Amtrak

He came in, I guess, straight into Wilmington, and I drove down from Philadelphia.

We left our cars there and jumped on Amtrak.

Super easy.

And when you come in to the station there in Washington, you get on the Washington Metro, and the Metro has a stop right for the Pentagon.

And the reason I remember that is saying to myself, "We need to go get a cup of coffee.

It's late.

I haven't had any coffee." Just from the Wilmington train station, I don't know if you've ever been on an Amtrak, it's not the greatest coffee.

We hadn't stopped yet, right? So I, I know it was late enough that I...

Cato got a state police escort on the thruway to Albany, where he met Governor George Pataki in an underground bunker.

Pataki sent Cato by Amtrak train to Penn Station in Manhattan, where he walked to street level, got into the back of a New York police cruiser, and received a ride to Ground Zero.

He walked through the thick dust covering the ground to reach a command center where he asked a fire department battalion chief what he needed.

He said, I need a chaplain.

See you in about three months.

Hops aboard the Amtrak.

It's 2015 and Bobby, it takes the train to work and his family drives him out to the train and he's like waving goodbye to him.

See you guys later.

Okay.

If you don't build this maintenance facility, on the land because the union, you know, union Pacific has agreed to sell the land to Amtrak union Pacific.

It'll revert back to a rail, a rail yard anyways.

Now it's been decommissioned for now, but Chicago wire did suggest that the union Pacific isn't a merger and they could decide to reopen it, you know? And I guess that is the one thing when it comes to residents.

Okay.

Where can we really, if you don't want this maintenance facility, Sam track maintenance facility in Bridgeport, where can it go? Cause it's got to go somewhere.

Cause even Amtrak is saying like where it is now where Justin wants to build it's outdated.

So they got to figure out something.

Let's just ask Alexa for a joke.

Why don't zombies take Amtrak? They prefer the gory Yent Express.

Terrible.

That's terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible.

Anyway, ISHPE is interested in relocating the White Sox, obviously, with the renderings they put out this past weekend.

They're looking at the Amtrak maintenance facility, which is the train tracks just south of Roosevelt Road in the South Loop along the Chicago River.

And that is an area where he wants to essentially own that land for a mega development, which would include residences and restaurants and, of course, a stadium.

This is how this works.

And a Northwestern Medicine health care facility.

Yep, and a health care facility.

And he's working with and putting up some money, too, to relocate the Amtrak maintenance field there or train tracks, train yards, so they could move a stadium there.

So this is a big move.

What else is happening?

Well, between getting clipped by airport snitches and getting gift wrapped by your fellow passengers, maybe just take the Amtrak.

But Amtrak, but hey, at least HR.

Yeah, dude, you ain't getting raided out on my Amtrak, dude.

You know what I mean? You can do whatever you want on a fucking Amtrak.

But hey, at least the corporate HR department didn't waste any time cleaning house.

Now we're going to move on to a story that is definitely not HR approved.

And part of my job entailed me occasionally or actually fairly regularly having to go to Albany, the state capital, to do some work with a Democratic leader in the state Senate there.

And that would require me leaving my home in central Brooklyn, taking the subway to Penn Station, and then catching an Amtrak train north along the Hudson River, to Albany and then returning same day doing that same commute.

So that was pretty brutal.

It was a grind.

I've since been in New York in 2016 who said he saw the towers fall at age 12 as he was living west of their safe distance.

Amtrak would have been busy, no planes in the air.

Anyway, get in touch if you want to talk, Marcus.

Oh, Newcastle has scored.