Amtrak Train from Chicago to Lafayette, and Back

YEAR: 2005

TRACK: The Kiss (YouTube, Spotify) / Promontory (YouTube, Spotify) from “The Last of the Mohicans” Soundtrack by Trevor Jones, and Randy Edelman

PLACE: Chicago, IL and West Lafayette, IN

MEMORY: I remember listening to The Kiss when leaving West Lafayette on the train to Chicago after kissing my boy goodbye. I lived in Chicago for 6 months, so I took a lot of trips back and forth on those tracks (no pun intended). It was always a hard moment saying goodbye because I was going back to my temporary place. One where I was stuck between my Polish life with hard-earned college degrees and my toes hardly dipped in the first career on one side and starting over in a different country on the other. Those were my GRE-pursuing times. Many trials and errors (nowadays, it’s good for me to remember that I was persistent enough to have taken my GRE four times). And failures – like getting my rejection letter from Purdue (I got accepted the second time around). But those were also the days filled with amazing people and unique experiences in one of the wildest and windiest cities I know. It’s the only city in America I genuinely miss.

FOOTNOTES:

• Amtrak trains are frequently delayed. It’s due to the rail freight but also because they stop to let the livestock cross the tracks at their own pace. Basically, if the cows are stressed, there is no milk. The delays are hard to predict, they vary every time. I would usually take the 8pm train to Lafayette and most of the time my delay would only be a few minutes. But I remember I was stuck for 3 hours one evening. The Across America: Relax and Enjoy the Ride article describes the experience quite accurately.
• I would probably not think to put this together, but the Promentory track (YouTube, Spotify) can be heard in a 2007 Nike TV commercial.