My Trip to Chicago

This past week I spent a few days in Chicago at a conference for work. I got there Wednesday night and returned late Friday night.

I love Chicago. Our daughter and her husband Peter had a house there for a few years, and I loved going out there for meetings, because they would pick me up at the airport and then I might stay at their house till the weekend and then they’d run me back to catch my flight.

Peter has his fixed wing pilot’s license and a helicopter license and has taken me up in both formats. The helicopter was the best! We went up in a little bug of a machine and puttered in a circle around the city at 1,000 feet. Kathy would have freaked, had she known our secret plan to fly that day.

Gosh I missed seeing her (OK, and Peter) out there this time.

These trips are fun because I get to see my friends from around the country, but oddly tiring, as I am in executive board meetings and committee meetings most of the time. Next summer the annual conference is in Cleveland, so I’m helping plan that, too.

This time the flights were fine. It was the ground transportation that faltered. Getting there was a breeze. Went to baggage claim, turned around and walked right onto the shuttle. No problem. Coming home, the shuttle showed up at the hotel right on time. Only problem was, it was going to the wrong airport! I found out in time and bailed out at another hotel. Finally got to the gate with ten minutes to spare, which is cutting it close for me. Usually I plan to sit there for several hours, which I spend writing up newsletter articles and such.

On the ground at Cleveland, I took a taxi home (it was 10pm and Kathy didn’t want to come out that late). As we pulled out of the airport, I saw that the interstate was closed, with police cars blocking the road. Darn! I would have been home in fifteen minutes. The driver, who happened to be from Somalia, want to go down this other road that would take much longer, but I said, no, let’s go back up on the interstate—catch it further down past the police. So, he got on the northbound interstate to catch the eastbound outer belt, but it turns out the northbound road does not have a freakin’ exit for the eastbound road! So we went for a merry chase around Cleveland finally arriving at my house some time later. It probably cost about the same, had we stayed on the side road, but jeepers—isn’t the taxi driver supposed to know which road goes where?
I’m over it now. Not another word.

Good news! As we were driving to the airport on Wednesday afternoon, the UPS truck was dropping off my new Nikon Coolpix 7900 digital camera. Woo-hoo. I’m going to go read the book right now and try to figure it out.