more travel

I'm going to Chicago this weekend. There's been a lot of traveling recently; D. is in Toronto right now for a conference. My travels should be interesting as four separate transit systems are required to reach my final destination: St. Louis Bus, St. Louis Metro, Amtrak and Chicago Metra. I know St. Louis Metro and Chicago Metra are fairly reliable as far as being on time, but Metra did have that incident a few weeks ago where they derailed a train at 65mph in a 10mph zone. Amtrak...well, I'm not holding out hope, but maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised. I've never used the St. Louis buses either, but I have no reason to think they'll be too bad, especially at the time of day I'll be on them. So I'm crossing my fingers that I'll avoid derailed trains and make my connections somewhat on time. Note: I've never really lived anywhere before St. Louis where public transport was much of an option. Sure, I took the bus to the mall half a dozen times in college, but that wasn't exactly a major urban transportation system. And I guess with the aforementioned never taking the bus here, I don't really utilize public transport other than in cases when parking is a nuisance (i.e. taking the metro to the baseball stadium). But I really love trains and I'm not intimidated by figuring out how to get from A to B using different systems, so I'm looking forward to this trip. (Speaking of A to B, I figured out how to get D. from the Toronto airport to his hotel to the conference center to the other couple of places he has to go via bus and subway. I'm wondering how many of his fellow conference attendees will be enjoying some rather expensive cab trips.) (P.P.S. I've been to Paris a couple times and Le Metro is a thing of beauty. Seriously. I love the Metro.)