Whizzing, Zipping, Missing

I’ll admit it—I’m already missing the morning rush. The crush of bodies on the train, the whizzing buildings out the window, the rapid descent toward North & Clybourn, then zipping through the tunnel toward Lake; I miss the ebb and flow of people.

I’ve expressed some ambivalence toward mobility, but the movement inside the city is exciting. Every weekday morning, I would step off the train at Lake and, challenging myself to get a little exercise, skip the escalators, bound up the stairs, slip through the turnstiles and a set of heavy doors and emerge into the pedway. I always walked fast. In fact, I’ve walked fast my entire life; in grade school my friends used to tease me and tell me to slow down. I remember being offended in fifth grade when a sixth-grader called me “racewalker.” I suppose it was only natural that my perpetual impatience crept into my bodily movements. I’ve always hurried about. Not in a nervous kind of way, just swiftly. In Tennessee my rapid speech and quick movements were noticeable and blamed on my being from “the North.” It’s nice to finally be in a place where my rushing around seems perfectly normal.

Sometimes, when I really am in a hurry, I’ll walk up the escalators. I always get frustrated when some oblivious person stops right in my way, without moving to the right so that I can get by. I have to remind myself that I’m not actually headed anyplace that important, nor am I so important that a leisurely ride up the escalator will make any significant difference to anyone at all.

Anyway, Monday through Friday I would rush along the Pedway, zipping through the revolving doors (always conscious of the number of hands and germs that must touch those doors everyday). You always know you’re in a city when the entrance to every building greets you with a revolving door. I don’t know the actual reason for this, but I assume it has something to do with practicality and time economy. Four people can race right through those things in half the time it takes to actually open a door. I’ve gotten so used to zipping through heavy revolving doors, in fact, that I almost knocked my mom over when we went through one at a hospital in Toledo last month. She stepped in first, and I hopped into the space behind her, moving at my usual speed. She practically leapt out of the door into the waiting room and stared at me with wide eyes as I casually stepped out after her (imagine my mom, a petite woman standing 8 inches shorter than me, flying through a revolving door). I wasn’t aware of what happened, and was surprised I’d gotten that reaction until she explained that I’d whipped her right out of the door! We both had a good laugh about it, which was good, because that was a day that needed a good laugh… Oh, I digress again…

My morning hike through the pedway always led me through offensive odors and the difficult sight of bums sleeping on the ground outside Macy’s; I’ve never felt comfortable with this—all that wealth inside the store shoved up against the poverty of homeless people sleeping right outside—and I have had an internal struggle about my feelings on the homeless in Chicago since I arrived. (Perhaps this topic warrants a blog entry of its own…) Most mornings I would rush through the halls outside Macy’s (perhaps my discomfort instigated my rushing) toward Millennium station where I would be greeted by the scent of Cinnabon and battle my way through throngs of people headed out of the station. After rounding the corner past one of the million Starbucks in Chicago, I’d push through yet another revolving door and climb up the steps to the Prudential lobby. Now, I love the Aon center, but the Prudential building is an architectural beauty, both inside and out. Plus, I always enjoyed this particular pair of paintings with green gradations and black flower designs hanging on the far wall. Those, paired with the Prudential’s classical music greeting me everyday, made my morning hike very rewarding. Once I ascended the escalator into the Aon building, I’d sometimes make a quick stop at Sopraffina (for a solid month, I became slightly addicted to their low-fat cranberry muffins) before waving my I.D. badge at the gates and riding up another escalator to the elevators that would take me to the 64th floor. Every morning these walks would energize me and remind me that I was really working in downtown Chicago. Because even though I grew pretty used to it and some of the glamour of that idea had worn off, I still got a thrill everyday. And I definitely miss it now. Just a little.