Bright Lights, Big Idiot.

aka: Gomer goes to Town

And now for another episode of, "Why I hate traveling."

Pretty much, I have no travel skills. I can't blame it on my parents, they tried. I just got nuthin in the travel-intuition department and it makes me feel like the last 35 years have counted for absolutely nothing. If I can't even get from point A to point B, why worry about the shortest route, or how long it's going to take, or whether I packed enough snackies? Fortunately, I try to compensate by "Being Prepared." Unfortunately, that translates to "Carry a lot of cash in case something goes wrong" which admittedly isn't the most practical philosophy, but it's fairly effective as far as defense mechanisms go.
So this week I have to go into downtown Chicago for two days of training. And let me make this perfectly clear, I HAYAATE traveling to/in/from/through/around Chicago. Maybe if I was the only one there it would be better, but then I suspect I'd be running for my life from zombies or something...
Anyway, today was day one of this training. Class starts at 9am, so Chris and I are out the door at 6am, to get to the Elgin train station by 7. So far things are going smoothly, and I actually make it onto the train. Mind you, the station itself isn't open yet, so you just jump on the train and get your ticket later. It's not like they don't know where you're going. So I'm there with 9000 commuters and I'm the only one without a monthly pass. No worries though... I have CASH! So after we get through Bartlett, the conductor comes around. After quickly checking the passes for everyone in the front half of the car, he gets to me. I hold out a $20 (because that's what the ATM deemed me worthy of) and he squints. "Which stop?" he asks. Now you would think that a college grad wouldn't have any problem answering that. I stare. I have one choice. "Union Station" I say. His eyes roll. "No, which stop did you get on." Yeah... you see he doesn't know how much my ticket costs until he knows where I started. I stare...blankly. Where did I start? He wants Point A, not Point B. I can NOT remember the name of the station. Nothing. Time passes. People with actual tickets start to wonder what the hold up is. I've got nothing. Then my brain starts to trickle into my mouth... "Big, err Elgin, no, egh... TIMBER! Big Timber!" The conductor puts his head down. Punches a ticket, looks back at me and slowly says, "That'll be $5.15, sir." At least, that's what his mouth said. His eyes said, "Sigh... now I have to dig out $14.85 in change for this dope who can't remember where he was 15 minutes ago."
When we finally got to Union Station, I opted to walk 2 miles to class instead of trying to negotiate a cab or the busline by myself. Happy ending though, I did actually make it to class on time.