I was pleased to wake up after nine hours of sleep on an air mattress that was still largely inflated. We made a hasty exit as our first stop for the day was to meet someone in Holland, Michigan for lunch. Michigan felt like a state where as one radiated from some central point, one went further to the South. The person we met for lunch spoke of his difficulties as a person of color in an area with so many Confederate flags. I didn’t even know there was a South to Michigan but apparently there very much is. He hoped to leave the area, and I hope he gets to. I’m willing to put in a little help to make that happen. Let’s see if it works out. After leaving Holland, we headed around Lake Michigan and made our way to Chicago. Along the way we stopped at the Frederik Meijer Gardens which is a mix of a botanical garden and sculpture park. There were large installation pieces by contemporary American artists which is a bit rare but was quite nice. Seeing the DeVos name everywhere was a bit jarring. We didn’t have much time and quickly ran out the clock on the gardens being open.  Grand Rapids was featured in Our Towns and I hope at some point to revisit and the see the rest of this city as well as the rest of Michigan.  Another time.  We left for Chicago but didn’t have time to visit the zebra breeding facility.  There’s a zebra stallion that has been tamed and has successfully made zorses, zonkeys, zonies, and other equids.

Chicago is one of my favorite cities for the embarrassment of riches it has for art, reasonably inexpensive mass transit, architecture, view, and history. Chicago is a place for people doing things. Our host was someone I generally only talk to when in Chicago. I’d like to find a way to fix that but we don’t have much overlap in our lives otherwise. Maybe I need to find a way to change that. We arrived and were offered air fried taquitos. Air fryers in my experience were the fastest route to a mediocre french fry but these were amazing. Like, maybe I should get an air fryer amazing.  We caught up, and full of taquito, we slept on a pull out.

This post was made on 2018-07-26 and is backdated.