Berck got a call while we were driving him to the airport on Thursday from a United flight attendant who is renting beds in a crashpad in Chicago. This was good news, but that meant that the next day he had to go buy sheets, mattress pad, pillow, and towel from the K-mart nearby.

His next day off isn’t until the next Friday, so I decided to go see him for the weekend. He got assigned a trip starting Sunday morning, but that was okay because the only flight I could get back home on Sunday was the 6am flight to Denver, then a flight back to Colorado Springs, where my car is parked.

So at 4 am on Saturday, I got up, finished packing, and headed to the airport. I opened the trunk to put the radar detector and stereo faceplate inside and was horrified to see that I’d forgotten to bring in the box of bottles of wine I’d purchased during “Family Card Weekend” at the Liquor Outlet on the way home the night before. It was cold and forecast to get even colder, but I’d miss my flight if I took it home. So I left $60 of wine and a bottle of bloody Mary mix in the trunk and hoped for the best.

I carry a JetBlue eye shade and several pairs of earplugs with me wherever I go, and with my sensory deprivation system in place, my overshirt balled up against the window, and no one sitting in the seat next to me, I easily slept most of the way to Chicago.

While I write this I am at the O’Hare airport gate C23 waiting for my 6am flight home. I am currently 19 of 20 standbys with 75 seats available. I think I’ll make it on.

I called Berck when we landed. I’d printed out directions from Google maps to his apartment using their new By Public Transit? system, which is one of the most useful things they’ve ever done. But Berck told me how to come anyway. I followed the “Train to City” signs in the airport until I came to an elevator. “Train to City,” said a sign above the elevator next to an arrow pointing down. So I got in the elevator. Inside were three buttons; the one on top said “UL” and the two below it said “LL” and “BL.” Another lady carrying a stack of manila envelopes got on too and pushed a button. “Does this go to the train?” I asked. “Yes, I hope so!” she answered. The door opened, and I followed her down a hallway and down an escalator to a platform for the airport train, the one that goes to all the terminals. An automated voice said that the next train would be arriving in 6 minutes. The map above the doors showed the train I wanted in the center of the map with the airport train traveling in a semicircle equidistant from the O’Hare station. That didn’t seem right, so I called Berck back. “There’s an airport train?” he asked. “I guess that means I don’t need to take it?” He told me to go back to baggage claim (where I hadn’t been yet) and go down from there as far as I could. I walked back the way I came and somehow ended up in ticketing then found another elevator. I got in this one with two other people. They pushed a button and got off in baggage claim. I got off the elevator and looked at the sign on the outside of it. “Train to City,” it said with an arrow pointing down. So I got back in the elevator and pushed BL. The doors on the other side of the elevator opened, and I found myself in a long corridor with moving sidewalks and signs saying “Train to City” which did, in fact, lead to the L. I got on one saying it was going to Forest Park and then pulled out my book to read. Berck seemed to think that UL LL and BL are perfectly reasonable labels for buttons in an elevator, but I think they need explanation.

Chicago was white with old snow, and the sidewalks were treacherous with packed snow and ice. I’d debated bringing my heavy down parka, but there was a forecast high of 40, so I brought my leather jacket instead. Beneath it I wore a T-shirt, flannel shirt, henley, and scarf, so I wasn’t cold. I got to Berck’s building no problem but had to call him to remember which door was his. He buzzed me in, and I walked up a flight and a half of steps. His apartment is in a pretty nice neighborhood. The building is old, but there’s new carpet and paint. There’s a kitchen that’s bigger than ours, if you count the breakfast area but without any cabinets or counters to speak of. An older black female United flight attendant emerged from the girls’ room in a pink robe and introduced herself. She was gone again when we came back that evening.

We waited for his laundry to finish and then headed out for an adventure. Berck had assigned me the task of coming up with activities for the day, and I wanted to go to the Art Institute of Chicago. I had not, however, researched where we were going to eat. We went back down to the L and waited in the cold wind for our train to arrive to take us to the Loop. Once there we wandered around in the direction of the museum and found G&G’s Restaurant. G&G’s looks like it used to be a place where you could go get a burger for lunch but has since been taken over by Mexicans and now also sports a full Mexican menu. Indeed, half the walls inside the joint were covered in menus, half of them American and half Mexican. There were also breakfast menus and a couple of handwritten signs on the wall promising BISCUITS AND GRAVY. Each menu shared many of the same items as its companion on the adjoining wall, and all the prices seemed to match. We each ordered what was on the poster outside that had brought us into this dive, a gyro and fries. The Mexicans in the kitchen cheerfully prepared us our orders, slicing off a tip of a pita, slitting it open, and stuffing gyro meat inside. The gyros were accompanied by generous slices of onion and tasteless winter tomato along with a little plastic container full of surprisingly passible tzadziki.

Thus fortified we continued straight down the street to the museum. We were waylaid across the street by Ken’s Shoeshine, who followed across to the other side. He insisted that Berck’s pilot shoes needed protection from the snow. “Come here, come here, big guy, I’m not gonna bite, I wanna show you something.” Berck paused long enough for Ken to squirt a dab of white cream on each of his shoes. Ken then retreated to the steps of the museum, leaving Berck with the option of following him or continuing along his way with a glob of goo on each shoe. Berck went over to Ken, who was now kneeling on one knee, the other one draped with a thin towel. Berck put his foot on Ken’s knee, who proceeded to buff and polish his shoes, talking the whole time. Then Ken demanded $8 a shoe. Berck insisted that this was way too much for a shoeshine. “It’s not a shoeshine! It’s snow protection!” Ken insisted. Berck offered him $3, and after haggling for another minute, Ken had to take it. Berck’s shoes did need polishing and did look much better after Ken was through with them.

Inside the museum Berck claimed he was a student and only had to pay $7. I headed straight for the contemporary art room. Unfortunately, the Modern Wing isn’t opening until next year. I think my favorite gallery was the 1900-1950 American art. We had a debate about whether Diego Rivera would be in there, but he was, marked “(Mexican)”. We saw American Gothic and Nighthawks, but my favorite was a piece commissioned for Falling Water called The Rock.

After a few hours, our feet were hurting, so we left. Right as we we walked out the door, about a hundred Santas came walking down the street opposite us and then roared and ran across it straight toward us, collecting on the steps of the museum to take photos. As we crossed the street, they broke into a rendition of “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” singing “Now bring us some beer!” I took advantage of the my new camera phone to take pictures.

My feet were tired and all I wanted to do was sit down somewhere and have a drink. It had started raining lightly, which didn’t bother me at all wearing my stocking cap and didn’t seem to bother Berck too much, even though he was bareheaded. We started making our way northwest until we came to my favorite pizza chain in Chicago Giordano’s. It was just 3 o’clock, and we’d eaten at noon, but we ordered a pitcher of Goose Island local beer and a 10 inch stuffed pizza. The pizzas take at least a half an hour to cook. They take pizza dough, that is more like biscuit dough, and form it in a pan as deep as a cheesecake. Then they put meat toppings on the dough, then fill it with cheese, spread tomato sauce on top, and put on the vegetable toppings. Berck picked the toppings and chose Canadian bacon, olives, and jalapeños, which I love on pizza but end up usually not actually eating. Of course, I didn’t eat any of the olives either. Still, it was delicious as always. We ordered another pitcher of beer and just enjoyed talking and being together. I had positioned myself beside Berck on my left so that I could hear him out of my good ear, but that meant that we were both sitting on the same side of a table for four. The booth in front of us emptied and stayed empty, so I didn’t worry about taking up room as we leisurely finished the beer. Then a girl came up to us and asked if we wouldn’t mind moving to another table. Apparently, the reason that table was empty, as were the table and booth next to us, which had been merged to form an extra long table, is because the restaurant was trying to seat a very large party and were just waiting for us to leave! In fact, we had to squeeze our way out the door through all the people who were waiting to be seated. I overheard one woman say that there was a half hour wait. It was now five. I guess it was a good thing we got pizza when we did.

We found an L stop and made our way back to the crashpad. Berck didn’t want me to spend the night with him there in case his three roommates came back, so we Pricelined a hotel room near O’Hare. We took the L to the airport and then waited for the hotel van to pick us up. I carefully studied through the terminal window each van that pulled up. The driver of a Super 8 shuttle hopped out and looked like he was trying to solicit guests. He was wearing a bright red double-breasted suit with a red fedora and perfectly matched red leather shoes, over which was an incongruent navy trench coat. Berck tried to get a picture of him, but he was too efficient loading his passenger’s luggage and disappeared from view. I suppose if I drove a shuttle for Super 8, I might dress that way too.

Our hotel room smelled like smoke and the stuff they spray in rooms so they won’t smell like smoke, but we opened the window to the rain and were much more comfortable. We were able to connect to the free wireless on each of our computers. I checked the weather back home and was dismayed to see it was very cold and snow was forecast. So much for the wine in my trunk. The hotel would only take people to the airport on the hour. Berck thought I would be fine if I left at 5 for my 6 o’clock flight, but I decided to be safe rather than sorry and opted for the 4 am ride. Having gotten up at 4 that morning, I went straight to sleep, but Berck was having a much harder time of it and kept waking me up with his tossing and turning, thermostat adjusting, and computer using.

I woke up when my alarm went off at 3:45 and then waited in the lobby for about 10 minutes for the van. A guy came in asking if he could get a room for the night and had to deal with the Asian lady doing laundry in the back behind the counter; you know you’re getting up early when other people are just going to bed. I got to the airport, checked in at the kiosk, and made my way to security. The line wasn’t very long, but there was only one x-ray machine, and all the first class passengers and crew members kept having to go in front of us. After I got in line, we all just stood there without moving for about ten minutes. I didn’t put my boots in a tray because Berck told me not to. I always put my boots in the first tray I use so that I can put them back on while I’m waiting for the rest of my things to come though the machine, but in Colorado Springs, a TSA agent took my boots out of the tray they were in and put them directly on the belt behind all my other things. But now the lady behind me handed me a tray saying I needed it for my boots. I get so tired of people behind me in security telling me I need trays for my things, so instead of arguing with them, I just take the trays they hand me now and use them. It’s just easier that way. This time my boots stayed in their tray when I finally got to go through the magnetometer after several more people cut in front of me. I got to my gate at 5:45 but really had to go to the bathroom. By the time I was done, it was 5:50. I don’t know if I would have had enough time to get on board if I’d taken a shuttle at 5. Maybe they would have opened up another security line, or maybe the lines would have been longer. But I didn’t have long to wait before they started boarding my flight.

Berck didn’t have to get up until 6, so I called him right when they closed my aircraft’s door. I got a window seat in the emergency exit row, which is great, except the guy on the aisle keeps readjusting himself, jerking all three seats, so I haven’t tried to sleep. Instead I finished my book, started the Nabokov Berck sent back with me, and watched NBC, including a very old episode of How I Met Your Mother.

In Denver it was snowing heavily and blowing even more and the snow machinery was having a time keeping the thousands of square feet of DIA plowed. They have an army of front loaders with extra long plows attached to their buckets that they use to load snow into strange looking trailers or dump trucks. According to my schedule I had 35 minutes to make my connection to Colorado Springs, but by the time I finally got off the plane, I only had 10. Fortunately, my gate was in the same terminal but all the way at the other end and into the extension. I hoofed it from gate 20 to gate 85 and got there right as the gate agent was paging anyone who wasn’t already on board. I’d been given a whole tomato juice can on my flight before and had wanted to stop by the bathroom but decided I could wait. Our plane pulled out to the de-icing skid (which just seems like an oxymoron) where a truck with an arm with an enclosed cage at the end of it with a guy inside aiming a stream of orange liquid at us spent several minutes thoroughly coating us down. I continued reading Nabokov then suddenly felt sleepy. I slept until right before we landed in COS. The captain said the temperature was 7 degrees. I looked out at the falling and blowing snow and groaned, remembering the wine in my trunk, wondering what the tolerances of wine bottles were to their contents freezing. But it wasn’t getting any colder, so I finally visited the bathroom, found the ticket saying where I was parked, and headed outside. There were no shuttles to the long term parking lot, which made me mad, but I wasn’t parked too far away, so I started walking. It was very cold, and now my leather jacket was not warm enough. I passed another guy dragging his rolly bag along. “Where are the vans?” he asked. I laughed harshly in reply. I got to my car and opened the trunk to retrieve the radar detector and stereo faceplate. The closed box of wine bottles was still there, but there was no sense opening it until I got it back home. I drove around everyone driving slowly in the snow, trying to see around the pickups that were creating mini blizzards behind them. It took me an extra five minutes to get home.

I grabbed my bookbag, which had doubled as my only luggage, and got the mail. Then I went back out to get the box of wine. I brought it up and opened it on kitchen counter. Miracle! Nothing was the least bit frozen, but boy were they cold. Even the bloody Mary mix was crystal free.

Berck is on a four-day trip in a 700, so he still doesn’t have to fly the unpracticed 200 yet. He doesn’t have any other trips scheduled for the rest of the month, so it’s a probably a good thing he’s paid for a bed for the rest of the month. He has Fridays and Saturdays off for the rest of the month, which is really nice. He’s also off for vacation from the 26-3. We’re contemplating exploring the Canadian Rockies!