Home Again, Home Again Jiggity Jig: Part 2

Last time I took Alex to Chicago, he literally flew around the world to get there. It was January 2008. He left London to go to Melbourne for a few days for work, which, due to flight issues, was followed by a day and a half in Sydney. When it became apparent that he would have to be in Los Angeles shortly afterwards, he continued his eastward journey around the world from Sydney to LAX. After a few days doing seemingly nothing that remotely resembled work (unless staying on a yacht and partying with Victor Garber constitutes hard labour), he was set to head back to London, thereby completing this circumnavigation of the planet. On the way, however, he decided to meet me in Chicago.

Now, if this itinerary/decision-making process seems ridiculous, you have to understand how our relationship was at the time. Leveraging work travel to our advantage, impulsively spending exorbitant amounts of money on flights and meeting up in places where neither one of us lived was pretty much par for the course. It was tiring and at times, ludicrous, but it worked for us.

Anyway, I was very excited to show Alex my hometown city for the first time, despite the fact that I knew it would be extremely, if not brutally, cold when we were there. The temperature, however, was nothing he or even I could have prepared for. It was frost-bite-threatening sub-arctic, arguably the coldest couple of days in Chicago that I’d experienced since that time in grade school when school was cancelled. We’re talking negative 40 degrees F here—not exactly a great climate in which to explore the city and begin Stage 1 of my Plan to Convince Alex That Chicago is the Greatest Place to Live in the World.

After two weeks of summer in Australia and sunshine in L.A., the poor guy was rugged up in five layers of my dad’s coats, hats and scarves, with just a sliver of face skin showing, his eyelashes freezing before the wind-blown tears could fall from his eyes. It was pretty sad, and certainly not the impression I was hoping he’d get of my beloved Chi-town

So this time around, I was determined to make it count. I WILLED the weather to behave, and behave it did. When Jason, my flatmate, and Alex arrived, the sunshine emerged from the clouds and provided us with two uninterrupted days of pure sunshine, blue skies and warmth. We hung out with my friends, saw my parents, went to a gourmet food and wine festival, took the architectural boat tour, went to a birthday party, and took in the sights and sounds of the city.

It was a legendary weekend preceding an equally fun week/weekend in Baltimore (check out HAHA JJ: Part Three coming up tomorrow). As you can see from the pics Alex took below, I think Chicago finally made the impression I was hoping for...