Chicago – Blowing In and Out of Town

They don’t call this The Windy City for nothing! It’s a beautiful, clear morning here in Chicago, but there is a brisk wind blowing … and it’s chilly!

I spent last night aboard the private rail car in which we had come up to Chicago from Washington a day earlier. We were parked in a corner of the vast Chicago rail yard and it was an unexpected extra day aboard. Before leaving Washington on Thursday, we got word that a barge had broken loose and damaged a bridge across the Mississippi River at Burlington, Iowa. Not just any bridge. This was the bridge I was going to cross the next day aboard the California Zephyr.

At that point, Amtrak had no idea if or how the damaged bridge would affect the Zephyr. That left me with a difficult choice: wait to see if my train to the West Coast would be cancelled, or try to make other arrangements. I opted for Door Number Two because, if I guessed wrong and was delayed a day out of Chicago, I would miss my flight back to Maui. With the state of air travel today, who knows when I might get another flight or what it would have cost me.

So I dashed into the Washington station and switched to Amtrak’s Southwest Chief. That train goes direct to Los Angeles and crosses the Mississippi over a different bridge . The change in my schedule gave me an extra night in Chicago … time well spent with an old and dear friend from school many years ago who lives in the area.

It’s Saturday mid-morning as I write this, sitting in Amtrak’s Metropolitan Lounge in Chicago’s Union Station. The lounge is a large series of rooms reserved for sleeping car passengers and I will be relaxing here until my train departs this afternoon.

I truly enjoy the longer train trips. The Chief will take two nights to get us to Los Angeles, arriving there on Monday morning. Lots of time to relax, read, stroll up to the lounge car, and enjoy conversation with whoever my tablemates will be for meals in the dining car.

Then, on Tuesday, I’ll fly back to Maui. I do enjoy travel, but there is nothing like catching that first view of that extraordinary island as the plane settles down through those clear blue skies, passes over thousands of acres of sugar cane, then turns over the ocean for the final approach into Kahului Airport.

What a rare privilege it is to call Maui home.

More trip report in a few days … with photos.

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