July 31st, 2011 Last Day of 7-Day/Metra Pass MY 25TH BDAY!

7/31/2011:
IB Green Line train: It's my 25th birthday, the reason behind me spending $35 to purchase a 7 Day CTA/Pace pass and a Metra weekend pass in the first place. I board an IB Green Line train to downtown, so I can board a SB Metra Electric train to the 95th stop. When my train gets to Clinton, a tall, dark-skinned man boards the train with a large green garbage can! Does this fool know that it is illegal to transport city garbage cans, which do not belong to him? The reckless mover gets off the train at the next stop, Clark/Lake, and goes about his business. Geesh, I should've reported him, and I don't know why I didn't!

LATER
SB Metra Rock Island District train: When I get to Millennium Station, I look for anything pointing to the train I'm looking to catch, discovering that the next train doesn't come until 10:30 a.m. Now, I could've stayed inside and waited, but chose to walk to the Randolph/Wabash stop, to board a Pink Line train to take to Lasalle/Van Buren to board the next Rock Island District Metra train. And when I get to Lasalle St. Station, I discover that the next one does not come until...10:30. My one and only thought was,

"Oh damn."

I decide to stay here. When a Metra train arrived and was about to allow new passengers to board, the doors of one car, closed unexpectedly while a woman with a luggage cart was about to board, trapping her arm! Me and twoother people pryed open the doors to free her arm. She did have visible marks, but nothing too serious.

AND LATER
OB/WB Metra Union Pacific West Line train: I am on board a train on my way to Elburn on my second and final day of Metra joyriding. In the car that I am in, I choose to sit in a singular seat of the upper deck. I look to the front of me, and see a guy with his legs and feet placed on the upper deck railings, something entirely prohibited by Metra. Even worse, about a couple seats down, I spot an old, hard, stale blueberry or chocolate chip muffin, resting on an upper deck railing. Mmmm, yummy!

As the train sits at the Wheaton stop to allow passengers to board/exit, a scantily clad blonde-haired woman nearly trips from something on the platform and looks back to see what it was. I thought,

"Dirty whore should've fell flat on her face."

As she stood on the platform with a guy, her boyfriend probably, the wind gently lifted the legs of the back of her short shorts.

Here's an all-too-common problem with Metra-the smell of the wheels as the train stops at a station. When we get to Winfield, I smell it, really, really good, and I really, really begin to wonder how come Metra trains don't catch fire much more often than they do, which is really not that often. This is what I was fearful of when I smelled the smell of burning wheels and burning rails that created no sparks.

Then, when we get to the end of the line, Elburn, the train sits at the station, but the doors do not open. The conductor says something to the Metra personnel, but what he says to them is heard over the intercom.

"Can somebody let these people out?"

Everyone near me, about a dozen folks, bursts into laughter. I do nothing more than hold a huge smile on my face.

THE RETURN TRIP
I decide to ride back from Elburn to the Oak Park station instead of Ogilvie. Just minutes before the train departs from the Elburn stop, what do you know? A speeding freight train, headed by two Union Pacific locomotives, comes flying by. A few minutes later, my train departs, and as it heads toward the La Fox station, at full speed, it passes the cars of the freight train with ease. Oh! I am getting excited! Oh my gosh! It's a train race! Oh my gosh! Oh I wish I had my digital camcorder to record it! As my train rapidly picked off cars of the freight train one by one, in my head, I silently shouted,

"Get 'em! Get 'em! Get 'em! Get 'em..."

It was about a minute into the race when the Metra train overtook the freight train, and when this occurred, I shouted,

"Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yesssss!"

Silently, in my head of course.

As the train sat at the La Fox station to allow passengers to board, and it surely was a great deal of them, the freight train somehow caught up with it, and began to pass it by! Less than a minute later, my train pulled off and the race was on again! It surely didn't take long for my train, the UP-West Metra train, to get the best of the freight train, pulled by the two UP locomotives, and it was never seen again, not even at College Avenue.

The train sits at College Avenue for more than 10 minutes! Something awfully terrible has happened! It begins when I hear a Metra employee shout,

"Get back! Is he bleeding?!"

While they're waiting for an ambulance to arrive and see about the injured person (and how he got hurt is completely unknown), passengers on board begin to get very impatient, and so does the conductor. I am in the second car, so I can clearly hear him blowing the horn! He blows it like, five times, before getting on a CB or whatever it is, and shouting,

"Hey! Talk to me!"

This is heard all over the train's intercom system, causing several people to laugh. I didn't find anything funny about that. As a matter of fact, the whole ordeal made me pretty scared, although I didn't show it! The conductor blows the horn four times once more to get the employees' attention. About a couple minutes later, the ambulance arrive and about a couple minutes more, the train begins to move again, and it is about 20 minutes behind schedule. This is a little upsetting to me, but at the same time, is extremely understandable.

Now that that last Metra ride became the end of usage for both my weekend Metra pass, and my CTA/Pace pass (I got off at the Oak Park stop and boarded the Green Line at the adjacent Harlem stop), I will have to yearn for riding CTA/Metra/Pace until sometime in August.