chicago no.1, no.2, no.3

there is no one else i've shared a room with longer than ally. first, it was 315 petticoat lane, boyd hall, then a semester in prague, only to finish out our academic career with a spacious one bedroom on hunting. fall of 2000, we entered k-state together, she in interior architecture and i in architecture. our room was the best in the hall and if you ever came to visit, she would entertain you with quite a thorough tour. she stayed up with me at night as i finished up projects for she felt guilty sleeping as i worked. funny how she got over that one by fifth year. i am forever thankful for her motherly support in prague, and ally, what would i do without your fashion expertise? seriously?! but our friendship extends far beyond being college roommates and all the way back to the fourth grade in our brownie troop and into high school. oh, the stories we can tell.

it's been two months now since i was visiting her in chicago, so this post comes a bit late. apologies. in the past four years, i have made three trips to chicago and all have been with ally. each trip to chicago was so unique and entirely different, that they must all be shared.

in our second year of college, we ventured up to the windy city together. it was the biggest trip we had both taken on our own and my first plane ride. first time in the big city, ally prefered the airport shuttle to the 'el' and opted for a hotel off of the magnificent mile for safety reasons. i appreciated her cautious ways. far too often i fail to think things thoroughly and she keeps me balanced. we stayed in well lit areas and i hailed my first taxi after the comedy club night venture. oh, did we ever think we were big city travelers.

chicago trip no. two occurred rather accidentally and i accept all blame for this one. we were about to begin our semester in prague and we could not be more excited. we were on route to manchester, england to visit some of my family before we met up with the rest of our classmates in london. boarding the plane in wichita, our eyes teared up after goodbyes but we quickly turned our minds to the adventure that lay ahead of us and a six hour layover in chicago before life took us overseas. somewhere between boarding our plane in wichita, gate c45 in chicago, and the 7 hours that passed, i lost my passport. that's right. i didn't misplace it or leave it at home. i lost it. [read more here] thankfully, we were in chicago where one of the midwest passport agencies is located. we trudged to the last minute hotel and i made about 16 long distance phone calls to figure out what to do. we awoke the next morning at 4 to catch the shuttle at 5, to get to the airport by 6, to catch el and arrive downtown by 7, to be at the front of the line by 8 for an emergency passport. 24 hours and $286 later, the plane for manchester left again, though this time we were on it. needless to say, this was my least favorite of the three trips but ally couldn't have been a better sport.

ah. this last trip was different. after graduation, the girl who used to be afraid of public transportation and hostels, moved up to chicago on her own. she enjoys reading on her hour commute, buys organic food, and has successfully killed a cockroach by herself. she's a become a big city girl and i'm proud of her in that motherly-life-time-friend kind of way to which i am entitled. this trip, i saw the city from her perspective, instead of the tourist or crazy-passport-losing window i had watched through before. hers is a much better view.

i loved hearing the stories from her day to day living, the crazy couple down the hall and the guys who try to hit on her on the bus. we ate at her favorite restaurants, walked through lincoln park on a lazy saturday morning, and peopled watched downtown. one of my favorite moments from the trip was just before bed one night. living in a studio apartment, she has big windows along the backside which look into an interior courtyard of the building...as well as all the other apartments.

as we laid there in bed, the lights off and the noises from the city still lulling in the background, we watched the building settle down for the night. she told me of the man on the sixth floor who often plays his guitar at night. he lives by himself and has red hair. though she cannot hear him, sometimes he plays by the window like he's playing for her. then there's the lady a bit further down who one evening sewed a purse. there is a black cat which always sits in the window and then another with plants far over grown. she mentioned the people who've moved and those who've made new homes. we watched the lights go off, one by one, wondering what stories their lives were telling and what they were reading from ours.