I recently flew to Chicago for the weekend to see my old college buddy J, who worked with me at The Tech (making this the kind of blind item that is obvious to everyone who knows us both and totally opaque to the rest of you). I had not seen him , his wife, or his family in seven years.
I flew from San Francisco to Chicago on Virgin America. What an odd airline. I was lured by the fact that a round trip in Virgin first class was the same price as a round trip tourist class seat on American. Virgin tries so hard to make you experience interesting and different. The indirect lighting in the plane is pink and purple. The safety video is a rap song. The emails are so friendly they make my teeth ache. But overall, it was an amazing experience, and if you score one of the four seats in the front cabin, you'll find the food quite nice and the service attentive. In the back, all food is ala carte, which is the way I understand most airlines operate now. Me, I fly Southwest most of the time, where no food was ever served or expected above the level of peanuts, pretzels and cookies. It appeared the tourist class seats had reasonable leg room, but I didn't get a chance to sit in one.
[TRAGIC SIDE NOTE: According to my friend, the travel writer Joe Brancatelli, Jet Blue, the last American airline to offer every passenger a reasonable amount of leg room, will be adding seats to make the legroom as awful on their flights at on the legacy airlines. Boo. Hiss. I fly their inconvenient schedules sometimes because of their comfortable seats. If the experience becomes the same as everyone else, why not fly everyone else?]
I landed at 10 at night in Chicago and got to my room at the Staybridge Suites hotel in Glenview. Up in the morning for an adequate buffet breakfast. Then I rented a car (a Buick LeSabre no less; great Bluetooth connectivity to my iPhone) and drove over to see J. He and his wife E live with their daughter M in Glenview. I have know him since 1972, but had not seen him in years. He looked great. We chatted, catching each other up on the state of our children. He then took me to lunch; he asked me what I wanted and I told him "grilled cheese," so we went to a sports bar that served a well-made exemplar of the genre. Then we shopped for dinner. I had offered to take him out, but he pointed out a restaurant on a Saturday night would be crowded and noisy. Thus it was that we shopped for my signature dish, chicken with cherries (which has to be made, this time of year, with canned cherries). It came out great. After dinner we played a game I have never played called Cards Against Humanity. It is apparently all the rage with Gen. Y and the millenials. Both my daughters have played it. According to the website, it is "a party game for horrible people. Unlike most of the party games you've played before, Cards Against Humanity is as despicable and awkward as you and your friends. The game is simple. Each round, one player asks a question from a black card, and everyone else answers with their funniest white card." It is definitely rated X. One of the people playing knew the authors of the game. Having seen their output, I'm not sure I'd want to meet them. Definitely rated X. Do not play it with your grandmother.
Sunday morning, I went with J to St. Giles Episcopal Church, where he was married decades ago. On this Sunday, he was preparing a casserole for the pre-service breakfast. St. Giles does communion just once on Sunday,. at 10 a.m. It is a very choral service; parts of it were sung that I have never heard sung before. I enjoyed it. The sermon was interactive: I've never seen that before either.
I lost touch years ago with the widow of my favorite professor, Edwin Diamond. By an amazing coincidence, she wrote me two weeks before my Chicago trip, which enabled me to take her out for brunch on my way to the airport. We had a wonderful walk and talk and a brunch at a Swedish restaurant (I had pancakes with lingon jam and Swedish meatballs). She said she had seen my tribute to Ed and that there were errors in it. She gave me a contact who knew the correct information. I just updated my Edwin Diamond tribute with that corrected information. The thrust remains the same: Edwin was a great and inspirational teacher. The corrections have to do with how he got into teaching in the first place.
Like my trip to Chicago, my trip back on Virgin America was on time, comfortable and uneventful. For the first time, I took BART back to Orinda from SFO, vastly cutting down on V's driving time to pick me up.
