Oliver Moss

Arriving in Chicago:



One of the good things about coming into Chicago on a roommette, you get to have this before facing the city:


Only some Amtrak Stations have metrolounges, and none have anything on Chicago's.

I went outside and the city hailed my arrival, literally. It was a lovely mix of cold rain and hail out there. Just as I left the station I saw someone in a nice suit and haircut, yelling into his cell phone about trying to figure out how to get around the fucking train station. There was just a cadence to his speech and how he used swears that was just so familiar. Chicago isn't the east coast, geographically it's clearly not. But the way people talk, the Dunkin Donuts everywhere, the type of buildings and sidewalks, it just feels very similar culturally. It felt very comfortable, and also very cold.

I walked in the rain and hail for a while waiting to be able to check into my fucking hotel. My fucking hotel never sent me a confirmation code, they were just very condescending on the phone and told me I was booked and everything was fine. I did not like not having a reservation confirmation email. After a bit of walking in cold rain I just want back to the station because I had lounge access for 24 hours and the lounge was dry and had free soda and snacks.

I checked in and dropped my main bag, thinking my hotel issues were over! My booking existed and they gave me a room. What could go wrong?

The room was tiny. Rather than shoot the room, here is a detail for you:



See that weird set up where one doorway leads to two doors? Every room was down one of these. It's because the hotel split all the original hotel rooms in half to make two small rooms. They doubled their rooms without an expansion.

The thing I wanted to do more than anything else in Chicago was visit The Wild Mile. It's a floating park on the river with native plants and it creates space for wetland type plants that were probably there in pre-colonial times, roots and muscles underneath help clean the water. It's cleaning pollution, had created new park space and gives unique views of the city.

Getting there was a adventure. At one point the bus driver pulled the bus over, jumped off and was gone for ten minutes. The engine was running and door open, so me or anyone could have just kept driving. I never saw what was up, but at the next stop a lot of transit employees got on. Most people didn't react. I felt like I was in one of those group behavior social experiments.

Eventually, I got to my stop. Then, I relied on google to guide me to the park. It told me to just go down this alley:



I did, and I could see some of the floating islands you couldn't walk on, but not the entrance or even where the accessible portion was. So, I walked behind various buildings, like a paint factory, walking north and south hoping to find my way in. I finally saw it!

I finally got there and... the sky starting dropping hail on me again:



The islands creating space for duckweed and other plants that probably used to exist here:









After a while, I was soaked and hungry, so I went to a Whole Foods to grab some lunch. I couldn't find anything ready to eat, so I grabbed coffee, chocolate, french bread and some salami. I went into the seating area and just spread out my soaked gear. Then I started tearing off chunks of bread and making little salami sandwiches. I love salami, but almost never have it. I particularly like it with bread, coffee and chocolate as a meal. So, for me this was great even if I was tearing bread off in chucks next to my wet gear like a goblin.

Then I went back to the hotel to dry off. I really, really wanted to take pictures of trains that night. I was near some of the stuff I wanted to shoot, a wet night would have been perfect, but I was dead. I was pretty crushed because the photo that got me back into photography, started me towards doing paid photography articles for a good long while, was of trains in Chicago. But, I'd been going hard in the heat and then in the cold. So, I stayed in and just slept. I actually kind of fell over for 5 hours, then woke up for dinner and went back to sleep.