Safe Arrival

I've made it to my destination with a whole lot of traffic in Chicago. I have to look at a map as I believe Google maps took me on an odd route. I got off a main highway, to a smaller route which went for a few miles through a really rough neighborhood -- the type with tire stores, awning manufacturers and Chinese food places with bars on the windows.

That turned into a bad residential area, then to a nicer residential area, then into Lake Shore Drive and I was right on Lake Michigan. It's such an odd sight because it looks like the ocean, the waves are as big as the ocean and it just seems weird to go from corn fields to something that looks like it belongs on the East Coast. I wondered why no one was in the water until I heard on the radio that the beaches were closed because of the flooding rain and sewage overflowed.

So I made it, trying to have a positive attitude about being here, trying to think of the people I like who I will see. But as I checked in, there were two typical showgoers -- straight from central casting -- in front of me -- you know, the slightly angry thin and wiry white guys in their 50s. They were trying to get a room. It annoyed me because one of them said "If worse came to worst, we'll take a king size bed" and sort of chuckled -- and you know the subtext was "not that we're gay or anything" and the only thing they had was a suite for $149. I would have grabbed it -- It had a king size bed and a pull out sofa that was queen size.

Here they are, the night before the huge show, you don't have a room, a decent hotel has a suite, and they bitched about the price. They didn't want to pay that much. They pointed to a sign that said something like "rooms from $69" and the desk clerk said... "the sign says FROM $69" -- and they bitched about well, maybe you should add "yeah, and up to $149." Then they left, disgusted, as if the hotel clerk was trying to rob them.

I have to say for this show, hotel rooms are so in demand that you make a reservation a year in advance, pay months in advance so it was amazing that any room was even available.

I swear I try to arrive with positive attitude and I wasn't even checked in and I was annoyed. My wish is that they dicker and bicker and end up having to sleep in a parking lot. If you can afford to come to this show, you can afford a $149 hotel room.

Moment of synchronicity: I had passed some historical sign and I was thinking about an event and realized that I had reggae playing on the CD. Just as I said to myself, "My thoughts don't match this music...Reggae has nothing to do with American history..." Bob Marley starts singing the song "Buffalo Soldier."

Buffalo soldier, dreadlock rasta
There was a buffalo soldier in the heart of America
Stolen from Africa, brought to America
Fighting on arrival, fighting for survival

Buffalo soldiers were freed blacks who served in the army starting in 1866, up to the Spanish American War. The generally accepted explanation about their name is that the Native Americans called them that because the soldiers' curly brown hair resembled that on a buffalo.