I just arrived in Galesburg, Illinois after a 16 hour train ride on the California Zephyr. My layover in Galesburg is a mind blowing 9 hours! The southbound train from Chicago Union Station doesn't arrive here until 8:38pm tonight.
The train ride was relaxing but filled with flash backs to previous trips with my former wife and step children. Those memories of long ago taking the train from Denver to visit our families in Illinois were good ones filled with laughter, talking all through the night and little Clara sleeping with her head resting on my arm.
This trip back to Illinois was much different. There was no one waiting for me at the station and no one sitting next to me in the railroad car. Just solitude, quietness and hours of looking mindlessly through the opaque window at the darkness of the Eastern Colorado Plains and the North Platte River Valley of Nebraska.
The genesis of this trip back to Illinois began back in January when church board member, Jim Burns, invited me to speak to the Church about my journey across America. After finding out that I would be back in Quincy, local attorney, Michael Bickhaus, arranged a speaking engagement in front of the St Francis Catholic Church Men's Group as well.
I'm also trying to scare up some additional speaking engagements in other venues while I'm here in Illinois. I also plan to visit with family and friends back in Morton. After all, it's Mother's Day May 8th. Gotta say hi to mom.
Yesterday when I boarded the Zephyr I belatedly remembered that April 28, 2014 was the day I left Morton, Illinois and headed westward toward Colorado. It's been a fantastic 2 years of wild adventure, making lasting friendships, of pain both physical and emotional, of fear and finally of personal transformation.
It was well worth it all to be sure. I would never trade these last 2 years for anything.
Even so, I went hungry without food for days, slept in bone chilling cold, was drenched by torrential rain, driven into an old abandoned barn by lightening, dehydrated by the constant lack of water, attacked by bed bugs, suffered a blood infection, attacked by dogs, run out of town by a fundamental Baptist cleric, rescued from heat stroke, developed whopper sized blisters, body burnt by a blazing western Sun, threatened with a gun by a genetically challenged red neck in Nebraska and jailed by a Sheriff in Eastern Colorado.
What's not to love about a journey out in the wilderness like that?
Walking out of the Train Depot this afternoon in Galesburg I was thrusted into a blustery cold north wind as I moseyed on down to the McDonald's for lunch and to get on WiFi. After all, I have 7 more hours to kill waiting for my train to take me to Quincy!
The pics show Denver Union Station and the mighty Mississippi.
Peace to y'all!
BR Schoenbein
April 29, 2016- Friday
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