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Published: September 3rd 2007
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Chicago skyline
As seen from our hotel room Even though intellectually I know it’s fairly long way from Australia to pretty much anywhere else in the world, I’m still never quite prepared enough for the cramped legs and aching back that eventuates from being stuck in cattle class for over 24 hours in transit. This particular journey from Melbourne to Chicago was not helped by the fact we were sitting for an additional six hours in LA’s joke of an airport, hoping to get transferred to an earlier flight - because apparently booking a year in advance isn’t enough to guarantee you flights of your choice when you’re using frequent flyer points, but leaves you waiting for a connecting plane in LA airport for six hours instead. Figures.
I’ve also never understood how an airport which must host one of the world’s highest number of transit flights, has absolutely no duty free shopping, no small cafes, pretty much nothing to eat at all except for the world’s favourite fast food joint, McDonalds. As much as I enjoyed the place when I was a kid, Maccas had somewhat lost it’s appeal for me somewhere around the time I noticed that there was a peculiar correlation between the number of
french fries I ate and the mysterious love handles that could suddenly appear around my waist as if they had appeared overnight. But when you’re starving and a meat patty with plastic cheese and sugary buns are all you’ve got on offer, then I guess a meat patty, plastic cheese and sugary buns is what you’ll eat. Yash sits on the plastic grey chairs at the boarding gates, in ‘physical pain’ from lack of food. Mum tells him to go get more to eat, for her ‘growing boy’, as she affectionately states. Growing boy? A brilliant bloody excuse for fast food gorging if ever I heard one. I need to get myself onto that gravy train and quick.
We finally manage to board an earlier flight - earlier by a whole 45 minutes than our original flight, that is - and skip on over to Chicago. Upon arrival, Mum picks up the mobile to call not one, not two, but all three of her brothers currently in Chicago for the wedding, and usefully finds that not one of them are in answering distance of their phone and are therefore blissfully unaware of our arrival to pick us up, This
is no doubt a particularly warming thought for my mother who has just flown for 24 hours with her family to see her long lost brothers, who have apparently inherited my mother’s own trait of not understanding the actual point of a mobile phone, namely, that they are in fact
mobile.
But all is not lost. Or actually, it seems something is lost. Specifically, our luggage. Lost somewhere in the void which is Amercian Airlines baggage claim. We hop from one counter to the next, plastic smile after plastic smile, leading to one queue, to the next queue, to yet another queue after that.
Finally we make it to the front of the line and discover that our bags have been locked away behind the little grey door behind the counter the entire time. Hurrah! Too tired out to complain about the fact someone might have thought to mention this to us an hour ago while we were standing in queue number one, by now we have completely voided the ‘extra time’ we had gained from catching an earlier flight. On the plus side, Uncle Shirish has finally remembered his Australian sister and has come to the airport to collect us. Hugs and kisses and the usual family reunion stuff, while we head into Chicago to meet the rest of the gang at our downtown hotel.
It’s nice to see them all, for the first time in - I don’t even know how many years. The adults tell Yash and I how much we’ve grown (which isn’t true, I haven’t grown since I was fifteen years old, unless they mean width-wise, which I shall blissfully ignore) and we marvel at how big our baby cousin’s have grown (which
is true, Alisha was only just learning to walk last time I saw her, now she walks, runs, hops, skips, the works!)
We head on to the upstairs lounge where my mother and her brothers tell ‘remember when’ stories and count the days since the last reunion (2002, if I calculate rightly). It’s been a long while since visits, and it appears there’s much to catch up on, which is only to be expected, I guess.
Meanwhile, it’s been a long day, eyelids are heavy, it’s past midnight and bed sounds more than a little inviting.
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