tdaxp

I'm currently in Chicago's O'Hare International Airport, waiting for the United Express flight home. The trip went well, and involved time travel (arriving in the US before we departed from China -- timezones are sweet!).

The plane shook more than any I was one -- a steward next to me loudly called "down" and the he and the stewardesses were on the floor, attempting to prevent liquids (or themselves) from tumbling over.

I was frisked both in Beijing and Chicago. In China all wand-wavers are female, while in the United States the frisker is the same sex as the friskee.

Also, unlike at the beginning of my trip, I am now waiting in a domestic as opposed to international section of the airport. Not only is this wing less crowded, electrical outlets are plentiful and actually powered. My laptop loves it!

As happened to me in China (when I saw a gorgeous Hindu-Buddhist temple), the most beautiful parts of my journey hit me when I was without my camera. (Ironically, I do see a Hindu-style temple outside Chicago.)



I had a four-hour layover in Chicago, and hoping for some distraction I checked my bags into a locker and proceeded to explore the neighborhood.

It turns out that the Chicago Greyhound station borders the financial district. It is just blocks from Union Station and the Sears Tower. I spent the $11, took the ride up, and enjoyed one of the most heartbreakingly beautiful sites of my life.

Visibility was "zero," our guides warned us, so I was prepared to be disappointed. Indeed, as for much of the beginning of the trip I was all alone, I figured the view must be terrible. How wrong I was. To see thick, billowy clouds shredded by the tops of skyscrapers -- to see the sea of the sky underlit by a great American city -- is beyond my ability to describe.

The people were wonderful and friendly, too. I met a Taiwanese man and his American son, where a small faux-paus (tdaxp: Ah yes, Taipei -- the greatest city of the Republic of China. Man: Peking is the greatest city in the Republic of China!) begin a friendly encounter. Or the former space engineer, proud of his work on the Hubble Space Telescope but grumbling of the "politically-driven" selection of the Galileo Mission over his own company's proposal.

Yet no photographs remain of that. So what continues below is from the journey, and is far less photogenic. I had a great time on my Greyhound trip, and even the schizophrenic woman damning us to hell was taken in good humor (well, humor -- not all of it was kind) by my fellow passengers.