Good morning America! We have tickets! We leave in less than a week (nothing like waiting until the last minute, right?) and have a stopover in Chicago before heading to California.
I’ve only been to Chicago twice and both times I was at the train station. My first visit I was a baby faced high school student and as my delicate California-kissed skin hit the heat and humidity of Chicago in July inside the underground train tunnel the first thought to enter my brain was, “this must be what hell is like.” 20(ish) years later and that’s still how I picture hell: the dark, thick, hazy air, the rumble of the train engines that I felt as well as heard, my ears full of hissing and spitting as my awkward duffle bag banged against my shins and the strap cut into my shoulder as we walked forever to escape the steamy deafening darkness only to enter steamy deafening brightness.
The second time was much like the first, though I was only in Chicago to change trains and I welcomed the loud steamy earthy groundedness of it all because it meant that I wasn’t miles above in a sterile tin can whisking me to Connecticut in 1/16th of the time. Nope, I was taking the safe way — a 20 something pregnant woman traveling alone for two days on a train. What could go wrong there? Thankfully the only nefarious creatures I ran into were the ones that stole my phonecard number when I used it at a pay phone (both technologies obsolete now) and spent the next month calling Russia/USSR/the Soviet Union/whatever it was called back then until I got the bill in the mail the following month and had to spend many hours on the phone sorting that out. Yep, train travel is awesome.
This time we’re heading to Chicago with a boatload of kids and luggage to visit family on the first leg of our tour de USA (ooh, it will be July so we can actually watch the tour in English this year — win!). I’m looking forward to seeing more than the train station, especially since we’re arriving the way that people who have conquered their phobias travel, by air. For the 3rd time it will be at the hight of the summer heat and humidity, though I’m curious to see how it stacks up against what is normal for us. I’m packing sweatshirts for all of us, just on case. Maybe I’ll have to change my idea of hell to searing, swampy, isolating, and sweaty Bahraini days.