Travelling to Chicago

Here are a few lessons I have learned from my recent journey to Chicago:

1. Even if a hotel offers a free shuttle service from the airport to the hotel, they don't just circulate the airport waiting to pick up passengers. You have to call them for them to come get you.

2. It's really kind of cold in Chicago, particularly when you stand outside for an hour before somebody tells you that you should call the hotel.

3. Devices (particularly computers) with UK plugs do not plug into US outlets unless you have an adaptor.

4. It's really annoying halfway through a 9-hour flight to realise you left your adaptor at home in London.

5. Adaptors are available for purchase in Chicago airports, but it's basically an $11 charge for being stupid and forgetful.

6. If you forget to turn off the alarm clock on your UK phone, your 7 AM alarm in the UK will turn into a 1 AM alarm in Chicago.

7. No matter how tired you are, it's actually kind of hard to get back to sleep after being blasted out of bed by an alarm at 1 AM.

8. It seems I'm a bit out-of-practice with travelling these days!

So it was a decent trip. I was really rushing around at the last minute (didn't even start packing until about two hours before I needed to leave the house), but luckily I made it out of the house only a half-hour after I'd originally been aiming for. Although I didn't have time to talk to a co-worker about an issue, so I promised her that I would call her once I reached the airport. Unfortunately, I'd forgotten to charge my UK cell phone in quite a while, and so had no battery left. I told her I'd call by 10:30 AM EST (3:30 PM my time), so at 3:15 PM I was still rushing to my gate, frantically scanning the waiting area for an outlet so I could plug in my phone to make the call. Thankfully I did find an outlet, had a nice 1/2 hr call where we really covered all of the issues we needed to, and I still made it onto the plane early (due to my Priority Boarding status, the last vestige I have of my frequent flier days!) Although how I miss those First Class lounges, where there are no worries about finding outlets in the walls!

On the flight, first I had a really annoying big man sit down next to me who had an over-sized carry-on bag that he kept moving all of my bags around in the overhead bin to try and make room for. I wasn't impressed. So I was kind of relieved, when it turned out he was in the wrong seat, and I got a different seatmate. Not a cute guy (always my favourite kind of seatmate!) but a nice English businessman, a guy who provided some interesting conversation and stories about his grandchildren. I definitely needed some amusement on the flight, as it was a 767, which means no individual seat-back movie screens. Everyone just had to watch the same movie on one tiny screen, and while the first movie, "Star Trek", as actually quite decent, the second movie, "Last Chance Harvey", was quite horrificly bad. So was good to have some conversation to amuse myself with!

I unfortunately remembered halfway through the flight (something in the conversation with my seatmate brought it up), that I'd forgotten to bring my plug adaptor to make my UK-style PC powercord plug into US outlets. I spent a few hours during the flight kicking myself over that one, but at least I was thankful to have remembered it before I left the airport on the Chicago side, for as soon as I landed, I raced straight to the last open newstand in the airport and luckily they had an adaptor that appeared as though it would work for my machine. $11 just for being stupid and forgetful, but at least they had it!

I then didn't realise that I needed to call my hotel to have them come pick me up, I thought that the free shuttle would just be circulating and I would flag them down when they came by. I wasted an hour this way (when it was 2:30 AM for my body), before someone informed me that I needed to call the hotel. Of course, I had not printed out my reservation, so I ended up sitting on the kerb with my laptop in the dark and cold, trying to call up my reservation so I could call the hotel. Argh!

Finally I called and the shuttle arrived, and I made it to the hotel, tripping over myself with exhaustion. Asked for an upstairs room (as it's just a safety thing when you're a woman by herself in a cheap hotel room), and crashed into bed. Pity that I was then woken up at 1 AM by my UK phone alarm, and never quite managed to get back to sleep after that. Who knew you could get jet lag going west?

Still, I'd made it, at last, to Chicago!