travelogue

I wrote this on Monday, but we were having DSL troubles...

Spent most of my day getting from Boston to Chicago. My flight ended up delayed a little over an hour, but the flight before mine was cancelled, so a one-hour delay was hardly worth noticing. More time to just sit and read my New Testament. Philippians. After landing at O'Hare, I made my way to the Blue Line and got on the train with two and a half minutes to spare before it started for downtown. There is a lot of construction beginning right in the blocks behind us, and that has affected (as I wrote earlier) our trusty underground sidewalk system, including the lovely passageway from the Blue Line to our very corner. So I got off at Clark and Lake instead and got lost in the maze of the Thompson center. Finally had to ask a janitor how to get out of the building. Turns out I was still one level below the street. It was refreshing to get outside at what was, by then, 5:00 p.m. for me (still running on Boston time). As I walked down Lake street, each block seemed filled with a different yummy fragrance, depending on which of the many restaurants was there. The dominant scent was Mexican. And a few blocks into my walk home, there were some people handing out free samples "Airborne," which I had just purchased last week, hoping to be armed against a nasty sore throat that was making its way through the Boston community. That stuff is so expensive, I think I may go scouting around tomorrow to see if I can find some more free samples!

Once home, I found a letter (number 2) from the airline that had messed up my original flight, causing me to buy a last-minute ticket to Boston. This letter claimed that they had not only refunded my original purchase price, but I still had a valid reservation in their system, and they wanted me to call an 800 number to make payment arrangements. I tried the number (and not for payment options, believe me) and found that their office was closed. So they got a five-page follow-up fax.

I have a lot lot lot of catching up to do, but it is good to be back home. And I got an idea of how I am becoming climatized to Chicago. When the pilot described the local weather conditions and said it was "sunny and about 28 degrees," I found myself thinking, "hey, not bad!"

And you know? It wasn't!