… He was sitting on his ass in the Metropolitan Lounge at Chicago Union Station, enjoying complimentary beverages & snacks.

Eventually the train was called, and so we all trooped down to the boarding hall, where we stood around being occasionally required to move because they needed to get a motorized cart thingy through, because the train wasn’t actually ready. Or even present.

Someone jumped the gun a bit vis-a-vis boarding, I’m thinking; I think we started to get on the 1745 Cardinal at 1800 or so.

This was not one of those smooth trips. Lots of slow walking pace sections, multiple stopped-in-a-cornfield parts waiting for signals, or a freight, or possibly just really fresh corn on the cob, and the air conditioning was for some reason set to ‘beer cooler’ for most of the trip.

Made it to Indy maybe an hour late ( at 0100 or so ), which isn’t bad going. Walked to the hotel, because after that long on the train the idea of a non-lurching surface had some serious appeal. There were still a bunch of people on the streets, including some police folk dealing with something across the road from the station.

Check in was wildly uneventful, but getting to the room ( 30th floor with park view! ) was hampered by a couple who were too drunk, or disfunctional, or maybe just too stupid, to operate the lift. In the end I just left them on the 2nd floor, went back to Ground, and was then able to call a lift they weren’t in. ( no idea how, but their flailing at the card scanner + floor button system was stopping any other card from working as well )

OK, going to take a shower & get some actual non-plane non-train sleep.