I Am a Motorcoach . . .

. . . maneuvering my way around potholes and snowbank mazes, through narrow squeezes in parking lots, down crowded urban streets busy with oblivious pedestrians and autos competing for real estate, across flowing lanes of highway traffic, and onto splintering multi-directional exchanges, ramps, loops, tunnels, and crisscrossing overpasses. This is who I am in a word: maneuvering. It is what I am designed for and crafted to do. Motorcoaches do not fix things, correct systems, or petition for better conditions. In fact, formation of a complaint is foreign to our circuitry. We owe our existence to the ideas and activities of planners, surveyors, civil engineers, developers, and construction administrators. We know their errors intimately. We travel the details, and experience the flaws. Yet, no motorcoach has ever contributed a single suggestion for traffic distribution or infrastructure betterment. I maneuver through what is . . . that’s all.

Here, Chicago, is a good place to demonstrate. Let me show you . . .

Selfies

(which by definition means I’m in them . . . though you might have to look for me)

Wendella Boats sits on the west side of Michigan Avenue where it meets the north bank of the Chicago River. The location is also a favorite photo-spot for sightseers. There is a small cutout off of the busy Michigan for dropping off and picking up passengers. It can accommodate seven or eight cars or three motorcoaches, or a combination of these with room for others to squeeze through and out onto Michigan if everyone is squared tightly to the curb. To find the cutout unoccupied, or occupied by sensibly parked vehicles . . . well, that’s just not Chicago. The maneuvering is further complicated by traffic lights that back up traffic on red cycles, making it a trick getting into and out of the cutout. But, when a spot is secured, the view in every direction is impressively CHICAGO!

Three-and-a-half miles south of Wendella Boats, just south of Roosevelt Rd, there is a refuge for motorcoaches and buses along Canal Street. Except for this one designated spot, Chicago offers little relief from constant and congested movement. Whenever there is a break in the action, I maneuver my way to Canal Street.

See this little burgundy vehicle with the sign on its roof? That is a taxi. Taxis are to the streets of Chicago what flies are to a barnyard – busy and relentlessly present. Whatever bit of pavement you are moving toward, there are five of them that have their eyes on it. Maneuvering in Chicago is taxi-conscious.

MEETING THE NEWS on the roadways of America, first-hand, real time, real world news—going out and discovering the news . . .

RAIL NEWS: Adjacent to the Canal Street motorcoach oasis is the Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad yard. The BNSF Metra is a commuter rail line serving Chicago and its surrounding suburbs. Chicago has long been the most important rail center in North America, with lines radiating in more directions than from any other location. Chicago’s first railroad was the Galena and Chicago Union, first opened for business in 1836. Today Chicago rail yards are the coordinating centers for freight distribution throughout the U.S.; and Chicago is the hub for Amtrak, the national intercity passenger system.

“L” IN THE NEWS: Jammed with horses, wagons, streetcars, and pedestrians, in 1892 the crowded conditions of Chicago streets were much as they are today. That was the year the first elevated rail system began moving people through Chicago above the streets. The attempt to alleviate some of the street bulge would become a successful fast transit system known as the “L.” Today the “L” is the second busiest fast transit system in the U.S. (to that of NY City). Having united previously competing rail providers in 1924, the “L” transports nearly 240 million riders annually.

(Unlike selfies, these are not about me, but about travel discoveries I think you’d like to know about.)

This Thomas Edison cylinder phonograph sits among other pristine musical furnishings from the late 19th Century in the entry to the mansion-museum, “Place de la Musique,” at Sanfilippo Estates. Thirty-seven miles from downtown Chicago, “Place de la Musique” holds the largest collection of automated music machines in the world. Gloriously restored orchestrions and nickelodeons created between the 1890s to the 1930s are prelude to the largest theater pipe organ ever built and the most complete European Salon Carousel in the world, the Eden Palais. With an abundance of crafted beauty to match the fullness of auditory enjoyment, the Sanfilippo experience is nearly too big for words.

Quote Of The Day samples

“Eventually, I think Chicago will be the most beautiful great city left in the world.” – Frank Lloyd Wright

“The more relaxed you are, the better you are at everything: the better you are with your loved ones, the better you are with your enemies, the better you are at your job, the better you are with yourself. – Bill Murray