Chicago, USA

Amendment XVIII

Section 3. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of the several states, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the states by the Congress.

I forgot to mention last time round what I actually did in Portland, but it seems rather a long time ago now. They have what is touted to be The Largest Bookstore In The World, and it came very much in handy when it was raining. Naturally, I gravitated towards the travel section, and started leafing through one of the two Bill Bryson books that I haven't yet read. (For those of you yet unconverted, please go out and get one of his books. Now!) Unfortunately this led to the unique situation whereby reading a book of his on the train, bus, plane, while waiting in line, at home or even standing in a bookstore causes uncontrollable laughter, quickly suppressed by coughing and vigorous hitting of the chest to persuade all onlookers that, yes, I smoke too much. That was pretty much the highlight of Portland (now I remember why I didn't mention it), so on Tuesday afternoon I hopped on the train to Chicago.

The schedule of the Empire Builder allows 45 hours to make the crossing of the Rockies and the Great Plains (that's 3 hours longer than my trip halfway across Australia did), but my hopes of a prompt arrival were lowered by the announcement at Portland station that, "due to a derailment of a Burlington Northern freight train in Glacier Park, Montana, a bus service will be in operation between Spokane, Washington and Shelby, Montana. A complimentary breakfast will be served en route." Looking at the timetable I saw that we were to be offloaded for almost 500 miles! The trains out here get pretty long (over 100 cars is not unusual) but they must have been towing something pretty lengthy to cause that much disruption. Adding to the general grief of the prospect of a 10 hour bus journey was that it would start at approximately 1am - not the time one usually likes to sit on a coach in the best of circumstances.

In such a long journey, the hours pass pretty quickly, and the 7 hours it took to cross Washington state fairly flew by. To my disappointment, the one book I had brought along to read lasted about 5 of those hours. (I am unsure as to why I always underestimate these things. On the Australian trip, I had four novels with me, and finished them all with time to spare.) At Spokane everyone disembarked (some lucky passengers had already fallen asleep) and boarded four buses that rolled up shortly afterwards. Scanning down the aisles, I could see that all of the window seats were already occupied, but right at the back was a row of three occupied only by one woman. I headed down there, shoved my backpack overhead and sat down. She seemed alright as a travelling companion, if a little overburdened with books, notepads, purses and other paraphenalia. As we set off the unnveringly cheerful bus driver made his little announcement:

"We'll be cruising at an altitude of about 10 inches and a speed of about 60mph. At some point going over the mountains, oxygen masks will drop from the panel above, and you are advised to wear them!"

You have hopefully deduced, as most people on the bus did, that he was being facetious, but the woman next to me turned with a worried look on her face and asked: "Do we have to wear the masks?"

This, I thought, is going to be a long journey.

It turned out that I was right, of course. Sitting next to the comically euphemistic "restroom" (not much room to rest in there, I can tell you) I could stretch my legs out down the aisle, but had to move them every time someone wanted to get past to the toilet - and if you knew the average demographic of Amtrak passengers, you'd know that it was a lot of times. When I did eventually fall into a fitful slumber, it would rarely be more than 20 minutes before I woke up from either biting my tongue (an annoying trait resulting from sleeping in a sitting position), having the woman next door inadvertently lean her head on my shoulder or digging her hairbrush into my side, or (winning first prize), being woken up by her at 5am to be told that we had just passed a drive-in movie theater! She had a thick accent and chewed gum, which didn't help our communication at the best of times, but I think I mumbled something uncomplimentary and tried to get back to sleep. Drive-in movie theater indeed. I couldn't even have seen it as we'd already driven past it!

Dawn didn't bring many improvements, except to the scenery that we could see. From what I could see (and that was only the tail-end) the Rockies are pretty spectacular. I munched on a muffin from a box that had been left at the back of the bus and drank a bottle of juice, waiting for the mealbreak that I had equated with the complimentary breakfast. As it turned out, I was eating the breakfast, and the mealbreak in some ghost town or other was in the culinary haven of Burger King. Rumours that spread around the bus said that the lady sitting behind the driver made him stop there, and from the looks of her, she was no stranger to a Whopper for breakfast.

After that, the journey was not so remarkable, although it could be that I was too dazed to notice. I finally found a comfortable-ish sleeping position on the trains, utilising my backpack as a footrest, so most of the way across Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota and Wisconsin I dozed on and off, taking the occasional photo. Miraculously arriving at Chicago's Union Station only 15 minutes late (not bad at all, considering the circumstances and length of journey) I linked up with my newest friend of a friend, Andy Lindvall and his wife Ella who live very conveniently near the centre of the city. On Friday I walked for something like 20 miles around the downtown area, climbed the Sears Tower (another tallest building in the world) and hummed the tune from the Frank Sinatra song that most obviously relates to Chicago. (It didn't help that most places in the city had it playing as muzak, presumably to cheer people up.) I gawped not only up at the skyline, but down and around at the incredible number of homeless and destitute people in the city, exceeding San Francisco, which I had thought was pretty bad. For the richest country in the world, it's not an impressive record, so I don't look forward to Washington DC which is renowned even here as being Bum Central.

Breaking my record for observation decks, in the evening I had a look out from the John Hancock Center (which is the tallest residential building in the world, naturally) where the view is really good. Chicago by night is a very nice view, improved even from the daytime. On Saturday I spent most of the day wandering around the Field Museum (named after a man named Field, not because it's an open-air event, you understand) which was... moderately diverting. While I was there, I was disappointed to see that Meigs Field, which is the small airstrip that headlines in Microsoft's Flight Simulator, no longer exists! The runway has been dug up, to be replaced presumably with condominiums and apartments.

In a continuation of my tour of famous US churches, this morning I was at Moody Church, which is not prone to sulks but named after the 19th century preacher D L Moody, whose Sunday School was so famous it attracted President Lincoln to visit it. It was with a certain degree of shock that I realised there will be only one more Sunday away from home! I'm not sure which denomination's turn it is this coming week, when I shall probably be in Washington DC.

In a short while I'll be taking off again, down to the Deep South and New Orleans. Before I go, however, I should perhaps explain the rather strange introductory paragraph. Chicago being the home of the speakeasy, Al Capone and all that jazz, I thought this might be an appropriate juncture to moan about the drinking age of 21 that now inhabits all 50 states. (Apparently, the drink-driving deaths were so many that the government denied highway funding to any states with a drinking age of less than 21!) Now that I'm less than two weeks from home, I think I can probably manage to comply with the mandatory abstention, but it is a little frustrating that the 18th Amendment might as well have never been repealed.

Chicago is a nice city. It's got a mixture of monolithic architecture (the Great Fire took care of that one), a lakeside location, decent transport (the train station is actually quite busy) and nice neighbourhoods. Yeah... Chicago is my kind of town.