Last US Trip ?

Sorry if you've wondered where I was. International travel, injured feet, and the flu do take a toll. It was a trip to the US for business, probably my last from my Dutch stay. Or not.

There I was, clackclackclack, suitcase over the tiles behind me. Off toward the Naarden-Bussum station, just hoping the weather holds. But of course it starts snowing half way there, and by the time I have the tracks in sight, I'm all white, my head down, cold and wet and just enduring the few hundred meters to go. And then there's this BMW SUV by the side of the road, honking, someone yelling at me. A woman is shouting over and over, something that ends in: "...Schiphol?" the name of Amsterdam's airport. But my Dutch-language processor is not working this early, and I don't know how to give her directions--after all, I always take the train. "...naar Schiphol?" she's saying. I shrug to her, trying not to get snow under my glasses. "GA JE NAAR SCHIPHOL, MENEER?" Ah! A ride! I nod and run, and she and her lovely friend make room in the back seat among other luggage. It is warm. It is dry. They are blond and they chat with me. My glasses steam up. Now it doesn't matter that I would probably have missed my train. Life is good.

Another piece-of-cake nine-hour flight to O'Hare. I pick up my mail bundle and need a haircut before my conference and office visits. It has been four months. People ask "Why don't you get your hair cut in the Netherlands" and I respond, "Have you seen their hair?"

Nothing doing. The salon was closed, and apparently closed for good. My only Illinois ritual bites the dust. So I find another place, and call my parents on the US cell phone (OK, mobile phone to you Eurotypes), and at one point I am stopped at an intersection, in fact a four-way stop. Four drivers are stopped, all looking for another to start through first. All four are talking on cell phones. Welcome to the US. At the second-choice salon I get clipped--by which I mean not just my hair but clipped by an embarrassingly large bill for a haircut I didn't much like and for shampoo I probably won't use. Sucker that I am. So blame it on jet lag.
 

What I needed worse were shoes. I put on my decentest dress shoes (the ones pictured in the middle of This Earlier Post), and before an fruitless hour in Woodfield Mall is up, I'm ready for the hospital--seriously. My next ten days, my feet are bandaged double-deep, taking 15 minutes each morning to prep.

I eat something--I forget what or where--and drive back to O'Hare, shaggy headed and shoeless, turn the car back in, take the bus to the hotel without seeing, totally trusting the driver. In the room somehow, aspirin for the feet, crash--26 hours after getting up in my own apartment.

Wake up hungry, hit Michigan Avenue. Every time I come to Chicago I say the same thing--it's my favorite downtown on the planet (well, maybe tied with the very different Paris). I love Chicago.
 

Let's "do" Michigan Avenue.

No subtlety to it at all. This is a real city, muscular, both old and new, somehow modest and imposing at the same time.
 

Of course, Chicago is very American, part of which means churches and flags in plain sight and intended to impress.
 

And money, too. People don't think of Chicago as a rich town (think Hill Street Blues), but Michigan Avenue has little to fear from America's more famous shopping areas.
 

Did I mention that Chicago has money and is not afraid to spend it?
 

For myself, I am afraid to spend it, but I needed shoes. I explained to the Lord & Taylor shoe salesman that I had an "emergency shoe purchase", and that I would try on any presentable slip-on shoes that I could wedge onto my feet with anything short of a power steam shovel. He was wonderful, and I limped out ready for a week of walking. And here's what the walking was about...

The Pittsburgh Conference. The ostensible reason for my transatlantic jaunt, which despite its name has not been held in Pittsburgh for about 30 years. It's a monstrous analytical chemistry conference. This is the associated exposition. It is not modest. Very few cities in the US can host it any more, and it will henceforth rotate between Orlando, New Orleans, and maybe Atlanta. This is apparently its last stop in Chicago.
 

Yes I dove into this mess, and yes it hurt. But a few bruises and blisters go better with a nice dinner and wine Sunday and Monday nights with ex-colleagues from Coca-Cola and Minute Maid. Rush Street ladies, eat your hearts out. I almost didn't get there Monday night...there was a movie being filmed at my hotel entrance, and everyone was being diverted away from the stars, Sandra Bullock and Nicholas Cage (or so I heard) filming Weatherman, due out this summer. You heard it here first.
 

The McCormick Center has a few nice places where foot-weary conferees can rest and watch Lake Michigan...
 

...before wearing out their feet again. This lobby of the Center is the kind of agoraphobigenic space that traveling Americans adjust to but that you just don't see in European buildings less than 500 years old.
 

Dinner Tuesday with Dave and Trish (who are guilty of reading this blog--Hey!) at Le Colonial, a great Vietnamese restaurant, again on Rush, drinks in the wonderful bar of the Sofitel. A very nice lunch at Gioco Wednesday with Georges and Lois, my heroes. The ride there was panicked. I lost my camera (the very one that illustrates this blog!--horrors!!! sacrilege!!!) in the McCormick Center with 25,000 conferees, and I had to turn the taxi around for it, but an honest soul had turned it in, and I could describe the pictures I had just taken on it, so I got it back...then back to Gioco.

Can someone tell me what the deal is with American hotels dropping newspapers outside the rooms' doors at 4 am, absolutely as loudly as possible. Waking every one of the 1000 paying customers, and for papers that will end up back in the environment, unread. Or am I thinking like a thrifty Dutchman again?

That evening I rolled my suitcase and laptop out of the hotel and past 1,000 screaming, jumping teen-somethings waiting to get inside. There was a dance audition for MTV or something. A happening hotel, I guess. My Arab taxi driver loaded my stuff in the trunk and asked apparently sincerely, "Do you have to be black to stay at that hotel?"

A propos of nothing, or maybe of everything...I missed the Netherlands.

That night, a hastily arranged, obscenely gourmand-o-rama face-stuffing with John at Vivace in the underrated Italian Village, near State somewhere (I don't know the street names but I can find it). I pick up my stuff at his hotel, catch a cab to O'Hare, rent a heroically awful Pontiac, and drive in driving rain out to lovely downtown Hoffman Estates. Work two days. Weekend, but no rest--time to look for a place to live when I come back to the US, probably in July. So, back to Woodfield Mall for maps...and another pair of shoes.

We--e--elll, look what's waiting at the ready. And you thought winter was over. No chance.
 

The problem with driving a mid-size vehicle in the US is that 95% of the vehicles are bigger than yours. Go figure.
 

Illinois house hunting. All day Saturday, all day Sunday. Somewhere between Freaking Hopeless and Pickett's Charge, with the mood of the former and the wear and tear of the latter on my feet.

The really weird thing is that the ONLY affordable house I found in two days of driving is this enormous thing, a Frank Lloyd Wright copy on a 60000 square foot (5500 square meter) wooded lot. The price was low, in fact ridiculously low--a third of what it should be. There was nothing wrong with it. I drove away, quietly, shielding my face from view. I don't do business with the Mafia, the CIA, whatever. If you want to judge for yourself, go stand at exactly 42.09504N, 88.32013W, look west, and don't freaking mention my name.
 

I did find a condominium under construction. I looked at blueprints in their office, and found out that they had finished some similar units in Kenosha, Wisconsin. It was 2:15 pm. I jumped in the rental car, drove up, had a look. Not bad.

Kenosha is pretty impressive, including its harbor, until you realize that it's all a few dozen enormous boats for the Lake, a few big houses, a "famous" trolley, and a lot of gas stations and fast food. I took this picture in gale-force winds, which in the Midwest usually means worse weather to come.
 

I drove back to lovely downtown Hoffman Estates. A very American venture--I used more fuel in that drive than in the previous 2 months in the Netherlands. But there is a lot at stake in this drive. Stay tuned.

Tuesday morning, time to fly back. Snow greeted my departure from Chicago just as it had from Bussum. A horrendous flight, complete with squalling brats, helped only by a 200 km/hour tailwind that put us Chicago-to-Amsterdam in 6 1/2 hours. Home early, slept like the dead. Woke with the flu, but that's a story I'll spare you. Not pretty.