For the month of February, my wife was studying as part of the PASS Program in Champaign, IL. Soon after she went away, I got the idea to pay her a surprise visit (suggested by my parents and funded by them as a birthday present to her). I knew that she was quite busy and would probably not be very appreciative of me interrupting her studies, so I decided to arrive as late as possible such that I could share the 12 hour drive back with her.
Unfortunately, this surprise required that I know where to find her. Because she could not receive mail at her residential address and because she loves to be difficult :), I could not get an address from her without arousing suspicion. Neither could a search of the web provide the information I sought. Similarly, I was unsure of the exact time she would be finished. Arriving too early would be annoying; too late would be disastrous. Because of some snow cancellations, I could not even be sure of the proper date. I sent the administrator of the program an email requesting this information but did not receive a response. After waiting two weeks, I tried calling the office, where I was routed directly to voicemail. After a few more days passed and I had virtually given up hope, I got a response from the program. They were able to tell me the exact date and time when the program would end and gave me a partial address: 117 Sterling Court, in Savoy, IL. They were unable to give an exact address due to privacy concerns, but I figured there couldn’t be that many apartments and I would just knock on doors until I found the correct one.
Because I was going to be coming back in the car that she already had in Champaign, I needed to take some form of long-distance public transportation, none of which I had ever used before. My initial thought was to fly to meet her. Unfortunately, by the time I actually knew where and when to go, fares from Lehigh Valley International to Champaign were in the range of $450. I could decrease this price somewhat by being willing to fly out of Philadelphia, PA or Newark, NJ and arrive in Decatur, IL, but not enough to bring the price anywhere close to my budget.
I noticed that Amtrak had rail service directly into Champaign, so I started looking into this. It was much less expensive ($90), but had two distinct disadvantages. Because the Lehigh Valley does not have rail service, I would have to transport myself to a station in Philadelphia or Lancaster. More importantly, the only trains running to Champaign arrived at 6:45 in the evening, too late on the last day of the program and nearly 24 hours early if I went the previous day. Also, the trip would be spread out over 3 trains and 29 hours.
I next looked at travel by Greyhound bus. This would leave directly from Bethlehem and arrive at a more managable time in Champaign, and was only slightly more expensive than the train. This was going to require even more time in transit and many waits and transfers. I was set to take this mode of transportation until I noticed some fine print while purchasing tickets: owning a ticket does not guarantee you a seat on a bus. As I understand it, if a bus at one of your transfers fills up before you get there, you can be stranded in whatever random city you stopped at, hoping your entire schedule can be pushed back a few hours until the next bus goes in the same direction. This really wasn’t acceptable, so I ended up going with the rail option.
I was going to need to arrive in Champaign before 4:00 on Friday, March 2, which meant taking the train scheduled to arrive there at 6:45 on Thursday, March 1. This required boarding a train in Lancaster at 1:52 on Wednesday, February 28. Fortunately my parents live just a few miles outside of Lancaster, so I drove down, left my car with them, and got a ride from them to the train station.
The Lancaster Amtrak station was a combination of impressive and sad. The website had suggested arriving at least 45 minutes early if I needed to pick up tickets, which I did. When I arrived, I found an absolutely massive building with all-wooden interior and a ceiling at least 20 feet high. This massive building contained about a dozen people, and there was no line to pick up tickets. As boarding time approached more people arrived until about 20 of us actually got on the train. I have a bit of nostalgia for industrial history and whatnot, so I found this great station and the presumed hundreds of people who must have passed through it daily in a previous century inspiring. At the same time, the entire operation seemed a pathetic shell of its former self. After exploring as thoroughly as I could, I sat on a great wooden bench until the train was called for boarding.
When we received the call to go out to the platform, I was again amazed. I am terrible at estimating distances, but I am sure it took me more than a minute to walk from one end to the other. When the train arrived, it was nearly as long and significantly larger than I expected. The interior of the coach-class railcar was surprisingly spacious, and I settled into a fairly comfortable seat.
I was still pretty interested in the track, switches, water pipes, and whatnot, so I spent about a third of my time on this train (the 43 Pennsylvanian) watching the scenery as we travelled through the stations in Elizabethtown, Harrisburg, Johnstown, and others on the way to Pittsburg. I also spent about a third of the time reading a paper I was reviewing and a third sleeping. I was amazed to find that there was no announcement when we were arriving at a station for passengers to exit the train. Had I been intending to get off at one of these intermediate stops and been asleep, I would have ended my journey somewhere quite other than desired. In fact, the only announcement during the entire ride was to note that we were entering the famous Horseshoe Curve. (Naturally, I had been pleasantly sleeping prior to the announcement.) Although my research now tells me that diesel locomotives like the one hauling me have top speeds of around 110 mph, I would have guessed we were travelling at 40 or 50 mph when between stops from the speed at which we moved past the scenery.
Around 8:00 pm, I arrived at Pittsburg as scheduled. This station was smaller and more modern in construction, containing padded seats, a television, telephones and the like. I needed to be on my next train (the 29 Capitol Limited to Chicago) at 11:55 pm and wanted to get some dinner before then. I left the station and found that I was quite in the middle of the city. Everything around was commercial buildings, but I did not see anything that looked like a restaurant. After asking some people, I found that a hotel a few blocks away had a restaurant on their first floor. I walked to this location, but found that the clientele were all dressed rather formally and the menu consisted of wines and expensive entrees. I asked the hostess for a recommendation of a more casual location within walking distance, and she suggested another hotel. After walking around for a while I was able to see this hotel, but there were several highways separating me from it. I went in another direction for a while and found the U. S. Steel Tower. Since I live in the shadows of another former steel empire, I thought I would check it out. On the first floor of this building I was able to find some sort of cafe. The menu I found at the entrance looked promising, so I got a table. It turned out that the dinner menu was quite different, but I wasn’t leaving at that point. Instead, I ate a delicious $18 chicken parmiagana and listened to classic rock until they wanted to close. Then I returned to the train station and read Stranger In A Strange Land for a few hours.
The Capitol Limited arrived on time and departed for Chicago, set to arrive at 8:40 am in Union Station. I was hoping to sleep through as much of this trip as I could. The train was slightly fuller than the previous one, but I still had no trouble finding a seat without a neighbor. I found the sight of several dozen men and women with ages ranging from mine to elderly laying across two seats sleeping in their street clothes very odd, like a child’s sleepover gone wrong. I didn’t sleep particularly well, and woke up around 7:00 to find that the train was not moving. We continued not moving for several more hours, as there was apparently some sort of unexpected traffic jam with freight trains ahead of us. We did not actually arrive at Union Station until noon (central time, so it seemed like 1:00 to me).
Chicago’s Union Station was quite unlike the other two train stations I had been to. While Lancaster and Pittsburg both had two platforms, I believe Chicago had 14. The vending machines of Pittsburg were replaced with a full food court containing at least 10 different vendors. I had been hoping to eat an italian beef sandwich or an authentic Chicago hot dog, but did not find these for sale in the station. My intent had been to wander around the city during the day, finding a street vendor and hopefully some interesting museums. Since I arrived 4 hours late and it was raining outside, I just got a pork barbecue sandwich and sat down in the Great Hall to continue reading.
After a few hours I was approached by a gentleman who asked me to pray with him and then for money, saying he had been laid off from his job several months earlier and was trying to earn the rent to keep his family of 5 in a homeless shelter by shining shoes while applying for more steady work. I suppose I will never know whether his story was genuine or he made a healthy living panhandling, but he seemed quite sincere. I didn’t find it odd that an overfilled interim housing would charge some low amount of rent, but the $23/day he quoted me seems pretty outrageous, since I used to rent a small apartment for $325/month, less than half of that. I haven’t been able to find any verification of this. In any case, I had just found out that the federal government was going to return my entire tax bill for the year (hooray for being married and having little income!), and I figured he needed some of it more than I did. This was the first time I’ve ever directly given more than the change in my pocket to a panhandler, but I ended up giving him rent for two days and a box of crackers I had bought for the trip. I find myself still thinking of “Eddie”, wondering whether or not he was sincere and, if so, what else I could have done for him.
Eventually 4:05 pm arrived and I boarded the 393 Illini for Champaign. Unlike the sparsely filled trains I had been on previously, every seat on this one had been sold. I finished my book about halfway through the journey, although I did not fully grok it. (I am, after all, just an egg!).
I got to Champaign on time at around 6:15 pm and started waiting for a taxi. Because there was no line, I am less willing to push my way forward than the average person, and I had no idea what the proper protocol is, it took me 45 minutes or so to get a taxi. When I did find one, it drove me the 4 miles south to Sterling Court, where there were a number of apartment buildings. We drove around for some time seeking building 117, but found only 101 through 116. Eventually I told the cabbie that I would find it myself on foot and stop wasting his time (and my money).
After wandering around in the bitter cold and strong wind for quite a bit longer, I realized that 117 was not a building number but rather the street address of the leasing office, which was closed. I wandered a bit more, looking for my wife’s car and asking people I met if they knew where the PASS program students were housed before I finally gave up and decided I would have to ruin my surprise by a few minutes. I called Rachel and essentially demanded that she give me her building and apartment number, then rushed there. She still seemed to be surprised when I came to the door, and not especially happy. (I later found out that she thought I had come to tell her some urgent bad news that needed to be communicated in person.) Once I persuaded her that I had just come to visit, we went to dinner with some friends she had made in the program.
The next day I recovered from my poor sleep on the Capitol Limited and did some work while she was in class, then drove the 6 hours to Zahnesville, OH. On the numbingly-long journey, I derived the somewhat obvious fact that time taken to drive a distance is inversely proportional to speed and thus that the cumulative benefit of going 10 mph faster drops sharply as speed increases. I’ve never been too much of a flagrant speeder, but I may become even less of one now that I fully understand how little of a difference there is between 70 and 80 mph. (Roughly 10 minutes per 100 miles)
We arrived in Zahnesville around 1:00 am, March 3. I took a quick shower (my first since the morning of February 28!), and slept until Rachel awakened me at the ungodly hour of 7:00 am. Thankfully, she was willing to the early morning drive. By late afternoon we were back to Lancaster and my car, and were home by that evening. It was an interesting 5 days, though an experience I am in no hurry to repeat.