Eight Lines, 145 Stations, 224 Miles, 12 Hours, One Happy Boy

Owyn has always loved riding trains.  Ever since he was old enough to remember, the Chicago L has been his favorite train to ride.  I remember when he was just 2 years old and we took a late night trip on the L to kill some time.  The great thing about the L is that most of the track is elevated and thus you get to see the city.  He loved it then and he loves it now that he is 6.

A few weeks ago Owyn and Daddy came up with the idea of riding the whole L system in one day.  Daddy checked online to make sure it was possible and sure enough, other people had done it before.  To ensure we had enough time though, we had to plan a route that included trips on CTA buses to travel from one line to another.  This way we did not waste time traveling over the same tracks we had already traversed.

Today was the day.  We drove into Chicago the previous night, spent some time at Navy Pier and got to our accomodations (O'Meara's condo) early to get a good night's sleep.  We woke up early and were out of the condo by 7:15 am.  We stopped at the Walgreen's to get our day pass for the CTA and then bought some breakfast at the nearby Farmer's Market (bread and cheese sticks).  We started our journey at the Clark/Division stop on the red line. 

When we get to the end of a line, we call it a "Summit".  Red line south (95th/Dan Ryan) was the first summit and the rest of the summits in order were Ashland/63rd (green), Cottage Grove (green), Harlem/Lake (green), Forest Park (blue), O'hare (blue), Kimball (brown), Loop (brown), loop (orange), Midway (orange), 54th/Cermak (pink), loop (pink), Howard (red), Howard (yellow), Dempster/Skokie (yellow), Howard (purple), Linden (purple).

In the end, we had ridden the whole L (over 224 miles) in 12 hours.  It was a long day, but whenever I asked Owyn if he wanted to quit and do something else, he said no way.  We did read a couple of Magic Tree house books to keep us from getting too bored.  We also stopped for food and snacks a couple of times.

 
We picked up Mommy and Zoee before we finished. 

It was a long day, but we accomplished our goal of riding the whole L in one day.  When we got to Linden on the purple line, Owyn and Daddy exchanged high fives and jumped for joy.  Way to go Owyn!