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Clockwise Around America

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Real-Time Update 2

Friday, July 11, 2008 @ 8:37 Eastern time.

I am on Amtrak 171 in business class at the Route 128 station just south of Boston on the way to New York City. Business class in the north east corridor is my one break from coach travel Clockwise Around America. The people and the sights along the way make it increasingly hard to stay current. I am now uploading the last of day 4 arriving and leaving from Chicago.

My Old Home Town: Chicago.

In 1972, I arrived in Chicago for the first time to attend the University of Chicago. We drove from Phoenix to Chicago. It was not love at first sight given the decrepit conditions you could see from the interstate. The university is located in the heart of the south side near the lake. The south side was a dicey place to live at the time. It was primed for race riots and student revolt. This was where I truly grew up. This was a very political time for me. Little did I know that a young child named Barrack Obama lived nearby.

This was the second time we had been in the north. I spent the first three years of elementary school in Columbus Ohio while my father, a Navy reconnaissance officer, was assigned to work with North American Aviation. My understanding is he was testing a new bomb sight and photo recon package that would later be used in Vietnam. My father wanted to be an astronaut but the color-blindness that keep him out of the pilot seat also disqualified him to fly for NASA. What he never knew is that Lunar Excursion Module was being developed only three hangers away from his office. He died do what he loved best, flying off carriers, in 1964.

My arrival in Chicago was different. This would be the first time I left home. The first time I lived with people other than family. The first time in a big city. Alone. The reputation of the university and the quality of the students scared me. Soon though the city did not. Here is where I developed my love of trains. The Illinois Central suburban train ran on the eastern flanks of the university enclave but it was expensive and limited to only going downtown. The Chicago Transit Authority trains could get you anywhere in the city. Access to south side Dan Ryan line required a 20 block bus ride through the heart of the south side. For a white southern boy this was a whole nother experience. I loved it.

Now I was coming into Chicago again diagonally from the northwest. The skyline is barely recognizable. Surrounding the once isolated and majestic John Hancock Tower are more than 15 buildings over 60 stories deserving the term tower. To me they look like weeds desecrating the magnificent mile. Even the Sears Tower, for a long time the tallest building in the world, now has competition on the southwest corner of the loop.

Still it feels like home.

The Mississippi has a Mind of Its Own

Most people think of the great Mississippi River as a broad slow moving impassable channel. In the north, the river wanders in multiple channels of varying widths at multiple speeds. The Empire Builder follows along the western most bank for only a short distance before turning east to pass though the Lake Michigan cities in Wisconsin. It took seven minutes to cross all five channels of the river.

Taking the Fork at Grand Forks

We approach the headwaters of the Mississippi River during the night. The major junction in this neck of the woods is Grand Forks and it is grand in every way. Rivers converge. Roads diverge in every direction of the clock. The largest train switching yard for several hundred miles is here. The Empire Builder takes a 90 degree turn to the south here in the wee hours of the night. I know only because the sudden cessation of movement woke me up. We sat there for awhile awaiting clearance. I was asleep again soon after we started moving.