Los Angeles, Lalaland, to Chicago, City of Paradoxes to Milwaukee, City of the Flying Ship Museum and Back Again

The cold, bracing air, morning just barely beginning to peek through a rainy heavens. Chicago's Union Station after a long walk from the wrong stop on the "El" through the Loop, rushing people arriving, departing. Late March and there's still snow on the ground, on the rooftops. Exertion makes my chest ache. Breathe in, breathe out. Inhale, exhale.

Plane, light rail, now train. Sun sparkling on the last vestiges of snow. Snow and puddles, snow and slush, mud. Little patches. Big drifts. Snow piled on the hoods of cars, on the back of cars. Melting. Freezing. Melting. Freezing.

Families traveling, kids going to see the dinosaurs at the museum. Row after row after row of row houses.

On the 8:25 AM train to Milwaukee. Towns slash a wide swath through the land. Tall water towers rarely seen in California. Woods with bare, naked tree branches, like skeletons flashing by, dizzying mirage, fading into the landscape.

Kaleidoscope.

Open fields waiting to be plowed under after the final thaw. A white church steeple, and another and another. A mill spewing white smoke into a blue, crystalline sky. Fluffy clouds, hanging low, moving slowly.

Flat, flat is the land in every direction. A golden Labrador carefully picking his way through the snow.

Cold! Colder than I can take. I pile on the layers, feel toasty outside, then over-heated and sweaty when I enter a building. Yikes! How do the people do it here? Tough boogers they.

A red-brick prison surrounded by layers and layers of barb wire, squat and foreboding.

Kids standing on the platform, bundled up, pink chaffed cheeks, hands shoved into pockets. A little girl in a purple parka, cuddling her stuffed tiger, squinting through her glasses, sticking out her tongue to the chill air.

America!

Is it just me, with my high-heeled boots and my I. Magnin (consignment shop) mink coat, or is it the chivalrous Midwestern men? Seven of them carried my (very) heavy suitcase in, out, up and down the many labyrinth of stairs at Union Station in downtown Chicago.

Milwaukee. Calatrava's masterpiece. The Museum on the Lake Michigan. Snow, snow everywhere. Cold hands, warm hearts. The twang in the voice, the helping hand, the friendly greetings. "You bet!"

The extra service. The slick canuck who tries to pick me up at the hotel bar, offers to buy me a drink and then doesn't pay for it.

The Shabbat dinner, the Shachrit service, the oneg Shabbat, the Tish, on Sunday, the Bedeken,the Chuppa, the reception, the dancing, the toasts, the birkat ha mazon. The wedding's over.

Back on the train, the loop, Midway airport.
Sitting waiting, plane delayed, rain coming down, lovely fellow travelers, kindred spirits, charming companions.

Sunny southern California awaits!