Not so very long ago I posted a blog which — although it was inspired by a very rough morning — turned out to be a pretty good blog. I’ve since learned that one big sign that something blog worthy has happened to you is when you debate between several good possible titles in your head. Another possible sign of a good blog to come is when the blog will require visual aids. Today’s blog has both.

Over the past few days I’ve nearly blogged the following titles:

• “The cookie lady, and a plea to Nokia.”



• “Steal plated optic nerve.” or “No rest for the filthy.”



• “You take the good you take the bad, you take them both and there you have…”



• “Grab a smock and wait in the back.”



• “Express train to nowhere.” or “If thoughts could kill.”

It’s the last of these that I’ve chosen for today. Today I discovered the one advantage to having a car in Chicago. When the L ride goes bad…it’s not your fault…it’s someone else’s… and the rage this can inspire is not healthy.

That being said… the rage is very often completely justified. Take this morning for example…

For those of you who aren’t familiar with Chicago’s L system (or some other well designed large city mass transit system) let me give you a quick overview of my morning commute. I start a few blocks from my apartment at the “Chicago” station on the Red Line train. I take this train north (for about 20 minutes) to the “Argyle” station, where I then walk about a block to the office.

It’s actually a really easy commute. I’ve even come to accept the fact the Red Line is always and will always be under construction … slowing the train down at certain parts along the way.

Still if there is one rule I have regarding the L it is this: Never ride the Red Line to the end of the line….ever…in either direction.

To the south the Red Line End-of-Line is the “95th/Dan Ryan” stop. This is NOT a good part of town. To the north is “Howard”. Now this is a better part of town than “95th/Dan Ryan” but it’s still no place I need to be. (Ask Alan O’Neil about riding the Red Line north too far and he’ll relate a hilarious story where people on the train would start out their ride by assuring him they weren’t going to hurt him.)

But I’m ok because “Chicago” is in a nice part of town, and “Argyle” is in an acceptable part of town — both well away from the end-of-line stops.

This morning’s story starts at “Lawrence”… the Red Line stop just south of (prior to) “Argyle”. Basically this is the end of my commute and relative to the northern most stop of the Red Line looks something like:

Or more accurately, the story begins just after the train had left the Lawrence stop.

See… it was at this point that the riders heard the operator announce: “Ladies and Gentlemen this train will be express from Lawrence to Morse”. Of course… we had JUST LEFT “Lawrence”! So… we had missed out only chance to get off of the train before she had decided to go “express”.

What that means is that (without giving us a chance to get off first) the train was now going to pass all stops until it came to “Morse”. That’s about 6 stops! For those of you wondering… no, there is nothing on the train or the schedule that indicated that this train was going to be an express train. The control room apparently decided to get this train further north as fast as possible. But… they didn’t give the passengers a chance to get off the train before it began it’s non-stop journey north.

As you can see from the above graphic it’s a sizable chunk of the northern half of the Red Line which we were going to be forced to travel thru…all the way to “Morse” which is nearly at the end of the line. 6 stops further north than I needed to be…”Argyle”…which was a matter of meters away from where the train was now.

For those of you who don’t know relatively what 6 stops means in this case, let me illustrate:

Of course I wasn’t the only one who wanted to get off the train before “Morse”… so you can imagine the collective “What?! What did she just say?! What!?” that was going on in the train. Which was shortly followed by my mumbling “They can’t do that….they can’t do that….they can’t switch to express AFTER leaving the last chance to get off….they have to tell us before….so that we can get off if we don’t want to go that far north! I don’t want to go that far north….they can’t do that..this…It against the rules.”

After failing to confirm with those around me that there were rules about this sort of thing the train stopped dead on the tracks. Where exactly did it stop you ask? … about 20 feet North (past) “Argyle” (my stop).

Now the frustration of being hijacked by an authorized CTA operator and being forced to ride to “Morse” is bad enough… but when the operator can’t be bothered to get on with it already and just start the “express” train…well that about takes the cake. Of course there is the added frustration that our dead stop is within spitting distance of the “Argyle” platform!

I mean if we are gonna sit and wait before you take us on your express ride to the North side…COULD YOU AT LEAST STOP AND WAIT AT THE PLATFORM THAT IS NOT 30 FEET FROM YOU!!!???

I gave serious consideration to opening the doors, risking the electric tracks, and jumping for the platform.

It was at this point that the operator picked up her radio to the control center…except she accidentally picked up the PA system. We got to hear her rather frantically explain to control (who of course couldn’t hear her) that she was “…half way between [something]“. Shortly afterward she came thru the car doors from the front of the train toward the back.

I sat there waiting….waiting for her to go back to her cabin…she’d have to pass me…and then I’d stop her…

I’d tackle her if I had to…I’d stop her and explain to her that she can’t just hijack 300 people like this.

I was just coming round from the sweet after glow of this fantasy when I saw her - already past me - walking into the other car.

I don’t know what happened at the back of the train, or how many people did stop her (a few must have), or how many people were still cursing into the “emergency intercom”, or what the control room told her … but thank God for it… she did decide to make a stop only a few stops north of “Argyle”.

I bolted from the train and walked 10 blocks or so south to work.