No Sleep 'Til Wisconsin (Pt. 6: FOUR HOURS!)

TODAY'S QUESTION FOR COMMENTING: At this point in the saga, would you go home or stick around for the next train? Chime in below! And I think I'm adding something new today . . .
LOVE OF THE DAY: Ease Down the Road by Bonnie Prince Billy

(Continued from yesterday.)
October 2006, Evanston, Illinois

The instant I felt the air under my feet, I knew jumping was a huge mistake. The train chugged away and I realized: so what if that was the wrong one? It was a 50-50 shot, and regardless, that train was going in the right direction. If it had turned out to be the wrong one, I could've simply gotten off at the next stop and waited a minute or two for the Kenosha train. Makes sense now.

But, of course, that was the Kenosha train. How could it not be? It was just that kind of day. And the next Kenosha train was not for almost four hours. FOUR HOURS!

I felt totally dejected. I could not believe how badly I’d blown it. I mean, last summer I was frequently late for my voice lessons because I'd yet to grasp the finer points of the CTA brown line, but we’re talking a few minutes late. Not six hours. I had arrived at my neighborhood Metra station at 10:43 a.m., expecting to be in Wisconsin by lunch. It now appeared I would be taking the 4:33 p.m. train, if I decided to go at all. Sure, once upon a time, I happily lived in Evanston for three years. But at that moment, I thought I might jump off something much higher than the train platform if I had to spend another three minutes there, let alone three hours.

Ugh. Everyone else -- even the pervy bankers -- understood how the Metra works. When it comes, you go. What was wrong with me?

I stopped by the conductor’s booth once more, just to verify, 100%, how thoroughly I had blown it. (Yep. Thoroughly.) Worst of all, I found out the last train of the day back to Chicago from Wisconsin left 11 minutes after the Kenosha train arrived. Basically, if I hung around Evanston long enough to fulfill my destiny of going to Kenosha (please, just try to say “fulfill my destiny of going to Kenosha” aloud without laughing), I would be there long enough to take a whiz, as long as there wasn't a big line for the ladies' room. Fantastic. What a great story that would make.

THE PEEPS: "Yo, what did you do today?"
ME: "Went out of state to pee."

I surveyed Evanston from the elevated heights of the train station. It was beginning to dawn on me that my little college town -- the one that didn't allow bars or bowling alleys because, as the rumor goes, students would get drunk and try to fling their naked selves down the lane at the pins -- had gone through some big changes in six years. Now I could have thrown a rock and hit the following establishments: Pier 1, Coldstone, Ann Taylor Loft, Urban Outfitters, LA Fitness, Chili’s, the inexplicably named Fashion Tomato, a two-story Borders, and Wolfgang Puck’s restaurant. Someone had also seen fit to move the one-story Barnes & Noble diagonally across the street (a grand total of, say, 30 feet) and add a second floor. The pitiful shell of the old one was still obvious, since shadows of the words Barnes & Noble remained on its façade where the sign had been.

Maybe I had been too hasty, considering suicide over shopping. After all, it may be a chain, but Urban Outfitters does sell the Erin essentials: tights, hoop earrings, miniskirts, yellow stuff of all sorts. OK, that settles it. The show must go on!

(And it goes on tomorrow. Four words: Tight, shiny silver pants. See you then!)