9 April, 1999

The Windy City

The plane ride went by in a blur for the most part. The cares of my every day life falling slowly behind me with every climb in altitude.

I could not see the ground disappearing beneath the plane, just the occasional glimpse of nighttime lights speckling the blackness like fireflies.

Our departure was delayed by two hours in Baltimore due to high winds in the Chicago area. Climbing on the plane was a relief, if only because I was so hungry by then that even the tiny cold snack delivered in cardboard boxes was welcome.

Two hours later the plane landed safely at one of the largest air hubs in the world and I made my way through the maze of O'Hare to the blue line L into the city.

By the time I hit the Loop it was getting late. Well after dark and here I was entering a strange city with only the vaguest concept of where the hotel was in relation to the L stop.

Some remnant of luck from my younger days guided my footsteps. I found my hotel within ten minutes of leaving the train and was curled up in bed a half hour later telling sabs about my trip while perusing the room service menu. To my dismay I discovered that room service cannot be delivered after eleven pm. It was now ten fifty-five.

I also realized that I'd forgotton to bring toothpaste and that the hotel did not offer complimentary bathrobes. This was something of a problem considering the fact that the bath towels were perhaps twenty-four by thirty inches square. I am many more than thirty inches around.

Down to the reception I went to ask about restaurants in the area that might still be open and to pick up toothpaste at the sundries counter. Much to my dismay, the sundries counter was closed and the concierge was only able to hand me a pizza delivery menu for food.

Despite my growing conviction that this hotel was definitely NOT worth the price of admission over the next two days, my feelings about Chicago developed in exactly the opposite direction.

I came here expecting that I would not like the city.

Instead I've found that I like it quite a bit. I can't quite put my finger on why, but I feel comfortable here. The atmosphere actually reminds me of Geneva, of all places. The architecture is completely different, but there's something about the way people act on the street that is similar.

I was also surprised at how many doors I've had held for me and how many elevators I've been let out of first. This is the kind of old-fashioned courtesy that I've only encountered in the South before. At the same time the city is BIG. Not just large, but massive. As tall as New York, but almost as sprawling as L.A. Massive is definitely the right word for it. So there's this odd combination of an almost old-world sensibility and large-city cosmopolitanism.

However, this impression comes mostly from the downtown area.

It wasn't until my second night in town when I went out to dinner with fellow online-writer Gabby, that I got to see a different part of the city.

We took the L up to the North side between Lincoln Park and Ravenswood where the neighborhood becomes a hodge-podge of ethnicities as evidenced by the plethora of tiendas, botanicas, departments stores, corner drugstores and restaurants from almost every country imaginable -- persian, arab, indian, swedish, turkish, greek, italian, an irish pub. It was amazing.

And the smells ... oh my. Our mouths were watering before we even found the entrance to the small middle-eastern restaurant we'd picked out in her guide of the city.

To anyone visiting Chicago, I heartily recommend Reza's which is up in the 5200 block of some street whose name I cannot now remember, but it's about two blocks east of Paulina street not far from the Swedish Cultural Museum.

The walk back led us past Chinese take-out places, a leatherwares shop and into an area speckled with gay bars and video stores. Everywhere there were people about, or lights peeking out from behind curtains and I got a sense of a city alive and breathing with a real pulse.

The conversation over dinner was vivacious and interesting. Gabby is just as acerbic and funny in person as she is online. Spending the evening with her went a long way towards making my tims in Chicago a lot more fun than it might have been otherwise.

For the past three days I've been stuffing my head from 8:30am until 4pm with ColdFusion. I feel slightly dazed, but relieved. I now have the basic understanding of the structure of the program, the structure of the language so that I can finally get this application really rolling.

It's now ten forty-six p.m. on April 9th. I am tired but satisfied. I have walked around a new city, met someone whom I've respected from afar for a long time and learned a lot of useful new skills.

I'd have to say that this has been an amazingly productive and enjoyable trip.

Now I just have to get some sleep before I haul myself out of bed at an ungodly hour tomorrow morning.