O'Hare and Back Again

Dylan fell asleep at the gate before we boarded Friday morning and woke up halfway through the flight. She looked absolutely mystified as to where she was. She grinned at everything and everybody, particularly the nice man in the seat behind us, until she realized her ears hurt. We flew along the south edge of lake Erie, so I could follow our progress by looking out the window.















We landed, got off the plane, noted how long the walk was from the plane to the airport, ran back on the plane to retrieve the camera (thanks nice security people -- look! a baby!) claimed our baggage, and were on our way.














We are lucky she can still sleep while we're, for example, on the subway.














Our hotel was right in the middle of downtown Chicago, so we could walk a couple blocks east and be at lots of fun stuff on the waterfront or a couple blocks west for shopping and restaurants.

















We almost went up in the Hancock Building until a tour group of 125 mature persons slipped stealthily ahead of us. We almost went to the children’s museum except that the child is not mature enough for such things. I pouted, of course. We stayed on the 13th floor of the hotel, which luckily existed in that building. The elevator rose and dropped precipitously, so I stumbled around motion sick at the beginning and end of every excursion. The only other problem with the hotel was that there was no fridge in the room, so we had to refill the ice bucket every few hours to keep Dylan's milk cold. Nonetheless, she felt right at home, as we had to stop her from buying porn with the remote several times.














Mac was our personal escort service, so to speak, and showed us around town all weekend.
Here is how you can tell Dylan met Mac:














We dutifully ate deep dish pizza one night and found a great tapas place the next. It was perfect spring weather the whole time.














We raided Trader Joe's. Moral: groceries are not easy to pack. Dylan was a crankypants a bunch of the time, but enjoyed herself a bunch of the rest of the time.














Transportation was a pain. The conference planners neglected to arrange for a way to get from the hotel to the actual conference, which was a 45 minutes bus ride or $30 cab ride, so that sucked. Despite these obstacles, Dylan made an appearance at the conference. We went to the hospital adjacent to the conference building to get a taxi on one of our journeys back to the hotel, and the taxi driver was confused when we got in because Dylan looked so healthy to be coming from the hospital. On our way to the airport on the way home the hotel people mysteriously forgot to tell the airport shuttle we were waiting for it and had to chase after it. The driver told us they do that all the time because they want us to take their (more expensive) car service.














The conference was cool and I'm glad I went. Or at least I was until the plane ride home, which involved an overheated, writhing, screaming pile of Dylan on my lap for longer than I cared for. Aaron took her and camped out with the very gracious flight attendants in the little nook by the bathroom for most of the flight. Dylan has now been to New York, Washington, D.C., and Chicago, the last two on business.