The Great Adventure, Part 6: My Kind of Town.

DIARY

Jess and I landed in Chicago and felt exhausted and worn out already. We walked through Midway airport to the Orange Line, and spoke with Sam, who had offered to pick us up downtown. We rode to Roosevelt, and stood on the block between Wabash and Michigan, talking until he arrived. From there, we netted through downtown, wove back to Lack Shore Drive, and burst north as soon as we'd hit Fullerton.

Sam told us about his snorkeling gear he'd just acquired; plastlic flippers with a cut down the middle that made for quick propulsion and an breating tube that closed under pressure from water.

I'm recalling this from two months later, and I don't trust my sequencing of events completely. But I do know that that night Sky came over, and I while Jess napped, I believe, we spent one more night hanging out, talking and eating our staple meal of rice and veggies and fish and hot sauce.

Jess and I spent most of our days there packing and sorting and throwing away. We're both packrats, and even as we carted industrial bag after bag down to the dumpster, the amount of stuff between the two of us was staggering.

We arrived home on Wednesday. On Thursday night, Sam invited us to see Sin City at the Brew N' View. On the way, we met an Uptown Character on the train, who interrogated us about our professions and dispositions (Sam confided the truth; that he was Jim and he drove a CTA train). The Character got off at Belmont and we quickly avoided, weaving down and out through the wood-and-metal stairs.

The movie was joyful and vindictive, and we sat in the back, drinking beers and marvelling at the mount of colorless blood, and how creepy Elijah Wood can be when he really puts his mind to it. Afterward, we went to Clarke's one last time and talked about our adventures. While there, I saw Jeff Potter, who I knew through FYT and the BBU; he'd moved to Chicago. He knew about my wedding to Jess because his mother had seen the announcement and told him. We also saw our Uptown Character, rummaging through the garbage, but he didn't notice us.

I went swimming with Sam several times, and used the fins and snorkel tube to look at the sand and shells at the bottom. It was cold and sharp and not at all like the Caribbean in Belize.

On Saturday, we threw a housecooling party among the boxes, and many of our friends come, some whom we had not seen since the wedding. We drank beer, and talked about Mathews House and Scavhunt and the Gothic Funk parties. Lisa and Sam stayed up late, and we talked after everyone else had left.

On Sunday, I rode the CTA down to Hyde Park for church, then stopped at the Medici one last time, and read. Jess came by, and we visited with Meridith and Matt at her place. In the midst of these adventures, we'd been trying to sell Jess' car and both of our excess furniture, and we made several related stops. It was strange, moving around Sholars' Corner, where she had lived that year but did not live anymore. With the late summer sunlight beaming through the air but the wind distinctly cooler, it reminded me of when she had first moved in, just as when Sam and I were first moving to Edgewater Beach. Sam was moving that week as well; several days after we'd leave, he'd cart his belonging over to Ukrainian Village and become a West Sider. In the evening, we went to Michael and Tom's for dinner. We stayed late, talking about religion and politics and regionalism and family history as we always do.

It was very difficult at this time to imagine that we were actually saying "goodbye" to all of our friends. The week seemed like a time of slow employment, like the days just before or after Christmas, when there's time to visit and talk. The idea of going away seemed alien that week.

We spent our last several days in Chicago packing furiously, and I cleaned my room, tore the pictures and posters and maps off my wall, and scrubbed them down, sometimes taking the paint off with the grime. That night, Jessica finally sold her car.

On Wednesday, when we'd been back for a week, Jess and Sam and I went out to Kopi Cafe in Andersonville one last time.

Later that night, Sam and I went for a walk down by the beach at Ardmore, and we spoke and stood in the sand, looking out at the water, talking and thinking. We walked back to Sheridan, then north to Thorndale, west to Kenmore, and south to our place.

The next morning, Sunday, we drove down to Irving park and picked up our U-Haul. We spent the whole day loading our things in. We finally left the apartment after three, took the slow drive douth along Ashland, made a pit stop in Hyde Park, and wheeled out of Chicago along the Skyway. No more Stony Island Drive.

END OF POST.