The hub and I returned last Sunday from a two-week trip to Chicago and California. Many fellow Canadians currently refuse to travel to the states, which I wholeheartedly support, but I also refuse to let the cold-hearted Mr. Orange Piggie and his white supremacist money-muckers keep me from family.
This post, however, will not dive into the morons in charge of the US government but will speak of the people and places we encountered. First up? The patrons of Ronnie D’s Drive-In restaurant in Colville, Washington.
“I’ve never seen a woman with so many children,” the hub proclaimed (he’s never lived in Utah) as he cleaned up the last of his fries. “Look at that.”
A young family had entered the restaurant. A woman in a plain Mennonite dress with a “kapp” – the little white head covering – followed a man in suspenders with a trail of six or seven children, also dressed similarly. The family occupied two booths near the door, and I admired the dark hair and striking bright blue eyes of the children.
Other diners wore shorts and t-shirts, their faces lined and weather-beaten by the sun and hard living. The Mennonite family stood out with their fresh faces and quaint, old-fashioned dresses and the excitement of eating at Ronnie D’s for a Friday evening meal. One group of children had their own table near the window, and a little girl, perhaps six years old, openly stared at me, those blue eyes wide and sparkling.
When we left the restaurant, the young girl and the other youngsters at her table continued to stare. I smiled at her, wondering what could possibly be interesting about me. I wore capri pants and a t-shirt, but other than a few bracelets and rings and a couple of tattoos, I didn’t see anything to make me stand out. Could she tell we were foreigners? Canadians in a strange land?
As we walked to the exit, I waved, and she gave me a half smile. Her brother looked up, and they both stared. As a matter of fact, after we exited the restaurant, five sets of eyes watched us from the large window. I waved again, and she waved too. The image of those blue eyes and white cap stuck with me.
We arrived at the airport early the next morning and heard the announcement as we sat down at our gate.
“We are looking for one traveler with flexible plans to postpone their flight in exchange for a $400 travel voucher.”
“I can’t believe airlines are legally able to sell more tickets than the plane actually has seats.” It’s a common refrain from the hub, and one I can’t argue with. Airlines routinely seek passengers willing to give up their seats when the airplane is oversold.
We didn’t give up our seats, so we waited with the other Ultra Basic Economy travelers, those of us who don’t pay for seat assignments, checked bags or travel cancellation coverage, and jockeyed for position once the higher level travelers were seated. The problem with boarding flights last as an Ultra Basic Economy traveler is not the seating but finding space for our bags in the overhead compartments.
“We have a completely full flight today and expect our overhead bins to be full. You Ultra Basic travelers may not find a space for your suitcases, so we’re offering to check your bags free of charge to your final destination.” The gate agent sounded one level below threatening.
I can’t recall any flights in the past four or five years where the airline hasn’t tried to get me to gate-check my carry-on bags. I rarely do, especially if I’m heading across the border to rural Canada. If my bag doesn’t arrive in Spokane with me, there’s no cross-border concierge service to bring it to my house three hours away. But traveling to Chicago? The airline would bring it to the hotel if it didn’t arrive. I gate-checked my bag.
Once on the flight, the flurry of activity increased as we buckled up. A harried flight attendant rushed up and down the aisle, fastening an elderly woman’s seat belt one-handed, handing a colleague supplies of one sort or another and checking the overhead bins to make sure they wouldn’t open up and spill out during the flight.
A man’s voice called out from the back of the plane before we’d even gone into the pre-flight instructions. “Is there a doctor on board?” he hollered.
I froze and looked at the hub wide-eyed.
Did I think, Wow, I hope nothing serious has happened. Or, Oh my god, what’s wrong?
No. I’m sorry to say my first thought was, Ah, shit, we’re going to be late.
The flight attendant had the same thought.
“Are you kidding me?” She rushed past us to the man who’d called out in the back of the plane.
He wasn’t kidding. The poor man-baby had dropped something heavy on his foot and believed it required medical intervention. It hurt. He wanted a doctor to look at it.
Yep, not a joke.
I have no idea what the flight attendant said to him, but she turned off his call button, left him whining, and probably cursed all the way to the front of the plane where she began our safety instructions.
We spent our time in Chicago with the hub’s fifteen year-old niece and her family whom we’d last seen ten years ago during the joys of a downtown Chicago snowstorm.
This summer visit was quite different. Like much of the US, Chicago had experienced weeks of devastating heat, but by the time we arrived, the extreme heat had subsided, so we faced only normal hot temps and little humidity. All buildings are air conditioned, however, so I carried a jacket everywhere to mitigate the hot and cold fluctuations.
Outside our hotel room window, we had an excellent view of Navy Pier, with its Ferris wheel, shopping, food shops and a fireworks show to welcome us on our first night. Below our hotel, Lakeshore Drive teemed with eight lanes of traffic, cars swerving and honking in an unending stream, with emergency vehicles and blaring sirens every twenty minutes or so. The hub and I watched traffic as entertainment, and it never ended. No morning birdsong to wake us. No still, silent dawn…. Every morning we rose to the cry of the automobile – squealing brakes and revving engines.
And then we did the tourist thing. We ate pizza, consuming both deep dish, which is for tourists apparently, and thin crust, which is the true Chicago style, according to our city-born and raised hosts. At our first lunch, I mentioned I’d order a salad.
“A salad? You’re taking your life into your hands.” One of our hosts, Bea, a young woman in her early thirties, looked dubious. “Have you heard about the Cyclospora outbreak?”
I’d heard about it, but hadn’t given it much thought in Canada.
Bea’s husband Jay chimed in. “Yep, my friend and his family got it. They said it was awful. We’re talking explosive diarrhea.”
Having experienced the joys of explosive diarrhea while living in North and West Africa for several years, I vowed to avoid all lettuce. In a search for fiber (you know you’re over 50 when…), I stuck to rice and beans rather than foliage. Travel, or perhaps the North American overload of meat and cheese, wreaks havoc on my system, so I stick to what I know works for me.
Led by the niece, we spent half a day wandering through the Griffin Museum of Science and Industry where we bought tickets to Anne Frank The Exhibition. The exhibit, a presentation of the Anne Frank House, re-created the Annex where Anne and her family lived during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. It offered multi-media installations, photographs, film and sound elements and more than 130 original collection pieces from the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam.
The exhibit was sobering and thought provoking. I couldn’t help compare it to where the world is heading now, with hate and intolerance rising in the US and traditional alliances and norms crumbling in the face of authoritarianism. I also couldn’t help but reflect on the genocide in Gaza, the illegal settlements in the West Bank, and the overall displacement of the Palestinian and Lebanese people. When the oppressed can so easily become the oppressors, will we ever have peace?
Though Spiderman was not on my list of must-do’s in Chicago, the Marvel character was another feature of the Griffin Museum of Industry and Science. I ended up learning a lot more about the superhero than I’d ever wanted to know.
Now, the hub LOVED Spiderman as a kid, and he might have been able to lead me through much of this. But who wants to listen to their husband describe his childhood crush?
We also attended a show called Theater of the Mind, an interactive theatrical experience where we the audience (and no more than sixteen of us) journeyed through a 15,000 square foot installation of rooms filled with neuroscience experiences. A note from the show’s website captures the essence of the experience:
“Caution: The brain may wander. Side effects may include a distrust of your own senses, a disorientation of self, and a mild to severely good time. You may not be who you think you are. But we’re all in it together.”
It was an engaging and unique experience and great for anyone who struggles to sit for 90 minutes in a theater seat.
We don’t usually rent cars in cities, and this trip was no exception. Most cities have adequate public transportation, especially to tourist sights. The hub and I bought bus passes and caught a bus to Chicago’s Union Station to catch a train to the northern suburbs.
Union Station felt old, which makes sense since it was built in 1925. Its large ceilings, dark wood and white marble reminded me of train stations in Europe. Though fairly empty, it also held a quiet hustle and bustle. It features Amtrak connections, Metra (commuter rail) routes, and transfers to the Chicago Transit Authority and Greyhound buses.
At one point I heard a foreign language that I couldn’t identify. It certainly wasn’t Spanish, which we heard everywhere, and though it had a hint of German, it wasn’t recognizable to me.
I’m no stranger to foreign tongues, speaking a few myself, but I couldn’t place it. When I found myself washing my hands at a bathroom sink next to two happily chatting aproned Amish woman, I guessed it was Pennsylvania Dutch. Which made me feel that, with the abundance of bearded and aproned Amish travelers, I could have been sitting in Union Station in the early 1900’s.
The commuter train took us to the northern suburbs. Along the train route I spotted murals and watched as our surroundings transitioned from dense cement buildings to grassy, wooded communities with red brick homes. We spent the day with the niece playing board games and visiting the local Northbrook coffee shop before eating Mexican food (a cuisine that is definitely sub-par in Canada!).
We took the train again the following day but instead of playing games borrowed a car to drive to Six Flags Great America, an amusement park in nearby Gurnee, Illinois. I’m a fan of amusement parks and have been since I first went to Disneyland at age 5. And I like to go FAST, so roller coasters are always the main attraction.
However, age has caught up with me.
In the past decade or so, roller coasters have made my stomach twist into knots like I’d eaten lettuce in a country that eliminated food inspections to lower taxes for billionaires.
Rather than refraining from the wild rides, I popped a Dramamine to combat motion sickness, bought a Fast Pass to skip the lines, and joined the hub and the niece on as many coasters as we could fit into the day. This adventure will be its own post for another day, but it turns out that Dramamine works!
Our visit to Chi-town ended with thin-crust pizza at our hosts’ favorite neighborhood restaurant where the flat, nasally Chicago accent surrounded us. We filled our bellies and our souls with good food and better company and the next morning left for new adventures in California.
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.