the journey

yesterday, my fellow intern/msw student/friend, jason, and i completed a goal we had planned to achieve a few months earlier:

ride all of the chicago el (elevated) train lines to the end.

altogether, the el has eight different colored lines spanning about 115 miles (this is calculated by my terrible math skills and wikipedia - i'm willing to be contested).  these lines stretch into the north, south and west sides of chicago (it can't do the east side of chicago since most of it is underwater at this point in history).

after 12+ hours of riding, we hit each "end" stop and the bulk of the train line (admittedly, we took a bus and walked one place).  it was helpful for us chicago newbies (jason moved from portland this past august) to observe the city culture, neighborhoods, people and best places to view the city.

as one whose first arch nemesis in the city was the mass transit system, it feels satisfying to say that i have conquered the system, been to every el station and survived.  we found the green line to be the most satisfying (and most scary - glad we went during the day) and the blue line to be the most dreadful (very long and in the middle of a highway, thus no interesting neighborhood views).  we were serenaded to, got preached john 3:16 and witnessed a man relieving himself in a corner of the station (which is outdoors and in plain view).  it was an adventure.

below are a collection of pictures from the journey.  it was fascinating. long. and i don't think i'll ever do it again. :)

first stop of the day! green line // south side.  so much energy!

ahh... the romance of a big city abuzz.  brings me back to the 19th century for some reason.

one of the beautiful buildings i should know the name of...

after the south side trains were accomplished, we refueled in chinatown with some curried fish balls and too much delicious chinese food.

each el station is so different.  end of the purple line had owls hanging above each sign.  as well as spikes on the signs.  i assume this was to keep away pigeons and their poop.

after linden, we went further northwest on the adorable, two-car skokie swift.  most lines have way more cars, but this is a smaller line with only two stops!

shot of jason on the never ending walking ramp at blue line's illinois medical district station.

this picture is for marta.  the pink line was lovely.  very latino neighborhoods.  you would've loved it!  clearly jason does.

another key part of an el line train car is the door between cars that you are not supposed to enter.  since jason and i are rule-abiders to a t, we hadn't done this before.  we thought we should include this as part of our adventure... thus we are not rule-abiders anymore...

finally, around 10:30pm, weary but proud, our final stop, the kimball brown line.