TRAVEL DAY
I left pretty early this morning so I could get to Chicago at a reasonable time this afternoon. On the way to the Oakland Airport I crawled in commuter traffic for over an hour. At one point I glanced over my right shoulder just in time to see a large delivery truck bump into the rear of a new looking (I don't know what make or model) white car. We couldn't have been going more than five miles per hour but that little bump crushed the whole rear end of the car, collapsing the entire trunk and shattering the rear window. A woman in office clothes jumped out, looking to be in good health, but she was pretty steamed at the truck driver. I snailed forward with the flow and so I don't know what happened. But the truck looked like it didn't have a scratch on it.

I got to Chicago just in time to enjoy the evening commute -- creeping all the way up from the Midway Airport to the O'Hare Airport district, where I am staying. I was bushed and didn't want to drive anymore so after I checked in to the motel I went to the Dennys in the parking lot. The food was good enough but the server was exceptional -- one of the best waiters I've had in ages. We got talking. He came here from Mexico four years ago, worked his way up from bus boy, and has just started college.

Then when I was paying my check the young woman who took my money noticed the book on icons I had in hand -- Frederica Mathewes-Green's The Open Door. She had an accent that sounded Russian so I asked her if that's what she was. (I've meet quite a few Russian immigrants in this neighborhood over the years. When I stay in a motel it's always the same Motel 6 on River Road, Schiller Park. As a matter of fact, I've actually been in the same room on one of my previous trips. So some of the people are familiar.) No, she said, she was Bulgarian. So we had a short discussion about that. Sometimes you meet the smartest and most engaging people in the places you least expect it -- even when you're road weary.