So I’m fairly sure that I’ve fucked up, and yes, you can be sure it hurts. I’m fairly sure I’ve crossed the line into alienation and I’m fairly sure that I don’t want to be here. The more I think about it, the more apparent it seems. And it’s not just me who seems to be picking up on it - those around me are too. That’s really very, very scary when you’re stuck, in the middle of trying for transmutation, and you’re trying to be this huge, amazing thing when you’re trapped being little more than an ant in a maze. I’m really making an effort - I truly am, I’m trying to do everything I said I would because I think it’s worth it to do it. Not only that, I’m sick of being stuck in the hole I am. Right now I’m trapped in an infinite feedback loop of boredom in literally everything, finding everything in the world - even that I love, to be mundane and stupid. Everything is a bore. I can’t bring myself to do anything because I know I’ll just become frustrated with knowing I love something but not being able to feel anything except for absolute apathy for it. Nobody deserves to be stuck in that hole. Not only that, but it’s really fucking scary to be facing down the barrel of a gun looking imminent to go off, facing down the hole of being 21 and unemployed, and losing even more of what keeps me here. The concept of being out of work really, blatantly rips at my heartstrings and makes me want to scream into the infinite blue about fucking nothing, because really, fucking nothing is all I have left inside. What was once a beautiful garden is now swiftly becoming a heavily wintered derelict eyesore, an affront to all that is beautiful and right in the world. I can feel myself becoming evermore bitter, and evermore dissatisfied with the world around me. I can’t make ends meet and every day I’m stuck here I’m slipping further and further from my goals. I’ve got a lot of goals, as unspoken as they remain, and seeing them once more go by the wayside fucking kills me inside even more still. I don’t want to be like this, no way. I know I’ve got infinite potential, everybody always tells me that, and I used to believe it. I know I’ve got at least some potential that’s being laid to waste by me not being able to give the world my gifts. Let’s face it, I’m not dumb by any space of the word, but right now I can feel my brain becoming a stagnant swamp of cynicism and hatred, a poignant reminder that once I wasn’t like this. Maybe it’s just a phase, and maybe I’m just losing the forest for the trees - but the taste of regret lingering in the roof of my mouth and the air of disappointment in myself basically ensures I stay here, trapped, forever. I know I’ve done wrong - as hard as I’ve been trying otherwise and I hope that it is clear that I have been trying to the very best of my ability - and living with that cross to bear is horrific. It’s like being forced to be a martyr. Nobody needs that. Nobody needs that painful reminder looming over their head when they’re doing their best to honestly improve themselves and sort their shit out so they can get back to what is good in life, and actually feel some emotion except the overpowering nothingness of apathy. It’s a surreal feeling being trapped in limbo between apathy and depression - it’s almost like you’re observing yourself from outside, watching things you know should crush or elate you, and only being able to feel a dull blankness inside your veins. Little more is exciting, and the longer this goes on, the further it seems hope is a lost beacon in an angry sea. In fact, it feels like right now I’m stuck as a rope in a perpetual tug-of-war between Kansas’, “Carry On Wayward Son”, and Jimmy Eat World’s, “What I Would Say To You Now” - both songs which have became increasing important to me as I try to fight for air in the molasses of life. Music has become most of what I have left, being that in a last-ditch effort to actually pay my bills and try and improve my life somewhat I’ve been forced to put my camera gear up for sale - now that stings to even think about. It’s basically the only thing I’ve been able to feel in days. Scary, eh.

I’m staring down the barrel of 21, and I’m fearing I may have broken a promise I made to myself. That, my friends, I fear could very well be the thing that breaks me. Living with regret of bad decisions is one thing, but living with that is horrific… may the universe have mercy on my tattered soul, and guide me to where I need to be to grow. I’m on my knees, I’m begging of you - let me be everything I can be. Let me show you what Benjamin Alldridge truly is.

And so, 24 hours into an exercise in forgetting and rebuilding it seems I’ve already failed the objective, and it seems I’ll continue to fail no matter how hard I want to succeed. I guess sometimes I’m a strong person when I’ve got a remaining apostle to keep me challenging and keep me fording the river, but as soon as you take that key piece away from my existence I crumble under the pressure like a wafer under a truck tire. I fall to dust and lose all function. Why? I don’t know whether it’s just routine or just what my mind has built up as needing, but either way it’s definitely something that is destined to make this an exercise in futility for me. I’ve already proven it’s hard enough to go 24 hours, how am I going to go extended periods? I guess the long-term gain is a worthwhile investment, but being as weak as I am when everything around me has dissolved really makes investments, no matter how sound, somewhat of a pipe dream. I guess a big part of it is not knowing the infinite implications of it, like if it’s going to be for good or if it’s gonna pan out that it crumbles or if we change so much as to make it impossible… this infinite of unknown, although the same as what I already had, is not ideally something I want looming. It’s like being a pawn in a game of Chess - you’re forever stuck at the mercy of your master just waiting for your turn for the inevitable to unfold and play out. Of course I’m not playing with swords - but the meaning of the metaphor couldn’t be truer because it feels like I am facing a sword. And quite frankly, it’s pretty angering to be at this point, even if I know that in the end it’s for the best and in the end it’s gonna be something that is necessary to growth on both parts. It’s angering to be thrust to this position given the position we occupied prior to my departure. And most of all, it’s angering that opposing issues lead to the same outcome. I don’t like this loneliness that sits in my belly and eats away at me, making even the smallest task seem like climbing Everest, and I don’t like the feeling of melancholy and worthlessness that follows from being incapable of achieving the smallest of tempests. Right now I’m down in the hole, and I don’t like being here. And even when I fight to get out, something else comes along and dumps on top of me. Sic vita est? The last words of a dying man. I’m not dying, I’ve got plenty of life left, but fuck, I’m still in the same place he was when he stepped onto that hallowed drop. I don’t like it, as necessary it is, but I guess I need to lay in the bed that I’ve made. Let’s just hope it’s not jumping from the frying pan into the fire, and hope the storm is one we can weather.

I made a promise to myself to keep me going, and made a promise to myself to ensure I arrive where I need to - but doing that is something that I’m not sure I can do. It’s like a game of Blackjack where you know the dealer has at least 20 and you’re sitting on 19, waiting for that one card to come out of the deck. The odds are fairly easy to calculate. Is it impossible to do it by way of statistics? No, not by any length. Is it difficult? You can guarantee it. It’s a game of mathematics where you know the statistical chance of achieving an outcome you want, and generally if you know how to exploit those statistics you stand in good chance of a positive return. In that one circumstance banking on a 2 of any face to beat the dealer’s 20 you have roughly 1:12 chance in the absolute best circumstance. Remove one 2 of any face into play and that chance escalates to roughly 1:16, remove two and it’s roughly 1:23 chance, remove 3 and you’re looking at roughly 1:45 chance. In the way of gambling those are fairly safe odds, however in this there is so many factors that bump those statistical figures to what would seem like picking the A♠ out of a million random cards with only one A♠ hidden there. Of course that is easy to work out mathematically, 1:1000000 chance, but a 1 in a million shot is something that seems almost a sure shot at failure. Even thinking about it it becomes, in terms of pure numbers, a fool’s game. Of course the deck is somewhat stacked in our favour in that we’re playing with the majority of the trumps in our hand - however, having the majority of trumps does not guarantee you’ll walk away with the pot. I’m not a gambling man, but I guess this is one gamble I needed to take.

Throw me to the spiders? Indeed. Let’s hope they’re friendly.

The beautiful thing about being in a new place and spending a reasonable amount of time there to the point you’ve basically living there is that you find so much amusement and joy in the simplest of things - learning the culture, learning the location you’re in, getting used to life. Up until this point I’d essentially been at home my entire life, and the longest I had ever been away from my family was about a week when I used to go on camps with Scouts. So, basically, being halfway across the planet for a month and getting to see all of this living by myself stuff first-hand and experiencing all of what was on offer was something I really decided to take by the horns and ride out to the best of my enjoyment. Everything was so incredibly new and so alien about it all. The way of life, it’s just something you don’t get back home and it really, truly just made me love it all so much more.

My relative newness to my surroundings was almost like what I’d liken to being synonymous with an infant taking their first steps - a learning process that really evolves fast. Everything in my surrounds were so fresh, from the people, to the sights, to the simple things - snow, trees with no leaves, traffic from the wrong direction… all of it basically forced me into an awestruck state. The Chicagoan way of life was something I could see early on was going to really grow on me, as was the being away from home thing… I mean, hell, I was free! Finally, after so many years, I had time to sit and be, and not have to worry about the family ties going sour or any of that other bullshit which goes with living at home. I had total freedom to do what I wanted, when I wanted, and it was beautiful.

My first few days were fairly slow really, because I was understandably timid in my new surrounds. Just basically coming to terms with it all, trying to take it all in as much as I could without overloading or frying my brain out on all this amazing scenery and so much wonderful new stuff I could enjoy over the course of the coming month. And really, I couldn’t've been in a better neighbourhood to do that - everything was literally right on my doorstep, as I found fairly swiftly when I decided to go touring Lincoln Park and its surrounds. My mission for the day was simple: go and buy a sim card for my phone so I could actually use it, and get as much knowledge of the local surrounds as I could in the space of a few hours. So I leave the hostel, and head towards N Clark, and towards what seemed like the right area to be heading to accomplish that mission. As I’m walking just down the front stairs, I start to notice that my gloves and hat were a VERY good idea at that point in time. From nowhere, I looked down and these tiny flurries of white began to leave a soft lace on my jacket sleeves. What was this stuff, and where was it coming from? Could it be what I think it was? Yes! Snow! For the love of god, SNOW! For the first time in my life, I had actually seen snow falling, and actually physically felt it leaving the sky and touching my skin. Right then and there I knew what I’d been missing out on my whole life. See, people who live in environments such as Chicago see it as a burden because it shuts down so much infrastructure every season because the falls are so heavy (thanks Lake Effect, you’re a hero!) and is something they’ve had to get used to over the course of years - but for us people who aren’t quite so lucky and live in places that stay stupidly hot year-round don’t get an opportunity to experience it unless we go to these places everyone sees it as a burden. Truly, when we do visit these places we’re spoiled because we can appreciate this phenomenon without any bitter or ill feelings for it, perhaps aside from a healthy dose of cynical jealousy for those so lucky. I think the best highlight of that came when I walked into the Ritzphoto on the corner of Fullerton and Clark, and commented to the lady about the lovely weather we were having. Just the look on her face, she seemed so… bemused that somebody could possibly appreciate such weather. Unfortunately, she wasn’t able to help me with the sim card situation either - despite what the t-mobile website had informed us of. Curses! So, back out into the snow it was. But by now, the snow wasn’t actually snow anymore - it’d became sleet. Very, very cold sleet. You don’t fully appreciate how cold sleet is until you’re walking around in it for hours on end. Suffice to say, I now can.

So I head further along Clark, and spot the local McDonalds. This was it, my chance to finally see what all the fuss it about. And you know what? It’s exactly the fucking same! The only real differences is that everything is double, stuff is stupidly cheap, and they had Shamrock Shakes (which, for the record, are excellent even when it’s sleeting and blowing -10C outside)… not really what I’d call a massive departure from what I was accustomed to. Oh, and of course, another minor difference was having to pay for stuff using 1c coins. You have no idea how ridiculous it is to come from the Australian money system to the American money system. I don’t think I actually used a penny up until about my third week there, simply because I couldn’t be fucked counting out 4 pennies to pay for something. As much as it’s cool being able to buy stuff for $1.99, I’d much prefer just to pay the extra cent for the sake of handing over a single coin and being done with it. This was also my first real taste of one of the greatest pieces of life in Chicago - the fact that there is about a million different kinds of tax payable that depends on everything about what you’re purchasing. It gets you all excited to be paying $0.69 for something and going to hand over a Washington and expecting a quarter and some pocket change back, only to realise that you’re not gonna get your quarter back at all because you forgot to add the $0.14 taxation on top of it. It’s like a lucky dip for shoppers, I swear it. The lady at the register looked at me a bit funny when I handed her too little money to pay for it because I’d added up all the costs, it was a priceless moment of realisation for me.

Leaving McDonalds, the sleet got much heavier. By this point it wasn’t just waifing down, it was literally pelting, and it was soaking. I keep walking up Clark about half a block and notice the Best Buy directly across the street - I’d heard of this place! Score! They surely have to have what I want, this wonderful emporium of consumer electronics! Right? Nope. Curses! Another false lead from the website. However, this time I was armed with some vital information: the location of the t-mobile store which was going to enable me to get the sim card I needed so I could get out of the sleet and have access to a telephonic device of some description. The guy gives me the directions very vaguely, which ultimately proved fucking useless to a tourist who’d only been there a couple of days and had never ventured further than his doorstep - hell, I couldn’t even find Orchard from W Arlington… and for those not in the know, they’re directly connected. This guy has told me to head to “just off of Diversey”, which I was assuming was further north along Clark. So I’m walking, and walking, and walking, and looking out for this pink t-mobile sign in a shopfront as the guy described it, and ended up walking about 8 blocks too far down. So I double back, checking and rechecking every shopfront, until eventually I reach the split in the road where it becomes Clark and Broadway that I took previously, and try the opposite side. I get a little bit of a way along and ask a few people who have no idea, until eventually I ask this Mexican dude coming out of a Catholic Church (yes, I can appreciate how silly that sounds…), wearing some kind of poncho-slash-raincoat, if he knows there the store is. He says it’s back along the street from where I’d come, just past a herb shop. So I’m walking and looking for this herb shop, and eventually decide to give up. Then I see a familiar sight: The Body Shop! This is one of my favourite stores back home, and somewhere I’ve actually applied to work before, so I was pretty stoked to see it after such a long, fruitless trek. I head in and check it out briefly, to the amusement of the staff who found the concept of a big burly guy rugged up like an Inuit speaking this funny foreign accent in a traditionally feminine store. Really, the smart thing to do would’ve been to ask them where the store I was looking for was, but after having been given no response by so many I figured it a lost cause. Then, as I walk out I for some reason look back along the street towards the lake. BAM, it hits me like a ton of bricks. I’d found, unwittingly, the store I’d walked no less than about 8 miles in sleet looking for. After 3 hours, I finally found it. What a relief! So I get my card, and the guy activates it. Woopsie, my phone dies! Oh god. He tells me to try charging it when I get back. After further inspection, I realise that my pocket is absolutely soaked, and the phone is taking in all the water condensing from the combination of the subzero chill, the sleet and the sweat I’d no doubt built up from such an ordealous walk.

Back out to Clark for me! I head back along it, and back towards a more familiar location. After getting back, I try and work out how to get my phone to work, and then how to work out my phone number. Ha! Fat chance of that one, buddy. The thing about t-mobile sim cards is, they don’t actually tell you your number, and the guy who had written it down for me basically had illegible handwriting. That, combined with the fact that what it was written on was writhing with semi-frozen liquid pretty sufficiently guaranteed I’d have no hope in hell of finding it out. Damn!

I’m sitting there, and then looking out my window, I see a sight that I’d only ever seen once before in my life. But this time, it wasn’t liquid. This time, it was actual, real, beautiful, puffy, crystalline, white snow. I was seeing for the first time in my life real snowfalls, and it stunned me. Just watching it float down under the floodlights of the carpark behind the hostel was amazing. It’s about time I go get some food, so I head across to the Subway - which by this point was basically the only food place I knew I could get stuff from for a reasonable cost that tasted good. On with the snow gear, on with the boots, I was going trekking in this shit! As I walked across, I was confronted by the most amazing feeling. Snow, as it was hitting my face, was actually making it warmer thanks to the energy being liberated on its immediate melting. It’s a sensation quite indescribable. Your mind tells you it should be cold, but your body feels a warming sensation, which in combination has a vaguely numbing effect. When I get to the door, I’m pretty-much white from walking against it, so out of courtesy I brush the majority off before I walk in. As I’m sitting down in there facing the road, I notice something happening. The falls, which were already relatively coating, were turning into much heavier coating falls relatively quickly. By the time it was time for me to go home, there’d been about an inch and a half fall on the sidewalk alone, so I knew it was going to be a reasonably high yielding night. Walking home, I took the opportunity to document my infantile love of snow on my phone, and basically by the time I arrived back I as so amped I just knew I had to go and make the most of this. So I wait a little, and pack all of my camera gear up. I wasn’t sure how the 20D would stand up to being outside in -14°, but I was sure I was going to chance it regardless because it was too freaking beautiful to pass up. You can kind of see a little bit of distortion by the sheer chill on the lens to illustrate fairly well that it was a little nipply out:

The snow was still falling while I was outside, but I remained fairly unphased by the concept that normal people don’t tend to stand in falling snow, as you can vaguely see it falling here at the intersection of Arlington and Geneva:

Not one to pass up the opportunity for a good self-portrait moment, I propped my tripod on the corner and set the self timer:

And I took a whole lot of vanity shots for the hell of it:

Before I snapped a few more of the surrounds and headed back inside:

And after much procrastination, I finally went to sleep. And basically, spent the next few days in that exact state too. Jet lag had began to hit me hard, I was feeling it in every bone in my body and my stomach worse than anything else I’d felt before it. Let’s face it, going from one of the hottest places on earth to one of the coldest at the drop of a hat does undeniably take a toll on your body, especially when your radiator in your bedroom only has two settings and both are between extremely hot and oh fuck the room is on fire. You leave your room and the sweat beads you’ve formed from being in there turn to ice beads and send chills through your bones, and then when you get back in the room you nearly faint from spontaneous heat exhaustion. I’d contend that sleeping in that room for the first little while was basically as warm, if not warmer, than my bedroom at home. I couldn’t sleep under a blanket by any measure, let alone with anything on because it was simply impossible to do so. Quite a reasonable contrast to the outside temperature, I can tell you that much…

Eventually, I decided to head to Shedd Aquarium to take advantage of their advertised free days. This was a fairly massive undertaking for me, being that although I could get virtually anywhere in Brisbane on public transport, I had absolutely no idea of anything that was anywhere outside of the 2 block radius of where I was staying that I’d bothered paying attention to in any massively great detail. I knew Shedd was south, and I knew I had to use the CTA routes to get there, but which ones was I looking for?! Oh lament, why can’t it ever be easy to get places? I check around to try and find a way to get there, and after reading on the Shedd website I finally decided to go another method: searching around for something similar to Brisbane’s Translink Journey Planner servicing Chicago. Bingo! The RTA website provided my saving grace. Not only did it tell me how to get there, but it gave me times and such too, which worked out perfectly for a dumbass foreigner like me. So I get on the bus, and it’s all fairly simple. In a way which immediately shone itself high above what we have here in terms of mass/rapid transit, it provided a level of simplicity we could only dream of back home and lust after as our mass transit solutions fall further and further short of the mark they need to hit. There was displays to inform you of upcoming stops. There’s no need for ticket inspection because you pay a single price to get on the bus as you get on. And, above all else, they stop frequently and logically. The benefit of having a city built on an almost perfect grid layout is that it provides a simplicity of ease in making buses running north and south, and if you need to go somewhere else you get on a different bus from a different street. Eventually, I got to where I needed to change, at Lake and State (a place I would come to become very familiar with over the coming month) and swapped to the bus I needed.

I was there. Right on Shedd’s doorstep, all I needed to do was go inside and (presumably) walk in. On my way to do so, I was confronted by some pretty amazing sights:

The last one is of particular note, because the tent erected in the middle of the stairs was the only way to get from outside to inside without breaking your neck. The stairs had completely frosted over with about a foot of snow and ice, so the tunnel was basically heated and provided a reasonably safer way to do get inside. Once inside you’re confronted by a large atrium with a booth in the centre for ticketing etc, and a long, snaking corral to get to the tickets. Luckily it was fairly quiet when I arrived, so I was only in line a few minutes. Once to the counter I was hoping to not have to pay for anything because of the supposed free days, but unfortunately, I wasn’t quite as lucky as I was hoping I was. Still, $14 isn’t bad for a ticket with the works, I guess. So I go in, and I’m confronted with a sight for sore eyes. A myriad of fish of all different species and types, of all shapes and sizes, all of whom were rather fascinatingly displayed. I’m walking around and taking in the freshwater fish, all various kinds from all corners of the world. There’s all kinds of displays in there, ones for different regions and stuff. Eventually I found one section I really enjoyed, the various Cichlid varieties of the African lakes - Lake Malawi, Lake Tanganyika, Lake Victoria, and the various other smaller lakes. Of particular interest to me was the display of Cyphotilapia frontosa in the Lake Tanganyika segment - these fish are absolutely stunning in their “natural” environment. I was thoroughly impressed. Then, after some walking, I worked my way to my favourite bit: marine species. This was what I came for, to see the wonders of the deep in their natural splendour and wild displays of colour. To see amazing animals as wildly coloured at one could hope. And that, my friends, I saw in abundance. It made me happy. All up I took about 500 photos there, some of which I combined for a wallpaper pack which I’ve dubbed “Undersea Community” (which you should really go get, by the way) and expended a good amount of time.

Leaving the aquarium, I saw something which would change me forever. I saw a lake, second largest in the world, covered in ice. But not just any ice. This ice, it was breathing. The ice was rising and falling with the underwater rifts and literally making it appear to be breathing. I took a series of photos of it I still need to stitch into an animation, simply because it was so dumbfoundingly fascinating. So I call Mandy and tell her of my joy, and spend a little time playing in the snow. What that means is I took the opportunity to go trudging through fresh powder provided directly off of the lake that was about a foot deep and basically made a dickhead of myself. What did I have to lose? I was in a new town, I needed to make the most of the snow while I could! So, in I go. Ankle deep at first. Then shin deep. Then… stuck. I managed to nearly lose my shoes in the downpull of the snow, basically holding me in like glue. Somehow I forced my way out and ended up back on the path carrying a lot of excess powder. So I’m trudging and trying to find a bus to take me back, but shit, the bus I need isn’t there! It apparently leaves from like 4 blocks over, so I ask a bus driver who tells me a better way to get there anyway. That all works out fine, and after a little exploring through downtown past places like Adams and Dearborn (the home of the Picasso seen in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off), I end up on the bus home.

The next few days were fairly full. That weekend Mandy went to Indiana for a band convention thing so I was left to roam free. After some sleep to recover I ventured downstairs to interact with the scary residents who seemed to have a majorly tight group (and in fact, did have one) and get some food. Of course, me like a dickhead felt it pertinent to exile myself because I didn’t want to interrupt their conversations and plonk my ass in the thick of it, so I got an extra seat and sat over to the side by myself. Eventually, a girl with a thick British accent comes over and tells me to join her, to which I responded I was in more of a solitary mood. After some arm twisting, she managed to get me inside to sit with her and her friend and get to hang out. These turned out to be two people I’d spend a lot of time with over the course of the coming weeks, George, and Hannah. Both very, very tops people I’m glad I had the opportunity to hang out with while I was there.

When Mandy came back from Indiana, she came over early and we basically decided to spend the entire day doing the downtown thing. I’d always wanted to see the top of the Sears Tower, which was something I’d been raving about for months, but we couldn’t actually find directions to it. So, we ended up on Michigan Ave with a view to go up to the observatory of the Hancock, a building almost as tall, and certainly worthy of our patronage. The start of the day was amusing, we just trudged around and tried to find things and went into all the fancy stores and did all the upper class stuff, like trying on the expensive clothes and speaking in absurd accents… mine kinda stuck for the next few days. Horrible! We eventually found our way to The Water Tower. This place, while externally it looked fairly similar to shopping places in Australia, inside proved to be nothing like. A maze of escalators ensued, as did such stores as the Lindt Chocolate store - which for the record is absolute torture for a Lindt lover - and an array of other wonderful stores. But that’s not what stood out - the thing that really set this place apart was the food court. Generally food courts have an array of different stores you can go to and pay at each separately? This one was different. It had a giant area dedicated to various food stores, and instead of charging you - they charged your balance to a little card. It was basically a giant store with a bunch of mini-stores in it. That served fairly well as a kick-off point for awesomeness, and the food was fairly nice too (yes, food, I actually got some unlike Amanda who got a smoothie) so it was all good. So we leave, and see some guy who looked remarkably like he was shoplifting from a pharmacy. Kinda running away with stuff in his coat. Kinda funny stuff really. So, we find our way out, and head back into downtown.

After some walking, we decided that Millennium Park was just a few blocks away and that it was a good idea to go. So we’re walking. And walking. And eventually find a moose sculpture. Normally this wouldn’t be so cool, but I gave her the nickname Moose a long time ago. So I got pictures of a moose kissing a moose. How saucy! We keep walking, and eventually we see it - the giant metal amphitheatre thing I’ve forgotten the name of because it’s a silly name. We were there. So we walk in, and set our sights on exploration, because let’s face it, Millennium Park offers a fair bit of that for tourists such as myself. For example, “The Bean”, aka. Cloudgate. This thing is a giant blob of metal in the middle of a paved area that looks distinctly like a giant blob of mercury trapped in suspension, which offers a unique opportunity for photographing. And we took it. A lot. I must’ve taken a good few hundred shots just on it alone… it was just begging for it! This was fairly exciting because I’d wanted to do photos in it since about 2004 when I first heard about it, and I guess when it was actually put there too… ha! Finally having the opportunity made me smile. Then we made our way down to the waterfalls. Of course there was no waterfalls running because it was winter, but still, the structures themselves are awesome. They’re giant, 50′ high structures made of transparent glass bricks with RGB LED arrays behind them which display giant, moving faces which I assume get covered with water when it’s not snowing. Awesome opportunity for series photos!

After some messing about and procrastination, we ended up at the Hancock. Looking at it from afar you don’t really notice how big this thing is. But when you’re standing at the base of it… it really hits home just how mammoth this building is. We go inside, and try and work out where to go, and eventually find it. Into the elevator with us! This isn’t just any elevator - this is the fastest elevator in the USA, capable of doing 95 floors in about 38 seconds. In the old scale, that’s about 20mph directly up, no mean feat for something with the aerodynamic stability of a brick (literally) filled with people. Then we get out of the elevator, and woooooooooooooooosh!, a wave of fear overtakes me. For those not in the know, I have a remarkable fear of heights. It’s irrational, I know, but just being high up and knowing I’m high up makes me almost catatonic most times. Probably not the ideal place to be in for that, but I was adamant to make a go of it. So eventually I move up to a window, inch by inch, and look out over the landscape. And as I saw, the view was so much worth it - and right then, in that instance, I basically dropped all of my fear and became almost coy about it. Surveying the skyline from up there was magical - the idea of having stood beside a building minutes prior and barely been able to see the top, and then being up here and having to look down 30 floors is pretty crazy, but certainly a worthwhile experience. We were fairly lucky because it was a lovely day too, reasonably clear with an alright amount of clouds to contrast. I really, really think this was one of the absolute highlights of the journey, being up there, being happy, and just watching the sun set in the west over Chicago.

The next day, we spent at Lincoln Park Zoo. This was another one of those things I’d told myself I’d go see for a fairly long amount of time, a lot of people had told me over the years it was worth the time go to and see it. There’s a LOT of really cool stuff there, and wonderful displays to make it all worthwhile. Although, I must say, my highlight for the day was seeing my first Squirrel. Yes, a Squirrel, something I probably took more photos of than any other animal while I was at the zoo for a touch of irony. They were everywhere… fast little fuckers too. Makes for a good chance to hone your skills as a photographer, though. I also saw a hedgehog. A HEDGEHOG. They’re the size of a baseball, which totally blew me out of the water… you’d expect them to be all big and spikey, but no, there he was snugly tucked into the corner, almost impossible to be seen amongst the woodchip in his enclosure. Good day, I’m definitely wanting to go back again and see it during the summer months…

Following that day, George was looking for a job, so we walked to 7/11. Who directed us to another 7/11, who sent us to another 7/11, who told us to go to another one… seeing a theme here? Yes, we walked to like 7 7/11s in search of an appropriate place for him to apply, all of which was fairly in vain. Being that we’d walked so far north and west, we’d ended up in a place anyone who has seen Blues Brothers would be familiar with - W Addison - the home of Wrigley Field, second oldest working baseball stadium in the United States, and iconic home of the Chicago Cubs. While I’m by no means a Cubs fan, it was still awesome finally seeing something I’d seen featured in so many movies, and something I recognised instantly despite it being something I’d never been to before. This stadium is gorgeous, and the surrounds are filled with every single person wearing some variety of Cubs paraphernalia. Mad people. Then after a long trek home, I ended up sleeping and becoming covered in something I’d get to know very well over the course of the next month - bedbugs. My favourite! I love ‘em! I’m still covered in bites from them, it’s fucked. Alas, the sacrifices we make!

Stick around for more from the wonderful world of Chicago in the future. Hoorah!

I walked up to the doors, still fumbling with my mountain of luggage (I’d taken 2 suitcases, a flight case (with about 10kg of camera gear…) and a laptop bag full of accessories (hey, can’t write code and stuff and be expected to blog on a shitty laptop keyboard now can I?) on those lovely little trolley things O’Hare seems to have a mountain of, anxiously inching ever closer to what laid beyond. It was an absolute shock because I expected it to be more hallways with even more doors and even more men in uniforms with walkie-talkies, but no, I was absolutely shocked when I was wrong. For the first time that I’d been on the ground, I’d actually seen American soil. I’d seen the supposed promise land in all of its marvellous splendour, and above all else, I’d seen the entire reason I was even in the United States to begin with: her. She was standing there like some kind of idol or token waiting for me to pick up and savour forever. Right then and there, so many tears, so much heartache, so much drama had finally forded to a head and came together in a single instance. I was rather upset that I didn’t have Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five’s “Scorpio” available at the time to do the Robot or Moonwalk as I’d originally intended, but true to my word I said, “Hey, so like, sup?” as the very first words. I think perhaps she was expecting something slightly more heartfelt and romantic, but fuck that noise, I’m no liar! When I was walking over to her I kind of had to look twice to realise she was actually there and hadn’t abandoned me at the last minute as my mother had suspected would be the case, or she wasn’t a 64 year old man named Roberto who had a bad combover with too much mousse who wanted to violate me in my holiest of holes, and she wasn’t a transexual Mexican thug with a bunch of horrible tattoos and carrying a Tec9… it was actually her, the same redheaded chick with the cutest freckles and the most gorgeous eyes I’d fallen in love with. We hugged a bit (as you do after that long a time and having spent that amount of time in transit), and not much really needed to be said - that struggle was finally, well and truly, over.

Now, see, what’s interesting about all of this is, it wasn’t until outside that it really hit me. I didn’t have the fast heart/slow breathing/panic attack stuff inside of O’Hare. I didn’t get the whole wave that people attribute to love at first sight or whatever the hell you want to call it. I didn’t get the shakes or nervous jitters that go with an experience of that kind. I was too goddamn exhausted because I’d been awake about a day at that point, and just flown 14,000 miles on my first two times ever on a plane, not to mention having dropped a convenient ~35°C in the process. That is, of course, until we hopped out of the elevator (passenger arrivals at O’Hare Terminal 5 are downstairs, the carpark is upstairs) and walked through the glass corridor to approach the carpark. Right then and there, as I saw the whole new world I’d arrived in, a wave of realisation hit me like a ton of bricks. I started getting the heavy heartbeats, my breathing was kind of going haywire, and I had the butterflies worse than ever before: it was official, I was well and truly head-over-fucking-heels in love with this girl, and you can bet I was glad to have my feet on the ground. Not only that, but all of the doubts I’d had had totally dispersed, and I was sure that my decision to come here was the right one. The best way I can describe it all is like being reborn - for the first time in my life I felt well and truly alive, like for once everything was perfect and I was finally in the place I belonged, with the person who I deserve to share myself with. Just that feeling alone, and the feelings that immediately followed it were worth every cent I paid, everything else was just a bonus I was lucky to have thrown in for free. All the hugs, all the kisses, all the times walking down the street and getting dorky stares that were halfway between pure love and pure amusement, all the wonderful moments.. just gifts of gratitude from a beautiful world. This was all made all the more incredible by the sights I was seeing. I was seeing up close and personal for the first time in my life these wonderful, puffy patches of fresh white - quite possibly the whitest white I’ve ever seen - scattered across the landscape in the creamiest and most wonderful display of beauty in nature I think I could ever see. Not only that, the sky was the most amazingly rich blue dotted with the occasional waif of flurry white, and the temperature was a gorgeous one. I was here, I was home, and I loved every second of it. After a bunch of jokes about “putting all my luggage in her trunk”, (because we’re both obviously incredibly mature when it comes to making stupid grade-school jokes about genitals), and me fucking around with that little trolley-thingy-luggage-carrier-cart-doobie-whakka (thanks Mum for the beautiful words to describe things…) and jumping curbs, we both got in the car and headed for my new home. I think she expected me to be phased by the cold more than I was, but right then I didn’t care because I felt too damn good to notice. I was alive and having the single greatest day of my life, think a little cold weather is gonna get to me? HA! Fat chance!

So, we sit for a little while as she gets her directions for where she’s going to head and we hold hands a little bit, and generally just be two lovebirds who’d just been given their wings, and then we head off from O’Hare to my new home at Arlington International Hostel, a hostel located conveniently in the heart of Chicago’s Lincoln Park, and right beside North Clark St (it’s on the 300W/2500N block for those of you with a point of reference to Chicago’s grid system). We pay the toll to get out of O’Hare’s parking lot, and head east towards the lake. We drive for a little bit, then take a few turns into what looked like the upper class suburbs of the northside of Chicago and eventually onto the “Expy” (Expressway for those not “down” with the American dialect) which would take us there. We stay on there for a while, and of course as you’d expect out of someone in my physical state I was relatively quiet, but still absorbing as much as I possibly could as we were travelling closer to our destination. I held the responsibility of checking road signs to make sure we didn’t get lost and ended up where we wanted… which ironically, led us to no avail. We got what seemed pretty damn lost, as I guess makes sense out of two people completely alien to the way things work on the Cubs side of town and where we needed to go. We ended up working it out and heading the right way after a fairly convoluted trek through Northern Chicago, which of course to me being unfamiliar with my surroundings seemed fairly like what I expected of downtown. So we get to Lincoln Park after a bit more driving, and end up going the wrong way and missing it a bunch of times, by maybe a street or two thanks to it being tucked snugly in the middle of a bunch of one-way streets. I even think we ended up going past the Biograph Theater (the famous one John Dillinger got shot outside of) at one point, though I didn’t see it. At some point in there, she leans in and kisses me, and then holds my hand, and the butterflies I had at O’Hare came flooding back like some kind of strange storm building inside my belly. It makes me feel like a schoolkid getting their first kiss, what on earth? I’m nearly 21! Eventually we find where we need to go, and after much effort with parking and finding a place to legally do so, we head to check in. Now this kind of blew me away a bit. I walk in and it seems like a pretty damn cool place. Fairly nicely decorated older building with a nice, cosy feel to it and filled with what seemed like nice people. That’s exactly what I wanted: somewhere I could lay my kicks to rest at night and do so in a comfortable environment. So we go to the room, and set everything up, charge my phone and all that jazz… because, as you can expect, making a bunch of phonecalls and keeping it turned on sporadically for a couple of days fairly drains the battery. Yes, I was a dickhead and forgot to charge it fully before I left Australia, and then because I didn’t have a Korean power adapter or my US one I couldn’t while I was laid over in Seoul. Go on, laugh at me you jerks. You know you want to for making such a simple oversight. Then after a little bit of hanging out and doing the while, “Hey, so I’m finally here and stuff, sup?” thing and settling into the room, we get ready to head to Mandy’s band competition at Lemont High. By this point I was feeling reeeeeeeeeeeally seedy, and the body shock had really taken hold and made my body feel like a nightmare. That didn’t phase me a whole lot though, I was still enjoying the very first day of what proved to be a very beautiful (and apparently, sickeningly cute) friendship. Mandy shows me her concert dress which is pretty damn cute, and I get ready into my half-suit ‘cos we were going to dinner afterwards and I didn’t want to be the only bum in snowpants and a hockey jersey the first time meeting the family.

Back in the car we get! More driving through unfamiliar surroundings, through downtown and towards the village of Lemont, located roughly in the corner of Cook, DuPage, and Will Counties in the Metro Chicago area. Of course, to me, it was all just Chicago; I had literally no idea where the hell I was more granulated than that, and certainly not more accurate either. So we head onto the Interstate that leads to Indiana and look for the appropriate exit number to lead us to where we wanted to go, and this time, we actually find it. Of course, getting there proved to be a pain in the arse, what with cars randomly merging at speed and then slamming their brakes on and all. So we drive, and drive, and drive some more, and eventually, we find Lemont. It seemed like a nice place, although it was stupidly cold by that point and the wind was ridiculous too. There and then I was given my baptism of fire for Chicago weather. After a little bit of trying, we find the way in and check in, we’re ages early. That worked out okay though, because it gives us time to roam the hallways and gives me an opportunity to see the inside of an American high school up close and personal in all its splendour. So we ask and then head to the cafeteria to hang out until it’s time for her to run off to her band duties, and to grab a bite to eat. Now, the cheapness of food there kinda scared me, to be honest. I got a full meal, as well as some Reese’s Cups and a drink for Mandy for the same price I was paying for a burger at TAFE before I left. I could live with that. So we hang out, and she calls up her friends to find out where they are. I screw around and take a bunch of photos of her, and force her into shock and awe with my ability to hold the shutter release and take montages of her. She also made me delete photos! No good! Even so, I kept a few, much to her dismay/contempt:

And let’s not forget this classic:

Though as she’ll confess, she hates this one:

Before she felt compelled to turn my own camera on ME and snap these beauties, looking a million dollars as you do when you’re as physically fucked as I was:

Then, of course, my guts decided to be a motherfucker. Let’s just summarise and say that American toilet bowls in schools are FAR too low to the ground, and the water level is stupidly high so to make it prohibitive to do anything without your hand getting saturated. And then, suddenly out of nowhere, DINGDINGDINGDINGDINGDINGDINGDINGDINGDING, the loudest racket I’ve heard in a long-ass time explodes through the halls, signalling me to get the hell out of there. Of course, me being daft paid no attention, until Mandy came in and told me we had to get our asses out of the building. Oh American school fire alarms, how I love you! So we trudge through the halls, trying to find where the hell to exit, and eventually find the back way out and once again into the snow. Inside was nice and lovely and warm, but outside was ridiculous - although I do feel the smallest bit of sympathy for Mandy who despite my advise didn’t bring her coat in - that was almost funny, and everyone was so utterly pissed off at having to be hauled outside for what turned out to be workmen who accidentally triggered it. So they reset it, and after a good 20 minutes outside amongst the snow, we head back in. Soon after, Mandy has to leave to go join her bandmates and prepare, and after waiting outside for about 15 minutes in writhing pain, I make my way to the bleachers inside of the auditorium they were playing. I set up the camera to be ready for when her band emerged, and then slowly drifted off into a mild sleep/not-quite-awakeness. The band was pretty damn good for a school band I must admit, nothing of what we have here can match the professionalism or skill these kids showed for their instruments. That’s all well and good. Then after the band leaves, they announce the next band to play: Lockport Township High School, just the ticket I wanted to see. Out they come, and Mandy gives me a huge smile and a little wave, and then they take their seats, which looked something vaguely like this if your eyes only captured a frame every 3.2 seconds:

And then prepared for their performance, which looked vaguely like this:

And looked rather professional in their penguin-suits and cocktail dresses:

And then the music came. And it was gorgeous. The sound they made was soothing and melodic, and wonderfully fresh and refreshing. I was impressed by my girl’s ability to make a wonderful sound amongst a sea of talented musicians. They even incorporated spoons into the ensemble, which I came to compliment Mandy’s friend Bailey on the inclusion of afterwards. Eventually, the set ends, and they go to pack up. I go wandering to kill a little time and hopefully find where Mandy had gotten to, and eventually run into her in the hallway. We fumble around the school a little more to try and find a way out, and eventually end up having to walk the length to the opposite end to where we needed. As we were walking outside I took the opportunity to snap some photos of a stunning sunset, and indeed, my very first in the United States:

And another which does the tobacco end of the colour spectrum more justice:

And we walk down to the school bus full of Mandy’s friends and have a quick chat, and she introduces me to some of the people she’d apparently told about me. Have a quick joke, then we hunt down Bailey and introduce and do all of that. She’s a pretty cool kid, she seems like she gets a lot of shit from the other bandies though… poor her! After that we walk back to the car - which proved to be pretty goddamn tiring - and head off to dinner with the family for her grandmother’s birthday dinner. This dinner was one which would make of break me (or so I thought…), so I wanted to make the very best impression I could, and wow people with my Australian charm which I obviously exude from every pore of my body. HA! It was at a place called Fox’s, an Irish bar which was set out kind of like a maze inside, and I got my first true taste of American laziness: toilets which operate themselves. What possible need is there for toilets to become robotic? That to me is just plain freaky… but then again, I prefer to take my morning dump manually as opposed to having someone else do it for me. We hang around a little and then go in to the room and meet her grandmother and grandfather - both very cool people - and introduce ourselves. After a little while, a crowd of people flooded in - yep, it was the family. Mostly pretty damn cool people. Of course, all very curious of my obvious Australianess, and a bunch of different things about that. The usual getting to know you type questions. Kinda skirt a few awkward ones, but not because I didn’t want to answer - rather because I couldn’t answer. I was tired as a mofo, amongst other things. Then the pizza arrives, and we all indulge. To my surprise, Cheese Pizza is pretty popular in Chicago, which is something I’ve never fully understood until I tried it. Cheese Pizza is, undoubtedly, a delicious pizza. But then again, so is Sausage, and to a lesser extent, so is a Junk too. After a little while more getting to know the family, we eventually all depart back to her grandmother’s place to hang out for a while.

Driving there, it’s noticeable just how nice parts of Chicago are in terms of housing quality, and especially how nice it looks under the blanketing cover of Winter. It all felt kind of like I was watching it on TV, because the images I’d seen all my life matched up fairly closely with what I was actually witnessing first hand before my eyes. I was seeing it with my own eyes, and seeing it first hand for the first time in my life. It was pleasant. We go inside, and then Mandy and myself went to the TV room and watched Zoolander for a bit. It was nice to get some alone time and just be for a while, by that point I’d been awake about 34 hours and was definitely feeling what was going to become a familiar feeling over the coming week - the body stress from putting it through such a journey. After a while we decided to depart, and were greeted by her grandmother loading us up with a cornucopia of peppermints - something I came to appreciate over the next few days. We drove around for a while, and got lost again - this time we were about 6 or so blocks from where we needed to be - but in the end we ended up where we needed to be. After a little bit of messing around on my part, after 37 or so hours awake and my first day in the new world, I finally fell asleep. That was a stupidly difficult night, because I finally had gotten what I’d literally hospitalised myself to get to, and I had to spend more time away. Curses! The problems with being young, they’re insurmountable sometimes. That was alright though, because I knew I’d be seeing her again in a few hours’ time.

Eventually she arrived, and we just laid there and cuddled. Finally! We could do that! We had the technology! And other such references to cheesy 1980s Sci-Fi films about rebuilding things! After so goddamn long of not being able to, of only having a teddy bear (aptly named Mandyface) to cuddle when I felt I needed it, I could finally reach my arms out and wrap this girl up. You cannot even begin to imagine how life-changing that felt, and how thoroughly perfect it felt. Let’s just leave it as life-altering for now, because if I actually do attempt to describe it, not only will my keyboard (and fingers!) fuck out, but you’ll probably expire from having to read so goddamn much. Not an ideal way to retell things! After a while of that, we decided to do what we do best: walk around seemingly aimlessly until we found something interesting/awesome/etc to see. What this posed us was such wonderful sights as a lagoon completely frozen over in a sheet of ice:

As well as a bunch of Canada Geese waddling around on the frozen grassed areas which I can’t find a photo of or be bothered converting from RAW right now; EASILY the biggest crack rock I’ve ever seen:

And not to mention Diversey Harbour COMPLETELY frozen over with shiny stuff that seemed to reflect light quite well:

And possibly the darkest photo EVER taken while handholding a camera:

Seeing that sight blew my fucking mind. Sure, I knew it was cold because there was snow and ice all over the sidewalks and ground (which Mandy said I was weird for being captivated by, as well), but to freeze a harbour? Jesus, that is something you don’t expect to see when you’re a naive Australian such as myself. I guess now I’m a little better versed on the weather patterns of freshwater lakes in the Great Lakes chain eh? One thing that really held through for me was just how amazed I was with the simplest things. I’d never had the chance to see any of the sights I was seeing back home, and I’d never been exposed to such glorious sights. I really do feel at least remotely jealous of kids who got to grow up in Chicago, because they get to see the wonderful Summers we have here, but then they get to see such glorious Winters as a contrast. I really, wholly and truly would adore living there - and not just for the obvious reason either. I mean come on, when you’re my age and acting like a schoolkid over dirty, half-melted snow piled up beside the sidewalks and the trees having no leaves, surely this is the kind of environment you could flourish in. To quote myself as I wrote about it at the time, “It was nice to walk around with Mandy, it’s awesome because it was just going out and walking around with no specific aim, the architecture is incredible. The amount of 3-story houses is incredible, however… I don’t think I saw one smaller than. Absolute moneysville it seems.All in all, it was an incredible day which I hope to repeat a bunch… it’s nice to go out and walk around in such beautiful weather with such a wonderful person.”

Eventually Mandy had to leave, which as you can expect, sucked slightly less than the night prior because I had been through the feeling before so I knew what to expect from it. So we say our goodbyes and she drives off into the night, and I settle in to my lodging for another night until I’m ready for my next adventure on the other side of the planet.

So, tune in next time to find out more… until then, kampai internets. And remember, make the most of the time you have with those you love and who matter the most, you never know what is in store just around the corner…

So, I guess I’ve probably been a little silent about the Chicago trip. There are reasons for that, but it really does undermine what an awesome time I had there. I’ve already started to miss the place a lot, I find myself constantly obsessing about tiny things that are so different from here that make me want to be back there. Well, aside from the obvious reason, but that’s to be expected I’m sure.

The getting ready to go was an absolute nightmare - I had to be at the airport and checked in by 6:20am, and because I’m a cool kid, I didn’t go to sleep until 1:30 that morning. When I woke up I spent like an hour throwing my guts up, completely screwed and freaking out and generally just thinking to myself about all that could and inevitably would go wrong (even if it didn’t eventuate, it was dominating my inner monologue) when I arrived a mere 42 hours later in Chicago, and indeed, what would go wrong before I even got there. We almost didn’t end up making it to the airport on time which was exciting, I was freaking out almost certain I’d basically forfeited my holiday through that. Turns out it was a wonderful turn of fate I’d planned to leave 30 minutes ahead of time, I got checked in with a handy 10 minutes to spare! Basically, because I’d never been to an airport prior, and never been anywhere on a plane before that I had absolutely no idea what to expect when I walked through customs to get ready to go on the plane. It turned out alright, though I must admit Brisbane Airport is easily some of the toughest security I’ve ever been through, and most certainly the toughest airport security I’ve been through. I was freaking out thinking all kinda of horrible, horrible stuff in my head about the possible repercussions of anything going wrong at that one moment - I was basically expecting to be pulled aside for contraband I didn’t actually have. Go figure eh? That was all good, so I sat down and waited for the plane, basically shitting my pants over the small things… reasonable flight anxiety I guess you’d call it for someone who’d never flown. So I call Mandy to ease the stress a little and let her know things are okay, and that takes the edge off a little, but instead of me being shit scared of the plane, I was now back to being shit scared of the plane AND my immediate future once I was through with the planes. Wise move? Perhaps not. But, it had to be done. All good, board the plane. Kinda squishy ‘cos I was in a full row in an aisle seat, but nothing too much of a problem. And then we start to make our way out to taxi. Adrenaline hits me like a bucket of ice-water. I’m basically there with my eyes squinted as tight as possible, holding on for dear life as we open the throttle up to taxi. Then WIOOSH, that immediate momentary sensation of weightlessness as the plane defeats gravity overtakes me and basically pins me to the chair; almost catatonic but at the same time so incredibly intrigued and compelled by my newfound ability to fly. It’s an odd sensation when your body is trying to make no movement and be absolutely calm and at the same time have your heart feel like it’s about to jump out of your chest (though it’s one I found I’d experience a lot over the coming month). In the air things were cool, it was something I basically came to typify as being the same as being on a bus or a train, only with less obnoxious commuters because literally none of them could speak a word of English. We keep going, end up passing Cairns and then it’s time for food. And my god, this was one of the most delicious meals I’ve ever eaten. Bibim Noodle with Spicy Chicken, to die for. The rest of the flight is rather inconsequential because it means I’ve gotta write about stuff that’s not the main point of my holiday.

We come in to land at Seoul (Incheon International Airport), which requires us to make a banked 270? turn and head back towards Japan, something which I must admit was totally unexpected and caught me by surprise… I then proceeded to freak the hell out until the captain explained what was going on. I guess I owe some of my cavalier approach to flight post that point to the unexpected popping up at random moments. So we disembark and walk along these wonderful gangways outfitted with air-conditioning (which at that point I had no idea why…) that also housed massive flights of stairs up to the departure lounges, and mammoth windows that permitted a view out across the entire airport’s landing terminal. Walking through the hallways of Seoul was an interesting experience, the place is eloquently decorated as you’d expect from a place built in 2001 that also was ranked the best in the world by Skytrax, and laid out extremely well. It basically demonstrated the Korean propensity for things to be well constructed and classically beautiful. Basically, it’s an ideal ambassador for the nation. Walking around was an interesting experience, because there’s basically a bunch of different places you need to go to get out of the airport to the individual airline desks, and after much walking/exploring (and of course, coming through Customs to even get into that area) I found another traveller who was with me for the journey over to Chicago who’d had much flight experience, and we ended up talking a bunch. Then we ended up getting our meal tickets and accommodation passes for the night from the airline (Best Western Seoul/Incheon International is an excellent hotel, I recommend it to anyone staying in Seoul) and head to the door to get the “limo” [which is actually a bus...] which seemed like it took a good mile to walk to. The airport inside was nice and warm, say about 16?C which was made even warmer by my opting to wear my jacket, but then as soon as we walked through the doors to go outside of the airport to wait, BAM, it basically levelled my subtropical-inhabiting arse with a wave of 2?C. When we took off from Brisbane, the runway temperature was 38?C, and after flying in climate control for 10 hours and walking into that it takes you completely by surprise. The novelty of basically blowing ice crystals in the air was wonderful, because it was so obscure to me, especially while having a cigarette. Eventually, our bus arrives, and we all huddle into it to try and escape the cold for another couple of minutes ’til we’re inside the hotel. The first thing you notice driving around Seoul after spending 10 hours on a plane is just how similar it is to Australia. The easiest way I can describe it is exactly like Australia, except they drive on the right hand side of the road, and literally nobody speaks a word of English. Even the ones who DID speak English did so really pretty badly, so it made for some communication gimmes…

We arrive at the hotel and go through the whole rigmarole of checking in to a hotel using passes, and head up to our rooms to what would be sleep and/or whatever else you do when you’re stuck in a foreign country against your will for 17 hours - my choice seemed to be going downstairs a lot and buying phone cards to make calls home and to Mandy - all in all I spent something like $US22 on phone cards that night alone. It’s okay though, I put them to good use, nothin’ like calling your family and girlfriend and saying that you’re cooped up in a hotel in the middle of nowhere! So I head down for my “One Free Meal - Dinner” at their swanky restaurant, we’re talking suits and ties on everybody, concierge who looks like he went to university just so he could be a concierge there, and silver cutlery. We had a choice between a Mixed Fish Grill and Chicken, guess which one I took? Yeah, I took the Chicken - and my god I’m glad I did. They brought me out a bowl of a Cream of Chicken Soup which I assumed to be the meal thanks to the staff’s poor interpretation of English discourse, only to be greeted by a plate with a crumbed fillet with Brown Onion and Mushroom Gravy and a massive salad with a bunch of Steakhouse-style Chips… my jaw just dropped when I saw it. As somebody who never usually eats Mushrooms, I must admit - this was an absolute killer, and I really wish there was more of it to have… talk about flavourgasm. So, I finish my meal, thank them in the best Korean I could muster (which sounded more like horrible Japanese, but whatever), and head upstairs. I get suited up for the cold weather, and head outside to soak in the surroundings and fire off a few photographs of the place seeings it was presumably the only chance I’d ever get to do so. Little did I know when I was planning to go downstairs, however, that it was going to be -12?C (10°F for the Americans in the congregation) as soon as I stepped out the revolving doors… and I tell you, I froze dead where I stood. It was blowing something like 50kn in front of the hotel to make it even better, and sleeting… a wonderful welcome to Korea for Ben! So, just how cold is -12?C for a non-acclimatised Australian? About this cold:

Or perhaps THIS cold?

How about THIS cold?

But, not quite cold enough to stop me from making a wonderful series of stupid faces and taking in the surroundings, I mean, fuck, I was in Korea, baby! KOREA! Even if it wasn’t on my list of places to go to begin with, I can tell you right now it’s on my list of places to go back to. Why? Because the place is gorgeous. Astoundingly beautiful, and really just the most incredible place you could hope to go when you’re stuck stopping places you don’t want to. So I head back to the hotel, have another smoke… but guess what? It’s not as easy as that - the smoke literally FROZE in my hand. That’s just how cold it was - when cigarettes that are lit and being inhaled from freeze, you know the weather is kinda nippy. But that’s not the best part - the lens of my camera literally froze to the body, and took me a good couple of minutes to get off. I’m surprised the sensor still worked in absolute honesty, because you’d expect components exposed to that sort of treatment, in sleet no less, would cease to work. I struck it lucky however, and that wasn’t the case. So I head back upstairs, and try and get some sleep. I found the sweet spot on the climate control for the room was around 15?C - not too hot to make me sweat my arse off and ruin any acclimatisation I’d done running around outside like a fuckhead, and not cold enough to make me wake up in the morning with a headcold. So I wake up, work out how to work everything in the room, and head back downstairs for more photos and breakfast. Hearing the head concierge say “this morning’s meal is a pupu platter” almost made me eject the contents of my mouth at that point all over his face in a fit of laughter and confusion.. I was questioning why a man of such apparent stature of employment and dignity was informing me of his need to have a bowel movement until I realised exactly what the hell was going on. I had a little bit but the majority was still frozen, not ideal considering I was about to venture back out into subzero air. So we do everything, and I check out, getting ready for my impending flight to what at that point seemed like it could go any which way but loose, and head back out into the bitter winter breeze. And yes, I emphasise the bitter in that sentence, it was easily more bitter than ANYTHING I experienced in Chicago. We arrive at the airport, and go through Customs - the usual deal, take your shoes off, your jacket(s) off, put everything in a basket… that was simple. So we go in and hang around, I call Mandy and use the remaining credit I’ve got on my phone card from the night before and sort everything out for the morning, and then head to the terminal where I’d be leaving Seoul in a matter of about an hour or so. I get to talking to the lady I was talking to at the airport the day before, turns out she’s a linguistics professor at the University of Pennsylvania, which was pretty cool. She made life seem a lot cooler in perspective, and put me at ease for the flight ahead.

Eventually we board the plane (after a series of thorough inspections from Customs involving checking every single piece of carry-on luggage by hand, as well as our persons), and this time I’ve got a window seat. Score! It was a good thing too, because I wanted to see exactly what I was experiencing outside the plane, as well as wanting something to prop my head against to sleep when the time came. So we do the taxi thing again. We’re building up speed on the runway, and once again, WHOOOOOOSH!, a wave of adrenaline hits me - but this time it’s not fear or catatonia, it’s absolute amazement and wonderment as we ascend from the runway into the sky. Looking down over Incheon as we were flying out was astounding, there was a bunch of ice rifts around the edges of the shores and snow in the hills.. all around, it was just a remarkable sight I wish I had my camera out for (more on that point when I get to coming home…) to capture. So we fly north a little, over Japan and towards the bottom edge of the Arctic Circle, presumably to make the flight the shortest route or whatever, and we have to close the windows because the sun sets (we flew against it, so it took a few hours), and everyone goes to sleep. I managed to get maybe half an hour in about an hour after take-off, but that’s about all. The rest of the time I was talking to a girl on the flight, who was heading back to Chicago to the law firm she was interning at after having left Hong Kong a year prior. She was pretty nice, told me if I ever need legal representation in Hong Kong or the US to look her up haha. That iced the time nicely, because we were in the air a loooooooooooong-ass time. We fly down over Alaska, and you can see some lights dotting the landscape but not much, and see the mounds of snow all over the landscape. Then we head into Yukon, and right then the sun starts to show its face… and my god, it was the single most beautiful sunrise I’ve ever seen in my life. Not only was it breathtaking, but what it signalled was overwhelming - it’d signalled the day that would change my life forever, the day I’d fought so hard and so long for, and that I’d vested every screed of my energy into had finally broken. I couldn’t help but let my eyes well up as I flew over the almost-arctic landscape. As we flew down over the Canadian landscape and into America, I knew where I was, and how I was a mere hour or so from knowing my fate. One thing I noticed flying over that area was how different the landscapes of each place is, and with each major expressway and highway we passed I knew I was inching ever closer to my final destination: O’Hare International Airport. Coming over Illinois we started descending, until finally the ground was close enough to make out major details like what shape buildings were and cars on the roads. It was still a heavy blanket of snow on the ground though, and everything was still a full sheet of white. I noticed the shapes of the buildings and how everything around O’Hare looked like a landscape made of Lego, it surprised me just how flat all the roofs on the buildings are and how block-like the surrounding estate was.

Then we start to put out our landing gear and prepare for final approach. Then SHYUUUUUUUUUNK! woooooooooooooooooooooosh!, we were on the ground. I’d finally, after everything, arrived in the United States of America, in what had become my graceland. We pull in, and pull up to the gate. Walking through O’Hare to get to the passenger pick-up was kind of terrifying in the most satisfying of ways, compounded so much by the fact I’d still not quite properly realised exactly what the following half hour had in store for me. So many what-ifs to contend with, and so many lingering questions for so long that would be answered in a couple of minutes once I was past Customs. Customs at O’Hare wasn’t really as bad as I expected, the guy I got was fairly helpful with the entire process. All I needed was a facial photo and a full-hand fingerprint scan, and to hand him my form and then I was done. He directed me over to the luggage pick-up corral, which proved to be more of a pain in the arse than I’d first expected - because I was so exhausted I actually forgot what my luggage looked like.. so I stood around for a while waiting to see if I could remember. While I was waiting, I had the lady come over with the Beagle and give me a thorough sniff-down, that was fun! Eventually I pick up my luggage, and head towards the desk for what I needed to declare (which was nothing), then get directed down a grey hallway to a big set of doors with an opaque grey that you had no idea where this would lead to in the maze that is O’Hare’s underbelly. I was shitting myself. Never knowing which door would be the one. Never knowing what would happen directly after I walked through it. Never knowing what was inevitable mere seconds from that point in time.

Little did I know what laid in wait on the other side of those fateful grey doors and exactly what it would mean for me… stay tuned in for Part II when I lay it out, and exactly what happened now I was in America. Until then, have some photos…