One Town Down

As some of you may or may not know, I started a cross-country trip last week that will take me through Chicago, Minneapolis, Portland and San Francisco. There's really no strong justification for this trip, other than my own desire to get out of Maryland for a while and live out of a suitcase for a couple of weeks. (It's also an excuse to visit friends and family that have spread out across the country).
On the 11th, I left Baltimore and headed to Chicago. Despite the stigma of the date, there wasn't a single delay or snag in security at the airport. That's not to say there were no problems, though. After sitting on the runway in a tiny jet for 45 minutes after we were supposed to take off for Philadelphia (where my connecting flight to Chicago was leaving from), all of the passengers were forced to de-board the plane due to electrical system problems. That is to say, the electrical system wouldn't stay on. But hey, at least they checked on that before we were in the air.
There is a silver lining to this story, however. After arguing with a gate attendant for another half hour about how I needed to get on a flight immediately so I could make my connecting flight, they offered me a direct ticket to Chicago on a partner airline that would actually get me to Chicago sooner than the connecting flight would have. Even better, after getting on my new flight, the flight attendant announced "Since a large portion of our first class section is unsold on this flight, we would like to offer free upgrades to any interested coach passengers." You better believe I was up in a second.
Anyway, the flight was pretty uneventful after that, and after landing and getting my bag, I caught the train into town to meet up with Jacky, my friend from college who was putting me up for the next few nights. I got settled, took a short nap, and sat around listening to jazz with the housecats while waiting for Jacky and her roommates to get back from their jobs. After that, we hung around, drank on their back porch (which had a decent view of the Sears Tower), and caught up. Unfortunately, this was pretty much all I got to do during my stay there. Because of Hurricane Ike, there was a massive storm system in Chicago that dumped flooding rains on the area for my entire stay; effectively ruining all the hopes I had of getting into the town and seeing the city. But hey, I still got to hang out and meet some cool and interesting people.
After a few days of hanging around waiting for the rain to stop, I finally got to take a trip into the city...to catch my bus out of town. The rain did stop that day, though (which is good, because my bus stop was on an uncovered part of a downtown street across from Union Station). I spent the next 8 hours on a bus, alternating between talking to the pro-Palin girl from Minneapolis who was also going to college in Israel sitting next to me and knocking out a few chapters of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Still, for the price of $28, the bus ride was top-notch. And I didn't get my head cut off.

So anyway, here I am now in Minneapolis, visiting my mom and working on grad school applications. I'm hoping to get more work than sight-seeing done this week, but we'll see how it goes. I'll be heading to Portland, come Monday.

Here's a few pictures that I was able to take while in Chicago. Not much, but then again, there wasn't much to see.