First Stop: Chicago

where am i? - millenium park - chicago by boat - hanging with the ihms

1.

I got off the plane and the first thing I saw was a woman walk by eating a frozen yogurt. After a three hour flight and nothing to eat but a cup of coffee, I walked out of the gate and searched for the nearest TCBY. I began to ponder the different flavor and topping combinations, anticipating the satisfaction of filling my belly with cool, delicious yogurt. I passed the newsstand, the fast food booths, the rows of cheap metal and leather chairs, gate after gate listing numbers and cities, and suddenly I stopped. Every single airport I'd ever been to in the U.S. melded into one and I wondered, where the hell am I?

I was at O'Hare Airport, in Chicago, IL.  The first, last and only time I'd been to Chicago was almost ten years ago, for three days in the dead of winter. Most of my time was spent at McCormick Place Convention Center as I'd been travelling for work. I remember driving in at night, and seeing a building with clean black edges and large windows. Wow, I thought, this must be some of that amazing Chicago architecture I'd heard so much about. The building I was gushing over was a Crate and Barrel.

Since Susie grew up in the Chicago area and her family was still here, we planned to spend a couple of days in the city before trekking off to South Dakota. She'd gotten there the day before, having been on the road for almost a week, driving from New Hampshire to Illinois. I had spent the last five days in Salt Lake City and arrived at 2:30 on Sunday afternoon, June 1.  The timing worked out perfectly. By the time I got my bag she was pulling up to the passenger pick up and when I went outside it took not one minute for that shiny green hybrid to pull up. There it was, my home away from home for the next week--Susie's light green Prius, license plate: 2BUGURL. Susie, disoriented from her own food-related debacle involving chicken nuggets (only one dollar!), a bowl of chili and a portable computer, hopped out of the car and we hugged. Then we put my red suitcase in the back seat and I had officially moved in to the car. We were now carmates! We celebrated by leaving the airport.

We were supposed to stay with her family in North Barrington that night, but we drove straight into the city and met her cousin Amanda. "Change of plans," Susie said as we headed to the West Loop. Susie and Amanda had always gotten along, and Amanda had lived with her family when they were in high school. What they didn't know, until the night before I arrived, was that they both had a mutual passion that would bond them in a deeper, more profound way for the rest of their lives. "It was a revelation," Susie said, her eyes wide in (half) jest. Amanda was also a lover of the herb.

I was so jealous. It's always been a dream of mine to be a pothead. I pictured myself having deep thoughts and writing inspired poetry and being a supremely enlightened being while stoned out of my skull. It's probably why I love th Harold and Kumar movies so much--because they fulfill a forbidden fantasy of mine. Yet every time I've ever smoked I would get a big headache and pass out. 

So we picked up Amanda from her friend's house and drove to her place, where we would be spending the night. Amanda's house is amazing. Four stories in a beautiful apartment complex in the West Loop. And she runs a daycare center out of her home. A beautiful apartment in a great city, and she gets to work with kids all day! What a life! The next morning we even got to play with the kids for a half hour or so before we headed to the downtown area. It was the best morning ever, I declared with satisfaction. I had told Susie that the biological clock had stepped down about ten notches since it took over my body about two or three years ago, but I think she knew that it was probably only five.  Or three.  Maybe one.  

At around 4:30, Susie and I took the metro to the Jackson stop and headed for Millenium Park. We made a new friend on the subway. Mesmerized by her outfit and general demeanor, we had to capture the moment. Welcome to Chicago:

2.

Millenium Park, with its sculptures and amphitheatre, is a 3-D kaleidoscope of images and perspectives. The sleek designs and materials inspire awe, confusion and a desire to take as many pictures as possible.

The Crown Fountain. I didn't see any faces when I was standing in front of the sculpture. I only saw them in Susie's picture, above.

Cloud Gate, designed by Anish Kapoor. Shaped like a kidney bean, with an opening underneath the sculpture which you can walk through. I could have spent days taking photos here.

After Millenium Park we walked along the river and headed to the Navy Pier.  I saw the statue of the man and the couch and so I sat down and started to "talking" to him. When we saw the next statue, Susie started playing with her friends and we took these lovely pictures to commemorate the moments. As we were cracking ourselves up, we noticed an old woman sitting on a bench near us laughing out loud as she watched us in our shenanigans. Little did she know that this would be just the beginning.

3.

Chicago, with its skyscrapers, steel and glass, doesn't work hard to remind me of New York. It's like New York, but different. There is something to the thoughtfulness in considering the aesthetic of a building, the building as it relates to the surrounding buildings, and the entire landscape of the city itself that makes it really pleasing to the eye. There are parts of New York that are lovely, but as a whole, I would not call it a pretty place. Walking along the river, with its many bridges and small touches of decorative accents, I was taken by the beauty of the city. The round bulbs of light below, for instance, reminds me of Paris.



On Monday morning (after playing with the kids :) we headed downtown and took the Wendella Boat tour. For one hour, we went up and down the Chicago River, listening to the guide point out various landmarks along the water--the Mercantile Exchange, the Opera House, the Sears Tower, the John Hancock building, the Merchandise Mart and many more! Here are some of my favorites:
The River Cottages, N. Canal Street, Harry Weese

River City, Bertrand Goldberg

Marina City, the corn cob buildings (I must have a thing for corn), State St., Bertrand Goldberg

Mercantile Exchange, S. Wacker Dr., Fujikawa Johnson

Susie on the boat tour, in front of the Sears Tower

4.

That evening we left Amanda's and headed for North Barrington, about forty minutes outside of Chicago, to have dinner with Susie's parents and brother David.  As we were having a drink, waiting for them to arrive, Susie told me about the golf bag that her father bought for her mother, and how he sewed the flaps together because she didn't like the way they stuck out, like wings.  "That's so sweet," I gushed.  "After forty years of marriage!"  We laughed and Susie announced that she wanted to marry a man just like her father.  

Susie's mother is a small, soft-spoken woman with a bird-like frame.  Her brother David I would never have guessed was related to her--if I had seen him on the street I would have thought he was Filipino.  Her father was friendly, talkative and funny.  He asked me questions about my family, where I grew up, and of course, if I had a boyfriend.  He told us of the time he and his wife were in New York and they needed to get to Buffalo.  He asked several people how to get to Buffalo, only he kept pronouncing it Bu-FAH-lo, so nobody knew what he was talking about.  Bu-FAH-lo, like from the song, Home on the Range, he said.  And then he sang, "Oh give me a home, where the bu-FAH-lo roam...So I thought it was bu-FAH-lo, New York."  

Later when we got to their house Susie and I started to look at the maps and books and tentatively planning our itinerary.  Susie's mother folded laundry and sewed up a shirt or shorts and her father popped in a DVD of their recent trip to Brazil, edited and set to music and copied for his friends - a computer project he just completed.  It was so cute I couldn't stand it.  

We stayed the night and left the next morning.  Susie packed up the car, said goodbye and we were off.  In the garage, she pointed out the golf bag, and the black threads that held the flaps together.  I stopped talking to my own father over five years ago.  An angry, difficult man who drinks too much and only speaks to criticize us, he is what I had, as a child, thought of as the typical Korean father.  I could never imagine myself saying that I would want to marry a man like my father (though the subconscious seems to dictate my choices otherwise).  But a man like Susie's dad--I would have to agree with her there.  I should be so lucky!

2BUGURL

      

Please send any correspondence to:
Susie Ihm
Green Prius
Anywhere, USA




The Prius was like a mini-celebrity as we travelled from town to town. Everywhere we stopped people took long looks and wanted to know all about her. How do you like her, how many miles does she get, what does BUG GIRL mean? The plates actually read Tubu Girl, a nickname for our fearless driver from when she was a girl, because people would always say she was soft like tubu (the Korean word for tofu), and she liked to eat it.

At times, it did seem like the car was a home away from home. The back was the storage area, and the front served as:


...the kitchen...


...the office...


...and the rec room (the stereo was our entertainment as well as a sunbathing spot for Dunny)...

I heard that it made for a rather comfortable bedroom as well, but even though that might have been kind of fun, I did not get to experience that.

In the next week, we would see a number of new things along the way from Chicago to South Dakota, but much of our time would be spent sitting side by side in the front seat. Except for one day, Susie was in the driver's seat, multi-tasking between steering, inserting directions into Garmin Jeeves, the GPS with the sexy British accent, and taking a toke from her shiny red metal pipe, the one that sounded like a small animal was dying every time she inhaled. I sat in the passenger seat, playing DJ, making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, or taking pictures of the incredible landscapes and unusual signs that we passed along the Interstate.

   

And we talked about our families, things we liked to do when we were young, relationships, our top five male celebrities (i love you, edward norton!), and we listened to her ipod playlists of new wave, cheesy love songs and contemporary hits and my favorite radio shows, This American Life and RadioLab (available by podcast at an itunes near you.  subscribe now!) And sometimes we just sat in silence, driving, lost in our own thoughts, watching the scenery pass by.  

       

If travelling with Susie was a destination, I would recommend it to anyone.  Easygoing, laid-back, appropriately silly and fun--I can't remember the last time I laughed so much in such a short period of time.  To steal a line or two from Juno MacGuff, "As a travel buddy, Susie Ihm is boss!  She's the cheese to my macaroni."  Or in this case, the cheese to my cheese.

                  

A Palace Made of Corn

I first saw it on a travel show about weird places to visit in the U.S.--a barn whose exterior was decorated entirely out of corn. Somewhere in that hunk of land in the middle of the country, yet another use was found for corn, but one that didn't contribute to processed foods, fuel sources or feed for animal farms. It was corn art. For reasons unknown to me to this day, I found this oddly fascinating. Do they use individual corn kernels? How do they get all the different colors? Who decorates the actual barn? How long does it take? And why? I mean, really, why? And the thought crossed my mind that I would like to see it one day. Little did I know that that day would come soon, and I would be standing in Mitchell, South Dakota, looking up at the multi-colored murals on the Corn Palace (it's not a barn at all) with my very own eyes. Let that be a lesson, boys and girls--dreams can come true!

How exactly did I meet my destiny? Through ADHD, lack of money and leaving things to the last minute. I was due to go to Salt Lake City at the end of May for the graduation of a student I used to work with at my last job. I was taking time off before starting school in the fall, and because I had the extra time, I thought I might tack on a trip to Seattle to visit a friend after the graduation. Because I had the extra time, I'd also been watching a lot of the Travel Channel. Once the idea of taking a trip was hatched, my mind went into overdrive. I think I developed a kind of travel ADHD. Every day my itinerary changed. I need to go to Jerusalem, I decided after watching a special on the Old City. No, I would go from Salt Lake City to Ecuador. Or rather, I'd fly back to New York and then go meet my friend Jeremy in Uruguay. Or was it Bolivia? How about both? And who knew that Buenos Aires is just a boat ride away from Montevideo?

Some time in April, Susie came down from New Hampshire to say goodbye to all her New York friends before leaving the East Coast for good. She decided to move to Bellingham, WA to focus on her love of hiking, climbing and the outdoors and would drive cross-country after Memorial Day. At the bar, I perused her Road Trip USA book of weird sites and there it was--the Mitchell Corn Palace, captivating me once again in its corn-covered glory. "Maybe I should go with you," I joked. "Yeah, you should," Susie replied. We began talking about her tentative route and where she wanted to stop, when she was planning to leave and how my schedule might fit in. Then we fell back into conversation with Lynn, Wil and Jennie and took goodbye pictures with Susie's Polaroid camera. We all signed the Polaroids and on mine I scribbled "Corn Barn, here we come!"

So here was another permutation to add to the mix, because juggling imaginary itineraries between the West Coast and various parts of South America wasn't enough. May was rolling around and I needed to book my flight. What made it easier to cut out South America in the end was my April credit card statement. Reality, my nemesis, made it pretty clear that a plane ticket to Uruguay would not be a wise move. I was left with Seattle and the road trip. I called Susie to see what her plan was and she said she'd get back to me, so I held off on booking my flight. I also tied a strait jacket around my brain so that I wouldn't try to add any more destinations to my plans.

I'd never been on a cross-country road trip before. My preferred method of transportation is public. New York is probably the only city in the country where it is less convenient, not more, to have a car. The subways here run 24 hours a day and get you almost anywhere you need to go. Long distance, I like trains and planes. I had been thinking for a while of travelling across the country by train, watching the landscape and how it changes, seeing the middle part of the country, the part that for a long time, I had considered just that area one flies over to get to San Francisco. When I was younger, my idea of a travel destination was big cities in Europe or Asia, places with incredible art, architecture, and historical landmarks, great food and extra large helpings of culture. Or dramatic, exotic landscapes like the Himalayas, Iguacu Falls, the Serengeti or Patagonia. I actually enjoy going places where I don't speak the language, and seeing my passport stamped with foreign words makes my fingers tingle with excitement. What was the midwest but a land full of cowboys and inbreeding and right-wing conservatives who vote for guys named Bush and all those horrible stereotypes that one thinks of because one is from New York and has no idea what life is actually like there?

In all honesty, this fascination with the Corn Palace wasn't just about the corn. It came from a growing curiosity about Middle America. I realized that even though I lived in New York, I was not immune to a certain narrow-minded provincialism. When Bush got re-elected in 2004, it was a sobering realization that there is a whole America I don't know. I began to wonder if New York, for all its diversity and liberalism--maybe even because of it--was really the exception to the rule rather than the one who sets the rules in the first place. Short of decorating buildings with different colored corn, what else happens in America? What do cowboys do exactly? Is everyone really named Billy Bob? Who are my fellow Americans, and why did they vote for Bush? Why? WHY?????

These aren't questions I expected to answer by trekking on I-90 and visiting turtles made out of tires or a 20-foot basket in the middle of a field. And given my preference for planes and trains to automobiles, I didn't think I would last a three-week road trip to Seattle anyhow. But as I began to research South Dakota I saw that the Corn Palace was just one among many sites along the way--the Badlands, Mount Rushmore, Native American reservations, old saloons and the Black Hills. For a week or so, this could be really fun. Let me just check one more time to see if the prices for plane tickets to Ecuador had dropped a few hundred dollars in the past three days. And apparently, Vancouver is beautiful this time of year...

I was supposed to leave for Salt Lake City in a week and I still hadn't booked my flight. Susie told me that by the time the graduation was over she would be in Chicago to say goodbye to family and friends there. Then she'd head up to Madison to visit a friend, through Minnesota and to South Dakota. We did a general estimate that we could travel from Chicago and hit all the sites in SD in 7-8 days. One week on the road, then I could fly out to Seattle and visit my friend for a week. I could have my cake and eat it too.

I picked up my cell phone and texted Susie: corn barn, here we come!