The delegates are so sincere and eager to make friends that the exercises and nightly adventures have gone very well with only minimum effort. Besides, the director has hammered the schedule and content options down to a lower energy level that actually works. Everyone has much less to do so things simply flow smoother. That is as important as the quality of the counselors I mentioned first.

Tonight is the cultural presentations, and I am doing the presentation I hate most. I am the Buddhist culture group. I am sure I will do something genius when I think of it, but for now I am just going to give a very brief overview of the faith and some cultural references to fill in the blanks. As a closer, I will teach them to count to ten in Japanese and give the number calligraphy away. Easy so far.

The part I like best is that I know how bad an encyclopedic presentation is, and I will go out of my way to make sure my group is not just a boring guy-and-his-flag in cultural drag show. Even if it were, I think it would still be fabulous! It is the one man shows that are the most personal presentations anyway. Take it, my sisters and brothers…..

I needed a new cell phone antenna because I am a busy klutz and have not had time to stand in line for a repair when it would be much easier to just buy a new one. It just so happened that I was working right next door to a Cingular agent. I was killing some time for something else to get fixed, so I stepped next door just to see what they had in stock.

Inside the window sat a short, middle aged woman. She came over and greeted me with a smile I had not seen in a very long while. I showed her the loose stub they call an antenna, and she casually reached behind her and pulled out the exact model I needed. In a daring feat of customer service, the same woman pulled out a torque wrench set and started taking my phone apart! With a steady pace and a determined manner, she gingerly opened the phone with a stripped wrench and held a friendly conversation at the same time. Her young son appeared every now and then. It is summer, and the offices teem with children in towns like this. I could see from her son that her dark roots didn’t need those highlights when she was that age. While she was talking to me, she and her son were playing the distraction game out of my eyeshot. This was too much for me to take, I had to step back to the shop. I left my phone in capable hands.

In a just few minutes she came next door with the phone perfectly assembled and a credit card approval agent on the phone for my zip code. With a signature I got a pink receipt and another smile of thanks for doing business. That was the complete package. A repaired phone AND a friendly rep, what more could I want? She didn’t even charge me for the install or the delivery. That was astounding.

Meanwhile, back at the store…I called the CELL PHONE number of the local Alltel repair man, and he was back in the CO in about 20 minutes. I can’t even imagine such a thing in the big city. I asked him if he was going to somehow hand the trouble ticket back to the big carrier, and he said he had no idea how to do that. He tried to call and speak to a human, but his efforts were stored is a voice mailbox somewhere in Texas. We both sighed, and went about cleaning up. It was 9pm and the shop owner had hung in there with me all day. He had been patiently answering phones to explain that they could blame lightning, and someone all the way from Little Rock was actually there working on it. It would have been really easy for him to blame us in a pre-recorded answering machine message, but he assumed his part in the situation as only someone from that town could do.

When all was said and done, the people of that small town had their internet back, I had a three bar cellphone signal and a four bar understanding that life is seasoned by salt of the earth people.

As soon as we drove up and had our tent setup, the group was just getting off their boat. Apparently there was a little alcohol on the trip, so you need no description of the mess they were in. The rest of the evening was cooking dinner, loud talking, more drinking, and beeping punctuated by uproarious laughter until midnight. There was only one visit by the ranger, and I was in bed around 11pm.

However, a select few decided to just stay up most of the night, and they eventually ran out of prepared food. They cooked a little early breakfast and finally settled in for the night on full tummies. Unfortunately, their premature venture into breakfast caused a big breakfast emergency while they slept in. When the pieces came together and they were branded perpetrators, the stewing drama was to reach a full rolling boil before any coffee got hot.

Naturally, the explosion was a result of a confluence of simple things. Bacon was eaten, and someone fell off the wagon. These simple things are not difficult to understand in the context of the moment. The responses were the workings of missed expectation, and therefore defy explanation. Wives were angry, everyone heard excuses and speculation but agreed that they were all adults. So, it turns out, we all want to get together again.

We got there early Friday so we had plenty of time to do stuff before checking into the hotel. We managed to see some of the more touristy places in the city’s downtown area. We found the Z Gallerie again, Pottery Barn, Crate and Barrel, and Borders. We had lunch at Hacienda, which was pricey but very good. Then we went downtown with some directions from our waitress. The planetarium and aquarium were packed beyond belief, so if we had enjoyed crowds we would have been in the right place. Alas, we do not. To make us pay a small fortune for parking to enjoy such a spectacle was only further insult.

We finally got to the hotel and were horrified to have another adventure develop before our very eyes. The place was run down, had horrible Saxophones bellowing from the basement, and carloads of Mexicans in nice clothes coming in while talking on cell phones.

We then ventured on to Michigan Ave, couldn’t get into The Cheesecake Factory, so we had $10 margheritas on the 96th floor of the John Hancock building with Chris East, a friend of Joels’ from the office. Did I mention that it was the Signature Lounge and we were wearing sneakers and shorts? There was a beautiful view out the windows from that altitude, if you were a meterologist. We were kinda hoping for lights. The clouds enveloping the building kept us from being distracted by the skyline so we could concentrate on our conversation with two schoolmates of Chris. We gingerly sipped our drinks through smalltalk and token interest about my job until Joel managed to plan an escape route. We were out of there and sitting in a Chinese restaurant near the garage with relief painted on our faces. This was the highlight of the first day.

From there to Halstead we dropped $40 just to park the car twice. The night on Halstead was not that memorable, but there were a few points of light here and there. We got back to the hotel after breakfast at Nookies, which had the good sense to create Dixie Benedict- poached eggs on a biscuit half, with ham and a flood of gravy. That was worth waiting for.

After a few hours of naptime, we left again for the Botanical Gardens and had the best time wandering around. As fate would have it, there was a Japan Festival underway. We took pictures of Bonsai and Ikebana and had good Japanese street food. We also saw quite a few striking gardens and Joel got up close and personal with his two favorite things- chocolate and coffee.

We then wised up and parked the car once at Halstead and took the L into downtown. After walking too far, we discovered the Museum was closed for a private event. Two and a half hours to get there, and it was closed, crawling with police. We threw our hands up, browsed through Borders, and stopped at a great BBQ place near the L stop. So far, that was the first good suprise. While we munched corn on the cob and ribs, the police were busy escorting vans, limos, buses and cars down Chicago street. There were Secret Service agents everywhere. Somehow the commotion added to the charm and irony. We were gnawing ribs on the front porch as the rich, powerful, or just plain political were being chauffered about.

A quick trip back through the Addison station, a stop by the car, and we were on to Halstead again. The stars were out that night.

We got some good sleep in our corner suite and found the IndoPak community access channel. Naturally, we were now craving Indian for lunch. Despite bad directions from the INDIAN hotel clerk, we managed to fight traffic to Devon and Western. We had a good meal and did a little walking, but we were paranoid about getting to the airport on time. Good thing we were. We just made it just in time to meet Courtney and get me off to my gate a little early.

The trip back for me was spent face down in a book about the Gospel of Thomas, who was clearly a Buddhist. That is a different blog entry, though. Somehow I managed to lose my Diamond Sutra book I got at Borders for the flight back. I picked up Beyond Belief in the airport bookstore and read half of it. We were delayed because the plane was caught in bad weather before arriving in Chicago. It was smooth flying all the way home and I caught a few minutes of sleep right after takeoff.

Needless to say I slept solid that night, and the alarm drove me out of a very deep sleep. Now that I have had a day to interfuse the truth with some opinion, I can see that the best part of the trip was suffering it all with Joel.