The Call of the Void

I set sail in Blues Traveler on a Friday afternoon for the distant shores of Lake Michigan. Many people asked me what caused my sudden departure, confused by the fact that I was being associated with words like “sudden” and “departure”. As many of my close friends know, I am about as well traveled as a sequoia and only half as spontaneous. But as many of my close friends don’t know, once every 28 years I have the urge for adventure - a biological mystery manifest by compulsory travel north like the noble salmon - and Chicago seemed as good of a place as any to drop my eggs and die.

Frankly, this doesn't look as appealing as everybody makes it out to be...

But seriously, I was sick of Atlanta and sick of the grind and just wanted something new for a weekend. And if the FBI is reading this, my trip was in no way related to your investigation of an underground kitten fight club in the vicinity of my garage. Those kittens chose a life of violence, and the last time I checked cheering was not a crime.

Mis – ter Socks! Mis – ter Socks!

The drive was long, tedious, and infinitely more enjoyable than any stupid webinar I would have been on back at the office. A solid, thin sheet of snow covered the ground from mid-Kentucky up. It was a dull blur in the dark, but almost glowed in the interstate overpass lights to welcome me into new climes. I finally arrived in Chicago around 2am, dropped off my bags in my hotel room, and then wandered the streets for a bit, where I quickly discovered through my superior powers of observation that it was 10 degrees outside and that I was dressed for Miami. I basked in the city for as long as I could and then took refuge in my hotel until morning.

The next day I met my friend Sarah for lunch at Lou Malnati’s, one of Chicago’s most acclaimed pizza joints and not-so-subtle front for the Illuminati. Sarah helped me work out a game plan for the weekend, as I pretty much just showed up as a reverse carpetbagger with nothing but a bindle and the dream of eating deep dish pizza. As we dined it started snowing heavily, and I watched through the pane glass walls as Chicagoans couldn’t be bothered to care. It’s like they didn’t even notice. It was all I could do to keep the snow-panicked Southerner in me from grabbing a megaphone, jumping on a nearby bench, and exclaiming “DEAR OBLIVIOUS YANKEES, IT IS SNOWING! I REPEAT: IT IS SNOWING! PLEASE RUN FRANTICALLY HOME, SHUTTER YOUR WINDOWS, AND IF ANYONE KNOCKS ON YOUR DOOR DON’T ANSWER. IT’S A YETI, AND IT’S THERE TO CONSUME YOUR CHILDREN!”

 "Just a reminder, yetis will not attack those in possession of a loaf of bread and a gallon of milk..."

Afterwards the plan was for Sarah to drop me off at Millenium Park where I was to wander around and take dozens of pictures like some big out-of-town goon before using my iPhone’s map to find a bus to take me back to my hotel. Instead what happened was Sarah dropped me off at Millenium Park, I took three photos, my phone instantly shut down due to the bitter cold, and I walked around Chicago lost like some big out-of-town goon. This was a constant issue while I was there. Any time my phone was out of my pocket for longer than 30 seconds I swear Siri would shout, “Nope, I’m outta here! Hope you die in the cold, sucka!” and maliciously switch herself off. I genuinely have no idea how Northerners communicate 50% of the year.

I developed a plan for my long, frigid treks while I was there – find a Starbucks, order a coffee, pour it down my pants, walk until hypothermia starts to set in, repeat. I may have substituted hot chocolate for coffee and my face for my pants, but the concept is the same.

I finally made it back to my hotel and loaded my bags. I had reserved a room at a hostel in Wicker Park for the following two nights. I wasn’t really sure what staying at a hostel would be like, but it felt like having a slumber party at a community college frat house. That night I took the L train back into the city to explore Navy Pier and look out over Lake Michigan. The surface was frozen for as far out as I could see, a serene white expanse that bade me walk. Luckily my common sense took over and bade me live. The following morning I went to the YSA ward before checking out the prestigious Field Museum. I was relieved to find out it was not a collection of dirt samples from various meadows and grasslands, but was instead a sprawling complex with thousands of ancient artifacts from all over the world. Perhaps their most famous exhibit is the world’s largest T-rex skeleton, Sue. Although certainly big and capable of eating me like a Snickers bar, Sue did not live up to the preconceived notions that television and movies had given me about the size of dinosaurs. It’s almost like movies have skewed my expectations and sense of reality.

Sue and I, moments before she disappointingly did not reanimate and run amok through the city.

After the Field Museum I went to the Shedd Aquarium. As with any animal exhibit, I spent most of my time wondering what the displays would taste like and concluded that most of the animals would fall on a spectrum of “delicious” to “very delicious”. I left before I could end up in the headline Hillbilly Goes Noodling for Rare Amazonian Catfish, Calls it ‘Almost as Tasty as Captain D’s’.

My final morning in Chicagoland was spent at Willis Tower, the second tallest building in the United States and the first tallest building formerly called Sears Tower. They took me up to the 103^rd floor to a fantastic view, and they have a few glass-floor alcoves where you can live your nightmares by stepping out and visualizing your death 1,300 feet below. It’s hard not to think ‘what if I jumped?’ when up that high – not from a dark perspective, but from a purely inquisitive daydream. I don’t think I’m the only one who has these compulsions, because the French have a term for it - l’appel du vide, or ‘the call of the void’. I spent quite a while up on the 103^rd floor just soaking up the city and thinking. I was happy to be there, happy to be experiencing something new and to be taking steps outside myself.  Maybe the void isn’t the pavement on Wacker Drive in downtown Chicago, but maybe it is Chicago. Or Taiwan. Or Abu Dhabi. Maybe it’s just the compulsion for the unknown, and maybe I had already answered the call when I drove 12 hours north for the weekend by myself. 

Or maybe, as most people told me when I got back, I’m an idiot who drove straight into the coldest Northern winter in recent memory instead of driving to Miami and getting a tan.

Little bit of Column 'A', little bit of number 2.