Boston to Chicago Done

    We all know what the “Big Lie,” is. In the Parthenon of fibs, falsehoods and outright fabrications it is doubtful it, or its author, will ever be topped.

    But I have a great candidate for first runner up.

    It’s the notion that when traveling by train the gentle rocking motion of the car clickity clacking down the tracks (Cue Arlo Guthrie’s song, the “City of New Orleans”) will be a wonderful way to fall asleep.

    On Amtrak’s Lake Shore Limited on Wednesday night, it’s rocking all right, more like rockin’ and rollin’ at a concert with Megadeath, AC-DC, and Disturbed turned up to Level 11.

    The far-from-perfect condition of the tracks is such that the train cars jump, bang, make crashing sounds, and sway wildly to and fro for most of the night, especially on a legendary 67-mile straight-as-an-arrow section west of Toledo.

    Like the stereotypical greenhorn deckhand who quivers below decks during monstrous seas trying not to get tossed from his bunk on the Discovery series “Deadliest Catch,” remaining in your berth on this train a challenge. It was especially hard on Roxie who drew short straw (volunteered actually, God bless her) and took the top bunk.

    For safety there’s a hanging contraption made from the same webbing as seat belts to keep you from being thrown to the floor and believe me, she needed it.

    We cut the lights around 10 but it isn’t until around 2 a.m., that I just barely hear her ask over the cacophony “you asleep?” Of course I wasn’t. I was too busy comparing the ride to what it’s like to be inside the spin cycle when the washing machine contains just a single heavy item.

    And sleeplessness wasn’t just the fault of the battered track and noise from the running gear. Did I mention we were in the first car directly behind the engines? By federal law, the engineer must blow the locomotive’s horn when approaching any road crossing. They blat out two longs blasts, a short, and another long any time of the day or night. Just our luck Western Ohio and Eastern Indiana seem to have road crossings at least every half a mile.

    Fortunately, we both laugh it off and chalk it up as part of the adventure, rather than lament a myth of the romance of traveling by train.

 One of two seats in the Roomette

    Just after daybreak, we spot a couple of nice 8-point bucks in a cornfield west of Waterloo, Indiana. Later the sight of the decaying former USS Steelworks in Gary, a massive inspiration for the term “rust belt,” sets off a wave of nostalgia. I worked in a steel fabrication mill in Connecticut after high school and we used to receive a lot of metal from there. It’s still producing but the output pales to that of days gone by which is a great metaphor for a lot of things but I promised to keep this dispatch shorter.

    Angry, six-foot breakers are crashing ashore on Lake Michigan, powered by winds that have a 307-mile head start. Living on an island in Maine we like to think of the ocean as the ultimate power, and here there's no mistake who is boss.

    We cross into the Central Time zone around 10 a.m. Fortunately, with traveling by rail, there’s really no danger of jet lag. Actually, I once heard someone explain that jet lag has nothing to do with biorhythms, but rather it is a discordance that manifests when your body travels faster than your soul. Makes sense when you realize that the favorite thing for billionaires lately is to zip around space at 17,500 miles per hour.

    With trains there’s no chance your soul will be a day behind and out of breath. But after last night’s rough ride, mine’s probably wishing it had taken its sweet time.

    After watching the city’s skyscrapers looming ever larger, we get to Chicago just a half hour late. We say our goodbyes to our attendant David and cross corridor neighbors James and Jamie, and disembark at Union Station. We enjoy a quick lunch -- our first food that didn’t require assembly in a microwave in nearly two days. Then it’s all aboard a Metra commuter train for the two-hour run up to Fox Lake where we’ll be visiting with Roxie’s cousin Ernie and wife Kathy.

    Day three is done. Barring some unexpected tectonic shift, both bodies and souls are looking forward to a good night’s sleep.