the Metra commuter line between Aurora and Chicago and then pull right into (and through) the station, arriving at 6:10, which is an hour and 50 minutes late.
The main problem with all this is that now I have to take another train trip sometime so I can travel over the real (current) route of the Empire Builder.
I was expecting my friend Jeremy to pick me up, but he's nowhere in sight. I walk around the station a couple of times looking for him, carrying my luggage (fortunately, I don't have to check the gigantic main waiting room, because it's closed off for some kind of private function) and eventually make a couple of phone calls, the second one being to Stacey, who assures me that her husband Levi had left with Jer to pick me up, and so they should be there anytime now. Immediately after I finish that phone call, I walk over to the Metra ticket counter area to pick up some timetables, and Jer and Levi spot me there. To check on my train, Jer had called not the Amtrak 800 number, but the Chicago Union Station number, and they had overestimated the lateness of my train.
Jer drives us to Levi and Stacey's, where Stacey's been making pizza. Jer's wife Catherine joins us for the eating portion of the evening. Then I go over to Jer and Catherine's to sleep on their couch (the last time I visited Chicago in late November 2001, I'd told Jer I'd spend a night or two at his place, but I didn't, so I feel bad). It turns out that I'm a little too tall to fit comfortably on the couch lying down, so I have to take the cushions off and put them on the floor.
|
| The St. Paul Amtrak station, which actually was built by Amtrak in the 1970s, and therefore manages to have all the charm of a bus station. |
|
| These two private cars are parked on a side track in St. Paul. |
|
| South of St. Paul, the Empire Builder hugs the west shore of the Mississippi River. Here's a dam and locks to prove it. |
|
| Winona, Minnesota. The station building is across the parking lot from the track that the train actually uses, which I assume is for a very good reason. But maybe I assume too much. |
|
| Has anybody noticed how many McDonald's restaurants there are in this country? |
|
| Crossing the Mississippi River. Backwards, although it's not obvious from this picture. |
|
| One of the buses leaving La Crosse, probably full of disappointed Amtrak travelers. |
|
| East Dubuque, Illinois. Wow, in small-town America, families do everything together, apparently. |
|
| Savanna, Illinois. (The sign on the right side of the store reads "SAVANNA Hometown Values.") |
|
| Rochelle, Illinois. |
|
| Beautiful downtown Aurora, Illinois. |
|
| Similarly beautiful downtown Chicago, Illinois. |
Remember that this trip was planned around a Giants game in San Francisco, but I got lucky with the baseball schedule, because not only did I have the opportunity to see the A's, I also had the opportunity to see the Cubs and the White Sox in Chicago. Today was the one day both the Sox and I would be in town, and Levi, Stacey, Jer, and I took the 'L' down to 35th Street and bought tickets at the gate.
Even though the upper deck was sparsely populated (it was a little chilly for baseball), a giant group of kids was occupying our assigned seats, but instead of getting into a confrontation, we sat a few rows ahead, in some seats that were in the sun.
It turned out to be a fairly lackluster game, especially for the Sox, although there was a Sox home run, causing the scoreboard to light up and fireworks to go off, which doesn't really have that much of an impact on a bright, sunny day.
After the game, Levi and Stacey made soup for dinner and invited more friends over. Since it had turned out Jer and Catherine's couch was too small for me, I stayed in Levi and Stacey's extra bedroom for the remainder of my time in Chicago.
| The view from my seat at Comiskey Park. |
| Closeup of the Comiskey Park scoreboard. |
| The "price" for staying with Levi and Stacey is painting an octopus on the wall in their bathroom. This is the one I painted in November 2001; they decided I didn't have to paint a new one because it had been less than a year since I was there last. |