El Racing

It’s rather infrequently that I travel up to north Chicago these days. So, today, as the Red and Brown lines rushed me northward toward Ravenswood to meet Liz for coffee, and I watched the John Hancock grow increasingly diminutive, it actually felt like an extremely long journey. The path I had traced every day coming to and from work when I lived in Uptown is actually becoming unfamiliar to me now, since my life is pretty concentrated in downtown Chicago.

On my way home after coffee, after I had made my transfer from the Brown to Red line at Belmont, I was reminded of how much fun that El ride can be (forgive me for being so easily amused). Because today we got to race. At Fullerton, both the southbound Brown line and Red line trains took off at once. The Brown line was off to an early start, and for a second I thought we would lose. But it wasn’t long before the Red line smoked ‘em, as it zipped past the Brown line train, which was forced to make a stop. I love when the trains are timed just right like that, because it reminds me of riding on the Gemini roller coaster at Cedar Point, where the red and blue cars would take off together, and you’d race each other until the end of the ride (blue almost always won).

My favorite part of the simultaneous takeoff from Belmont, though, is that split-second of adrenaline when it seems as though the trains might crash into each other as they converge to run side-by-side. It always makes my breath catch in my throat for the briefest moment but then I relax when, surely enough, the trains start riding safely on their parallel courses. It’s not quite as exciting as riding a roller coaster, but it amuses me. Plus, you get to peer into the train next to you as you ride alongside each other. It would be more fun if you could taunt one another like everyone does on the Gemini, but, well, there’s urban transportation and then there’s Cedar Point.