The trains sound like they’re dying whenever they take a bend too quickly. A lot of times, this happens at Belmont.
Heading south, the Brown, Red and Purple lines feed into Belmont and start sharing a path, the tracks turn from a dizzying soup of rust and curved rails into neat, orderly rows. I’d close my book for a second and listen to the growing din of people moving towards the doors. Three quarters of the passengers would exit, half of that would come in to fill in the gaps.
Riding home one afternoon, I stood next to a coworker for ten minutes before realizing he was there. He tapped me on the shoulder, we got to talking. I complained about the average forty minutes it would take for me to get from door to door. I told him how nice it was to have so much time to think and read but how draining it was; I could be doing those things at home, and I wasn’t home, and I wouldn’t be home for another ten stops.
“When I worked for Discover, I used to take the Purple Line to State and Lake. Most of the time, when it got to Belmont there’d be a Red Line waiting,” he said, “I looked it up and saw both lines take you to Lake, but the Red does it in less stops.” I checked the printed map in the train car. “So this one time,” he went on, “I said, ‘fuck it’ and crossed over.” We laughed. “You should try it.”
Time on the CTA is a twisted arithmetic. Fifteen minutes can be the difference between being wedged close enough to strangers to know whether they’ve skipped breakfast and having the luxury of sitting while staring at shoes. Fifteen minutes can trick your entire body into living 26 hour days. I took my coworker’s advice the next morning.
Shaving fifteen minutes off my commute was a revelation.
Space In Your Head 