three days

My customers in Mexico, and I think most companies there, work very different hours than we do in the US. A typical day is something like 10:00am to 8:00pm, with a two-hour lunch break around 2:00. It’s a really difficult adjustment for me, a long-time and fully committed Morning Person. The silver lining is that it allows plenty of time for me to go for a run before work. I got out Wednesday morning in absolutely perfect weather for a quick loop around the eastern part of the park by my hotel. I’d originally thought about two loops, but I’ve never run at that kind of altitude (7200’) before. I was hosed. The highlight was when a young woman blazed past me like I was standing still, wearing the exact same 2024 Chicago Marathon shirt as me. She turned and waved when she passed. 💙

A thing about these work trips is that I spend nearly all my waking time with a small team of my colleagues. At breakfast, at the customer, at dinner: we’re always together. I like them, so it’s not a burden, but this week there was still a measure of relief on my last night there when we all went our separate ways. We all had early flights. Nobody wanted to go sit for a long dinner. So I made my way out alone and found a charming little brick oven pizza joint around the corner, Homie Pizza. My mesera was a bit confused that I ordered an entire pizza for myself, but I managed to communicate that I was alone and not planning to eat the whole thing. I ended up eating about half of it, a pepperoni, basil, and hot honey delight that was so insanely delicious, I debated eating the whole thing. That would have been regrettable, probably, but I’m still going over it in my mind.

After eating, I was soaking in the vibe and finishing my beer when I had my first ever complete communication breakdown. Someone else asked for their leftovers to be boxed up, and the kitchen guy left it on my table for some reason. Whoever asked for it apparently left without it, as it sat there for a long time. The bus boy came by and was trying to ask me…something?…about it. I had no idea what. I tried to tell him it wasn’t mine (“no es mío”) but that wasn’t satisfying him. He kept asking something insistently in Spanish which I could not decipher. Finally I pulled out my phone, fired up the translate app, and typed in “I don’t know whose that is” (“no sé de quién es”). I held the phone up to him. “Ah, sí.” He picked it up and threw it out. Kinda dying to know what he was asking, or why what I told him the first time didn’t register.

The wind was howling Friday afternoon at O’Hare. Gusts over 50 mph from the south brought an unseasonable high of nearly 80F, and with it, treacherous flying conditions. Approaching from the west on our final descent, at an altitude of less than 1000’, our A320 was really rocking from side to side as I was looking out over Itasca, and then Bensenville. Nobody around me looked especially calm at that moment. I certainly wasn’t. Just after crossing Route 83, with the runway now beneath us, the pilot fired up the engines hard and pulled back for a go around. The acceleration of those throttled-up IAE 2500’s and the sudden, upward change in attitude was enough to pin my head against the seat back. The plane rocked a bit more as we gained altitude, but then was steady and still once we got high enough. He came on the intercom to explain that this was all normal, it was just that he felt the wind was too unpredictable to make for a safe landing in that moment.¹ He circled around, and a few minutes later the second attempt was smooth. The cabin burst into robust applause.

A thing you notice (or I do, at least) approaching Chicago from above, especially when doing so twice in fifteen minutes, is just how many golf courses there are in the area. According to the Chicago Golf Report we have almost 300 in the city and suburbs, though it’s not entirely clear to me how that’s defined. “Suburbs” means different things to different people. Some courses I can identify simply by their location, but otherwise they are wholly unrecognizable to me just looking at their layouts from a window seat. Sure, I’ve only played a handful of them, but even so, I never experience a golf course from above.² I suppose this isn’t surprising. The differences between perceiving something up close versus from afar have been long discussed. Forest, trees, etc. Mostly, it made me want to play, though that’s not really possible at the moment.

Terminal 5 at O’Hare is primarily used for international arrivals, and it is as miserable and dank as an airport facility could possibly be. Decorated in a half-dozen shades of gray that still somehow clash, laid out in a way that only endurance athletes could possibly enjoy, and broken down and mildewed from the moment it was opened over thirty years ago, it’s a civic embarrassment of the highest order. I think of how many people for whom this smudgy hellhole was their first experience in the United States, and I feel profound shame. The city is finally embarking on a modernization project there, though I suppose we have to wonder if that’ll ever be completed. I don’t know how dependent they may be on undisbursed federal money that’s now at risk. I suppose, too, the number of people experiencing this country for the first time is also about to drop rapidly, so maybe it doesn’t matter anyway.

Normally for business trips, I drive to the airport and park there. This past week, with Danny home for spring break and household car demand higher than usual, I didn’t want to take a car out of circulation. So I had him drive me to the airport when I left, and I took a Lyft home when I arrived. It’s just easier than trying to coordinate a pickup, and someone else pays for it, anyway. My driver, a kindly gentleman named Boris, arrived in a Dodge Caravan more aged and decrepit than even Terminal 5 itself. He proceeded to take me home via the slowest possible route, I think primarily because he didn’t think his car could safely exceed 25 mph. During this leisurely trip down Cumberland on that unseasonably warm, gorgeous afternoon, stretched out by the 46 red lights we failed to miss along the way, I pondered what it would be like to have loaded my bags into a canoe on the Des Plaines near Higgins Road, and let the currents gently take me south to what the kids around here call the rainbow bridge, and just walk home from there.³