Chicago

I'm in Chicago tonight, sitting in my hotel room answering work emails. It's nearly eleven here, so I really should be sleeping, but I always have a hard time winding down when I travel.

It's cold here. On my way out of the warehouse today, walking to the bright blue Dodge Charger Enterprise Rent-a-Car assigned me, it felt like we were in the middle of a sandstorm. Except, instead of sand blowing in the cold wind, it was tiny little pebbles of ice. Driving the three miles to my hotel room, I saw swirls of ice rolling along the road. It was getting prematurely dark at four o'clock, and all I wanted to do was hole up in my room for the rest of the night.

The only food around here is the hotel restaurant - Johnel's. We're talking cut-rate diner food with an alarmingly high grease content. The bar at the far end of the restaurant has low lights, bright TVs, and raucous laughter. The decor is heinous. The waitresses are middle-aged and slow. I ate there last night, and that was enough. At eight, I braved the cold and headed to the closest Olive Garden, eight miles away.

I find this part of the country kind of depressing. There are thousands of old, brick houses with dark windows. The businesses here are mostly industrial, the folks mostly black and hispanic. There's an air of hopelessness; a collective resigned sigh. Driving through the southeast side of Chicago on my way to the plant, I always see people walking down the sidewalks in bitter cold, between laundromats and liquor stores. Rap music always seems to be pounding just two or three doors away. There are so many young, single mothers working multiple jobs just to get by. Young black men with brand new clothes and - seemingly - no job. You see them in twos and threes on corners and in alleys, bright jackets and pressed jeans. Always looking over their shoulders.

There's a train passing by in the distance right now. An empty bowling alley across the street, most likely out of business. No noise in the hallway outside my door.

Tomorrow I'll fly down to Atlanta, drive to the suburb where our plant is located, and stay in a new hotel, in a new little town, full of brand new brick buildings and friendly southerners.

Honestly? It can't come soon enough.