Problem with trains

I don’t mind the day trips to Chicago. It breaks up the monotony of a work week by getting on a train and doing something totally different for a day.

The scheduling of the trips makes life difficult. Friends get riled up because I don’t tell them I am in town for a day. The problem is I am not really “in town”. I am there for a meeting and I am out. Hit it and quit it. Boom and zoom.

Trips to Chicago are usually with colleagues. That doesn’t give much time for trying to make arrangements with friends. Sometimes we are not even sure of what our schedule for the day may be. This past Tuesday I went for training that was slated to be from 8 to 5. There was no mention of when lunch would be. Thus no plans could be made. When the class finished just before 3, we made an attempt to catch the 3:15 back to Milwaukee. We missed the train and the 5 of us went to a bar inside Union Station. We drank for just over an hour. Not much time to call people and have them come downtown for 10 minutes of booze and catching up.

Sometime when I am going down by myself I’ll make arrangements to take the late train back at 9. I have learned that you don’t want to take the 5:07. As a co-worker told me, it is brutal. And he wasn’t lying. That train moved so slow it felt like you were never going to get home.