Chicago’s Blackhawks won the Stanley Cup two nights ago. It’s been awhile for them. The city’s excited. Revelers were still hooting in the streets, doing some strange pantomime of a pow-wow, as I walked to work the next morning.
Today, there was a PARADE! It marched through downtown, brushing the corner of our building. Everyone spent extra time and heroic effort to get to the office – and that was hours before the parade even started. It was, technically, over by the time my colleague and I started our walk to a meeting on the other side of the commotion.
Hockey fans were cheering and drinking (mostly drinking) at something happening on some giant screen. Downtown’s streets were closed and littered with excess: beer bottles and cans, massive piles of ticker tape and slightly less massive piles of horse manure.
We stumbled gape-mouthed through the detritus. Overwhelmed and a bit horrified, we fled through the Pedway and under the festivities. Whew! After the meeting, I had a plane to catch – and very little time left to catch it. I hoped foolishly to find a cab somewhere on my side of the parade. No luck. I was stuck making my way back across the throng, hoping the train could get me to the airport on time, anything to make sure I made it to my flight home that afternoon. Then, of course, the trains were also running slowly to accommodate all those hockey fans.
I’d like to say that I relaxed and enjoyed the process.
It’s a parade, after all. People love parades, right? I’d like to think of myself as present and aware.
Well, I was aware: aware that I was frustrated and annoyed, struggling to balance work, wanting to be home. And the mess, the excess, consumption and destruction – that just made me sad.
As the train pulled out of the city, leaving me with 45 minutes to catch that plane, 30 more of which I’d spend sitting on that train… it started to rain.
My flight was two hours late.