Today was my last day in Illinois and there was quite a bit that I still had to do before leaving for the train station. My bike still needed to be boxed, I wanted to incorporate a photo gallery into my personal website, and I still needed to pack all of my gear. It took me pretty much up until the time we left at 2:45pm for me to accomplish everything, but I think I managed to get everything I wanted done.]Boxing up the bike was a bit of a challenge because I had never done this before. While I have had quite a bit of experience taking it apart to clean it, that usually only involved taking off the wheels. In order to fit the bike into the box I had, I would also have to remove the pedals, rear derailluer and the handlebars. After some fiddling around I had it figured out well enough such that everything fit decently well within the box, however the wheel axles were putting a bit of pressure against the sides, so I was a bit worried about the possibility of those getting bumped around and either scratching up the frame or possibly breaking a spoke.With everything in place, my father and I departed for Union Station in downtown Chicago. The ride down was fairly uneventful with traffic where traffic was expected. In total it took us about an hour and fourty minutes to get down to the train station. We unloaded the car and carried my backpack and bike to the Grand Hall where we met up with everybody else who had arrived. At this point most people were still in the process of packing up their bikes, however their task was significantly easier than mine before. The boxes that Amtrak provides to box up your bike are significantly larger than the box I had used (a box that the bike comes in before it is ever assembled). As such, most people only needed to remove their front wheel, their handlebars, and their pedals in order to get their bike to fit. Once we had a few bikes prepped to go, we carried them down to the basement where we checked them in for their journey to New York. There was a few other items of business to take care of such as receiving our team jerseys and t-shirts, but after this we were set free for the evening, with instructions to return before 8pm when we would head down to the train.Seeing how it was dinner time, my father and I walked around downtown Chicago in search of something to eat. We settled upon Giordano's Pizza and had a salad and small spinach stuffed pizza. We couldn't completely finish off the pizza so the last slice was boxed up for train food. With dinner settled, we went in search of some other train food like bagels or something. Unfortunately it appears that both Panera and the Corner Bakery both closed at 7pm, so we were out of luck in that department. We returned to Union Station where I said my final goodbyes and then stood around as various parents took photographs of their children and the team as a whole. When 8:30 rolled around, we boarded the train and found our seats and waited for the train to leave the station. Just around 9pm the train rolled out of the station, and then stopped. We couldn't have been more than 500 yards out of the station. We ended up sitting there for 45 minutes, I don't know exactly all of the reason for our delay, but during this time the conductors came around collecting tickets and eventually reseated me in order for a couple to sit together. I wasn't all together pleased with the decision because it took me away from my own group, but I mean, who am I to argue about this. Either way, once the train started moving we opted to go up the cafe car and hang out playing cards for a while before trying to get some sleep.