Freak of the Weak (pun intended)

Well with the impending Dan Ryan construction and all of the little bastards who actually get to take a Spring Break, the South Shore has been a mess of people stealing my seats, and today was no exception.

Today we got lucky and saw a woman of about 45-50 years old, who looked like she took I Love the 80's waaaaaaaaaay too seriously, and decides that the Brett Michaels haircut would never die. Add to this that she got to sit with the 3 Gorditas for half of the trip, and it can make life interesting. Once the Gorditas departed for greener grazing pastures, this woman had a pissed off look that made even this brazen commuter decide to stay put. I am not quite sure if the look of death or the feathered haircut lasted longer, but I sure didn't want to put in the 20 years to find out. Then again 45 minutes with the Gorditas would make me want to kill someone, and that is without looking like a groupie from a Motley Crue video. Congrats to our latest nominee.

A New Name Needed!!!

Well as many of you faithful readers and riders know, sitting next to the Gorditas on a regular basis is much like Bill Murray's life in the famous movie Groundhogs Day. The converstations they have always consist of one of two things... Food or dating, neither of which they really need to be messing with too much. On Thursday of last week I managed to hear them talking about coffee, donuts (plain for dunking), oatmeal (plain as well, and of course chocolate. Now I know I missed tons of the conversation because we had our own one going on, but you get the idea if you have never had the misfortune of having to listen to them.

Now here's the rub... I want to have a regular write up on what its like to be around the Gorditas, and some of their more memorable food converstations that they have... The thing is I have no idea what to call the it, and that's where you the readers come in... What should I call it?

Idiots+Cell phones =screwed commuters

Also from the MC News Dispatch

Truck crashes into train

By Stan Maddux For The News-Dispatch

A Michigan City area woman and her 2-year-old daughter escaped serious injury after colliding with a fast moving South Shore Railroad train near Michigan City on Sunday afternoon.

Just before 2 p.m., Lauren Whitaker was driving a 1987 Ford Ranger pickup truck on County Road 400 West in Springfield Township when her cell phone rang, according to LaPorte County police.

Whitaker, 22, told investigators she looked down to pick up the phone, but dropped it on the floor. She said she had no idea a train was coming, and as she looked for her cell phone, drove into the side of the first car on the eastbound train carrying 70 passengers, police said.

Officers were told by the train's conductor that the train was traveling at 60 mph. There are no gates at the crossing, which is marked by stop signs and signs warning of the potential for high speed trains, police said.

The train came to a stop about a quarter mile east of the crossing while the truck came to rest on the north side of the tracks with severe front end damage.

Whitaker, 6248 N. County Road 400 West, was transported to St. Anthony Memorial with an apparent minor head injury, police said. Her daughter, Emma Breit, did not appear hurt. Police said the girl was in a child restraint seat.

Two passengers on the train, Adonis Woods, 29, and his daughter, Meekl Jones, 10, both of South Bend, each complained of pain, according to police.

Police said Whitaker was cited for driving with a suspended license.

Despite extensive damage to the lead car, the train returned to the rail yard in Michigan City where the passengers boarded another eastbound train.

However, that train wasn't able to proceed to South Bend until the accident scene was cleared and damage to the track fixed about two hours later, said John Parsons, spokesman for the Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District, which operates the railroad.

“Obviously, service was interrupted because of the accident,” Parsons said.

South Shore to consider Bi-Cars

Once again the South Shore is years late, and millions of dollars short. They should have been talking about this 3 years ago, when the plans for the Dan Ryan reconstruction were being announced. Instead they are looking at add these cars right about the time the Ryan would reopen, rendering them useless. In the meantime, we are going to have 3 years of misery crammed into over-capacity train cars, because Jack Parsons has the vision of Stevie Wonder.

The article is lovingly stolen from the Michigan City News Dispatch.

South Shore considers bi-level cars

By Scot Squires The News-Dispatch

Provided The South Shore Railroad may purchase bi-level cars like this one used by Metra.

Railroad says many of its trains are operating at full capacity

To help alleviate crowded passenger trains, South Shore Railroad officials are looking to buy 12 new cars - possibly double-deckers.

“We are at capacity,” said John Parsons, spokesman for the Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District, which operates the South Shore. “We are interested in getting new equipment.”

The new cars will take at least 18 to 24 months to acquire, which doesn't offer much help for what is expected to be a summer of gridlock on Chicago-area highways.

Major highways leading into Illinois and the Windy City are slated to undergo construction in the coming months, and the South Shore may not provide much relief for commuters because many trains are already full, and ridership continues to climb.

In 2005, ridership increased 7.3 percent over 2004. Already this year, the number of passengers is up 10.7 percent during January and February over last year, Parsons said.

If the railroad decides to purchase bi-level passenger cars, it would be a first for the South Shore, which borrowed double-decker cars for a short time from Metra in the early 1990s while it waited for its own new trains.

While those Metra trains used a diesel-powered locomotive, the South Shore cars would be electric-powered.

The double-deckers hold 148 passengers compared to 133 seats in the current cars. But there are some drawbacks.

Officials with NICTD have to be sure the new cars will work at all stations along the route, which extends from downtown Chicago to the South Bend Regional Airport. The bi-level cars only have doors that open in the middle for elevated boarding. The South Shore needs to have stairs for some stations that don't have platforms.

In addition, the bi-level cars won't be able to attach to the current trains, Parsons said. That means the new cars can only be connected to other new cars.

And, Parsons said, regardless of whether the railroad purchases single or bi-level cars, “We would have to have additional storage facilities.”

The bi-level cars under consideration are like the 26 new cars Metra recently purchased for part of their Illinois route. Those cars were manufactured in Japan and assembled in the United States.

To pay for the new equipment, NICTD is requesting $31.2 million in federal funds through the Indiana Department of Transportation and another $7.8 million in matching funds from the Northwest Indiana Regional Development Authority.

The NICTD board is expected to further discuss purchasing new cars at its meeting, which is at 10 a.m. Friday, March 31, at the Chesterton office.

Saint Patricks Day blow out SSPP-style!

For those who know us enough and we like enough to drink beer with... If you are interested and not on the email list, send feel free to leave a comment with your what you are bringing.

Diez de Marzo

Well Friday was an interesting commute to say the least. Downtown Chicago was effectively shutdown to most forms of traffic. The streets were jammed with protesters upset about the new laws aimed at illegal aliens in the USA. Buses upon buses of people were brought into the city, with the sole purpose of making their voices heard. These hundreds of thousands of people literally shutdown most streets, choking the intersections and roadways with seas of people. It was literally easier to walk down the middle of the Van Buren, then it was to walk on the sidewalk. Getting the train alone was an adventure, and Mr Angry was no where to be found.

Once I got to the train station, things were no less interesting. Seems that many people decided the South Shore would be an excelante form of transportation into Chicago for the protest. Of course we were standing room only, but at least it made for an entertaining ride home.

Some of the highlights included...

-Watching the Gorditas reading off a sheet the printed off of the net somewhere that told them how to cook Long John Silvers at home (hmm I wonder how many points those crunchy things are worth?)

-The fat girl wearing a tight shirt which prominantly featured half of her gut hanging out over her too tight pants, who also owned the "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" ringtone.

-Aisles being jammed with people, but unfortunately there was no real panic of people missing their stops, so that was disappointing.

finally after East Chicago things cleared out enough to find a seat. Viva la Revolution!

Muggle Ticker--->16

Monday managed to bump the Magical Muggle Ticker up to 16 without a real fight. It wasn't one of the usual foul conversations that we use to drive off stray muggles who wonder into our realm of commuting. Many times it takes a special conversation to get people to move, including subjects such as masterbation and gay butt sex as seen in Brokeback Mountian, but Monday all it took was a conversation about Nerd's daughters birthday party to get an older woman to simply say

"I gotta get out"

In her best gravely 2 packs of Marlboro's a day voice.

On the search engine side of things, the two latest hits have come from searches on...

"OttHaverstock" (a funeral home in Michigan City)
and
"Graphs on people who are out in the sun and get cancer from it"

Searches on funeral homes and cancer, damn I like it better when we were attracting pervs vs all of these depressing people.

An Anger special with a dash of postal sauce

As you all know, in my great and mighty efforts to entertain the masses, sometimes I stretch the circumstances of a situation to fit it into the window of "commuting". As such, this story did not actually take place on a South Shore train, or even at one of its stations. These both actually happened as I was walking to the train down Van Buren in Chicago to catch the train in order to get home. And now to the story...

Twice now as I have been walking from work, I had the (mis)fortune of being in the presence of this same guy as he had issues with other people. The first time was right before we rounded the corner from Van Buren onto Michigan into the tunnel which decends into the Van Buren train station. Right before Michigan Avenue, there is a little sort of collectors shop on the south side of the street. Its a very small place, the kind if you blink, you miss it. Well a younger girl is one of the two people that works in there, and she was standing outside smoking one day. She finishes up and flips away the used cig a few feet in front of the target of our story, and he snapped. Instantly he was cursing at her about polluting the air for everybody. Instead of arguing with him, the girl simply flipped the angry man off, and walked back into the shop. The guy, not being satisfied, opened the door of the shop, screamed in a few more choice obsenities, and then looked at me and asked.

"Can you believe some people?"

The funny thing is, I got to see him in action last Friday.

As I was standing and waiting to cross Dearborn, the light was against me, so I watched the cars go by waiting for a break. Eventually the light changed, and as I looked down the street, I could see that one cabbie in typical fashion, didn't believe that red lights meant stop if you were driving in a car painted yellow. So instead of getting creamed all over the pavement, I waited for the idiot to run the light and pass by. What I didn't realize was the Mr. Angry was standing on the other side of me, and had started to walk into the intersection once the light had changed. He took a step back at the last second, and then proceded to belt the car hard with his heavy satchel bag, screaming obsenities at the cab driver and refering to his obvious color blindess. Then the guy looks at me, and saids again...

"Can you believe some people?"

I do believe some people, and others I simply fear.

The UPDATE you have all been waiting for

Today was D-Day on the 5 am train from 11th Street in Michigan City.

Would the Worst Conductor Ever punch my ticket for an unprecidented second week in a row? Could my heart handle the extreme shock and stresses of world colliding if he did? Could Duddly DooRight save Nell from Snidley Whiplashes evil plot? Oh damn, wrong story... Sorry about that.

Anyways, as if to restore my faith in humanity, WCE looked at my ticket, made a stupid joke about it being Monday, and then bumbled on down the train car.

Karma has been rebalanced, all is now right with the world.

Hell HAS frozen over...

Somethings in life are just a given... The sun rises in the east, traffic on the Dan Ryan sucks, the Cubs will choke in September etc. There are many things that we can build a foundation, knowing that they are the building blocks for life. Well yesterday morning one of those very cornerstones was ripped out from underneath me.

As per my usual routine, I led the parade of weary commuters onto the 5:00 am train at 11th Street. I found my usual seat, surrounded by the usual people, and began my usual rituals for taking my hour's nap to rest up for the long day ahead of me. Also as usual the Worst Conductor Ever came through and was checking tickets, except when he got to me, I heard the most stunning words I could ever have possibly imagined.

"Has anyone punched your ticket yet?"

Now a little backround might be needed here, but in years of riding on this mans train, I cannot honestly remember the last time he tried to punch my ticket. I literally have months worth of virgin, unpunched tickets at home, collecting dust. Technically the ticket it supposed to be punched once a week by your morning conductor, which for me hasn't happened since the very first month they went to weekly ticket-punching many, many moons ago. Now back to the story...

WCE might as well have kicked me in the balls, because I was in such a state of shock, I could barely muster the brain capacity to pull my ticket out of its plastic cover in my wallet and hand it to the man. He then proceded to punch the ticket to prove that I was indeed a male, and it was also the first week of the month of March in the year 2006. Mechanically I replaced the ticket into its place within my wallet, and then settled in for my nap. Now it might have been the cold, or it might have been the shock, but I definately awoke later in a cold sweat. The very foundations of my world have been shaken. Life will never be the same... I now fear the second week of the month, will it bring another punch? Stay tuned...