I was very nervous for this trip, not just the fact that I would be facing my big important clients for the first time in person but also because I really didn’t want to drive the dratted company van again. To assure this, I made my travel accommodations myself. When they dropped off the keys, I signed the papers and noticed the word “Cadillac”. As in a 2007 SRX. With Bose speakers and an XM radio that I never did figure out how to use. And an input for my iPod. This pretty much guarantees that I will be my own personal assistant from this point forward.
The ride down was uneventful, other than the fact that the radio was singing the praises of Big Giant Snowstorm Approaching! It made me roll my eyes, because we Midwesterners always get so sensational about the first big blizzard and man, they are almost always a dud. But then there were reports of Dallas getting shut down and then Kansas and hmmm, maybe not? I didn’t really care, as long as it waited until I was checked into my lovely hotel on Michigan Avenue, car tucked into the covered valet lot. From that point forward, it could snow us all in. I could live very well on the complimentary snack hours in the executive lounge and I had the internet and room service for everything else. There was a Caribou Coffee just up the street and Starbucks in the hotel lobby. If anything, I could pretend to be Eloise and charge everything and make snowmen in my suite out of rolled white sheets.
There was an eerie sense of d’j’ vu when I walked into the hotel. The exact Christmas decorations were out, they were playing the exact same musak. The exact same pointless gingerbread house guarded the elevator bank, and the exact same giant tree sat in the main entrance way. One of the things I love about this hotel in particular is that main entrance way. It’s so grand and inviting, while still managing to hold one at arm’s length. I think that’s the allure of hotels, the sense of belonging while not really belonging. Perhaps it’s just material status, rented by the evening. Regardless, I enjoy the type of status where you walk outside and you’re standing under warm yellow glowing heaters that manage to fight the cold winds coming off the Lake three blocks away. A man in a Nutcracker furred hat asks if he can get you a cab, and you only have to nod and then he’ll step out into the wind, hail one for you, then stand there until you’re in the cab and on your way. It’s so fucking elitist and snobby and I don’t even care because it’s awesome.
I checked into my corner hotel room, dumped all of my stuff and grabbed a cab to take me up to the prime shopping. It was rush hour at that point, so instead of going all the way up to 900 N. Michigan, I got out at Nordstrom. I figured that I’d be walking around a lot, so I had changed into sneakers, but immediately, I regretted it. Not that my Old Navy sweater would really earn me any points among the serial shoppers decked out in furs and D&G. Plus, I was carrying a shopping bag from the Lego store. Perhaps I could have been more obvious only if I’d worn a sandwich board that actually said “Tourist”. Ah well. There were many waiters running around with trays of canap’s and glasses of wine, each pointedly ignoring me. It pissed me off until I realized that I was slumping around with an apologetic look on my face for having the audacity to run in these circles wearing New Balance work out shoes and a seven dollar sweater. I straightened up, put on my most disinterested expression and walked into the salon shoes department. A waiter appeared at my left, offering a complimentary vodka martini. Sometimes I forget it’s all in how you carry yourself.
Sometimes I also forget that a vodka martini on an empty stomach has the effect of making one very silly in very short order. I escaped Nordstrom with my credit card unscathed, but just barely. The cashmere wraps were looking very comfy, but I already have two, including one that I never wear because it just seems too foo foo. Also, I’ve been in a thrifty mood recently, so I was able to talk myself out of buying that arctic fox fur wrap. And also, there’s the guilt. Although I have zero guilt about buying leather gloves or having leather seats in my car and really, is a cow less important because it’s not fuzzy wuzzy? I should probably figure out where I stand on that issue.
I decided to attempt some Christmas shopping, so walked up to H&M, but then, as seems always the case when I’m in H&M, I immediately got overheated and bored with the whole store and hated how everything is size 2 and some of it is fug. I continued to walk up the street to where the Hootchie Mama store is, but then got distracted by the Payless Shoes where Jake and I had scored our Halloween costume shoes. I bought three pairs of shoes on a whim. I have no idea where I’m going to wear them, but who doesn’t need another pair of ballerina flats? Me, that’s who, because I already own twelve pair. Oh bother.
There is something about Chicago that makes it magical, I think. Something about Chicago in December, at least. It sparkles with snow and resounds with clippety clops of Hansome cabs. At several points, I thought of my notion that I never notice smells unless I travel, or perhaps I am so accustomed to the thirty or forty common smells within my daily life that I just don’t notice them. But December Chicago smells like a man. It smells like the nap of his neck, just under the five o’clock shadow and above the collar of his cashmere sweater. Or maybe it smells different to different people because maybe it smells a bit like being in love.
I continued walking up State, but I was so hungry that I was getting cranky and it had started to rain, the precursor to the predicted Blizzard Of Massive Proportions that had caused O’Hare to cancel a bunch of flights in preparation. I caught a cab, went back to the hotel and ordered room service. Beef, because Chicago is a beefy town and one must do as the locals do. I probably should have just gone anywhere else, because my supper was subpar. I peered out my hotel room curtains and from the 22nd floor, I could see far out across the flat landscape, but the puddles on the rooftops were busy with giant raindrops. On the Hancock Building a few blocks away, they had replaced the normal white spotlights on the top with red and green. Clouds had swallowed the antennae. It was starting already.
I watched The Office, did some work and then went to bed, my dreams punctuated by the passing of the El. Sometime in the middle of the night, there was a crashing boom of thunder and the entire building shuddered. Then again. When I woke up, I flipped on the television to hear the local news personalities excitedly telling the viewers to call in sick and stay off the roads, because some kind of white hell had been unleashed outside. I flipped open the curtains and not only was it snowing sideways, but the entire Hancock building had completely disappeared.
Of course, the one time I didn’t have a camera along, I get a great car and a great view and a whopper of a meteorological event. Figures.
When I walked out of the main entrance onto Michigan Avenue, Grant Park was some kind of gingerbread fantasy of statues wearing marshmallow coats and trees sculpted out of royal icing. I half expected a stop-action animation lumberjack to wander up and declare that bumbles bounce. I think I actually said “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me” but it was probably lost in the gale force winds that shot straight up the Saint Lawrence and right up my skirt. Yeah. Guess who only brought a skirt and heels for her presentation?
I’d like to think I rocked the Working Girl look with my white socks and sneakers over my silk stockings but realistically, every speck of the fashion faux pas showed on my face. The second I stepped into the client’s building, I hit their bathroom, changed into my heels, and pulled my hair out of its ponytail, the static quelled by the onslaught of snowflakes.
The training went pretty well, although really, they don’t pay me enough and also, I think the client was only half kidding when they asked if I wanted a job with them. And I also found out that one of my clients I used to work with all the time just came in second on The Apprentice. If I paid any attention to that show at all, I would have recognized her name immediately, but since I don’t, they all laughed at me for not knowing that she was famous now. Or as famous as we corporate people ever get, I suppose. Or rather, good famous, instead of infamous.
My section of their day was officially done at noon, but I stuck around to help someone out with their boring work stuff, then caught a cab back to the hotel. I had checked out, figuring that the storm would peter out by noon, and according to my Polish cabbie, the roads weren’t that bad in the city. I did have the go ahead to stay overnight from both my boss, the Veep and Esteban, but I figured that I’d give it a try and if I had to pull over and get a hotel somewhere up the shore, then I would. Besides, I had a new input plug for my iPod to keep me company and I really wanted to get out of town before rush hour started.
I headed north, slowly but surely. I wasn’t having a problem with the roads, but apparently the ribbon of freezing rain that came before the snow had made the roads a greasy hazardous mess. I was passing cars in ditches, up dividers and down culverts. I saw a double-trailer semi jackknifed fifty feet off the shoulder. I watched a squadron of eight snowplows barrel down three lanes of empty highway. Meanwhile, I blew past everything at a cautious 60 mph, but really, I wasn’t having any problems whatsoever and probably could have gone faster. The real problem was the rest of the cars on the road. Between semis going 40 and idiotic little Hondas going 75 mph and then slamming on their brakes and losing control like hyperactive little roller skates, it was slow going.
Four hours later and I finally made it to Milwaukee (that leg usually takes 90 minutes in light traffic). I stopped at school to pick up the mail in my mailbox and then made a stop at the new Trader Joe’s for wine and supplies. I was struck by how spoiled I am by my travels. When I’m in San Francisco, Trader Joe’s is just another grocery store. The Milwaukee store was filled with’for lack of a better word’tourists. They were gawking at everything, blocking aisles, standing and arguing about whether they needed the cracked black pepper crackers or if they had them already. After four hours of cursing idiotic drivers, I was faced with a store full of them. One couple was so obnoxious that I almost didn’t censor myself when the thought “Man, are you this annoying all the time?” came to the surface. Because seriously, are you?
I finally got home at 7:30. Seven hours after I left Chicago. I did stop at school for about ten minutes and in Trader Joe’s for maybe a half hour, but even so, a trip that normally takes three and a half hours on a normal day took almost twice that. Unbelievable. Apparently I drove through the entirety of the snow belt, because back at home, we had maybe an inch of snow and Esteban reports that when he picked up Abby in her northern suburb, they had only a trace of accumulation along the sides of the road. Chicago, yet again, gets all the fun. Figures.
