Omaha I, Chicago I

Excuse the silence. The internet has seemed to become increasingly less worth the effort of leaving the hostel, roaming the streets, finding a place with computers, buying (more) coffee etc.

Anyway, I'm in an internet cafe at last and it's raining heavily outside (finally! feel like home) and thus I'm luxuriating in unneccesary writing because I have time. I have no plans for today, and I am justified in this by my not having got much sleep last night (greyhound greyhound greyhound) and therefore it's Understandable if I laze today. That plus rain, glorious rain. I might go to the baseball, though, the Chicago Whitesox (really. the 'cks' would be far too much effort), since the football (american) game I was promised turned out to be in Atlanta. Curse you, John. (excuse also all the brackets and all the meaningless waffling - I have no excuse nor need none).

So after the events incredibly briefly described in the last post which now seem too much sunk in the dank mud of time (who needs to remember what happened two days ago? The future stretches like a glorious golden slinky jigging down the red-carpeted steps of time) to bear recapping properly, I went to Omaha.

This took exactly overnight, and in fact I arrived well before sunup. After a little while sitting in greyhound station I set off bravely into the morning to find the visitors centre, and thence somewhere cheap to stay, hopefully. But oof, the visitors centre is shut, even though it should have opened at nine ay-emm. Nevermind, I'll sit in this pretty little park thing just down the road for half an hour. Still shut though - okay, I needed breakfast anyway. A bagel (I love bagels. They are little circular Gods with Cream Cheese) later and maybe the visitors centre isn't going to open because it's already 11 and Still No Sign. A little later, I gave the place one last chance before going to $100/night place cheapest in guidebook, and it's open, and the guy there says i can stay with him (in his 9th floor luxury penthouse suite) for free. I am, being naturally paranoid, wary, but he knows everybody and tells them all I'm staying with him so the chance of him killing me in my sleep seems much less. Also he is quite old. I assure him I am not 'into drugs and things' and he gets me a key to let myself in and out, offers run of the fridge, my own bathroom, pool on rooftop above, etc! etc!

He really is very kind and I cannot thank him enough, and, to move back to the appropriate tense, I settled in nicely here and everything I did in Omaha was covered over with the feeling that I'd managed to get to somewhere after a long journey. Of course this was literally true, but I didn't feel it anywhere else so much as here, and the various activities, seemingly boring to mortals like you, were really... good. So I won't explain them, except to say I went to a few gigs (including a free riverfront gig with the yardbirds, bizarrely enough. You have heard of them, it's Eric Clapton's old band. There, I thought that'd jog your memory), saw a few Omaha/Saddle Creek landmarks, talked to a few people, ate some beef, and so on.

Then next I got another overnight greyhound to Chicago, where I am now. I did go to the baseball in the end, it was good. Jenks failed to take the world record of retiring 42 batters in a row, but one can't have everything. I got back to the hostel, and, I think this deserves a new paragraph,

ran into John Emberey! A ping-pong ball is now far too big an object to describe the world. A marble may be fast becoming more accurate. Drinks were procured and a good time was had by all, until we got told off for singing The Redemption Song too loud. I think it was that, anyway.

And then yesterday i went + looked round chicago, the downtown of which is what I imagined New York to be like (and the rest of which is really really like london. Ask anyone), and saw the beach on lake michigan, the millenium park with the bean (wicked cool mirror bean) and the Sears tower. Which is the tallest building in America. Didn't know that, did you? You thought it was the Empire State building. Idiotic child.