Saturday

Sorry for not getting online yesterday, but it was a whole day on the road. C-town for a conference. Left at 0h-dark-hundred, and didn't get back until after 9 PM.

I guess it would be appropriate if I made today's entry on Travel.

Chicago remains one of my favorite destinations. There's a ton of things I like about the city. The fact that The Loop is only 200 miles from my house is a big plus, as this makes access by car a no-brainer. As I have mentioned on these pages previously, it's satisfying to know that you can go to a big city without detailed knowledge of a destination point, and know that you can "feel" your way to the location without major trauma. This was certainly the case yesterday as my conference was held at a Northwest suburban conference center that I had never before visited. I spent less than five minutes "feeling" my way to the conference facility once I exited the freeway.

That said, traffic remains a big disincentive to make that trip very often. I spent at least as much time in the car yesterday as I did at the conference and at dinner with an attorney friend in Downers Grove. Traffic on any Friday is bad, particularly in the afternoon. Construction on the freeway entering the suburbs from the West ( I-88) is undergoing major reconstruction. And "rush hour" has extended itself to the point where non-rush hour is hard to specify.

My attorney friend said that while he normally takes the train, he had driven to his downtown office yesterday, leaving the Oakbrook area around 5:30 AM. He said that the Ike was busy at that hour, but traffic was moving along briskly. Been there. Done that. 27 years ago. Couldn't do it again.

The conference was close enough to our first house in Arlington Heights that I decided to check out the old place. It took a few missed turns to get there, but it was nice to see how the owners since us have improved the home. We were young, poor and were not planning to stay there all that long. So we didn't undertake the major work needed to refurbish a decrepit garage at the rear of the house. Someone along the way tore out the old mess and put in a new two-car garage with a second story addition to the back of the home. Really nice. By the number of pumpkins on the front steps, it must now be home to a family with several kids.

The trip South from Arlington to meet my attorney friend took over an hour. Ugh! I thought I could miss some congestion by not taking the toll road, but I was sorely wrong, and I had a few missed turns to boot. Just a lousy experience.

One of my friends at coffee this morning suggested that a GPS driving device might be at least a partial answer to the missed-turns part of my trip. He's the second or third guy who has recently touted these things to me. My pal Roy has one as standard equipment in at least one of his cars. I was with a guy a few weeks ago on a trip to southern Iowa and his GPS spoke to him in the voice of Dr. Evil from the Austin Powers films. This stuff makes Mapquest outdated. And I think that competition in the market place is driving the cost down to make the technology more affordable to the masses.

A different angle to dealing with urban traffic that my attorney friend is pursuing is working in the field with more electronic support from the office. He has had mobile accessibility through cell phone, pager and the like for several years. He is now looking at additional technology for his home office that will reduce the need for his presence in his downtown office. While this 0ff-site arrangement has been popular with IT folks and data processors of different ilks for a long time, applying it to a professional service is testimony as to how far we have progressed in today's business environment.

The attorney's social perspective as his family has aged has also evolved and he now speaks of possibly moving closer to the city at some point in the future to take advantage of cultural and entertainment opportunities. This direction rather than a move further West to avoid traffic. If you want to take advantage of the City, you need to choose your lifestyle. A backyard and a lengthy commute. Or a lot more concrete and a few more cab fares.

I might work on this discussion in a future entry. There are lots of angles to debate.

Great day here. I'm out to enjoy it.

BCOT