America 2013: Day Six - November 27 | Los Angeles LAX Chicago O'Hare

Come on, oh baby, don't you want to go? Oh come on, oh baby don't you want to go?
Back to that same old place, Sweet Home Chicago.

- The Blues Brothers

Being woken up by your alarm at 3.30am is never a good thing, even when you’re on holidays, but it’s the price you have to pay for getting cheap flights and for avoiding the madness that is holiday travel. Today, the day before Thanksgiving, is the busiest travel day across the United States because more people are likely to travel home for Thanksgiving than even Christmas, which leads to airport queues like you’ve never seen before.

The way to avoid those monstrous queues at check-in and TSA screening is to get the earliest flight possible. The earlier the flight, the less stress. Our 3.30am wake-up was for a United Airlines flight from LAX to Chicago’s O’Hare International at 7.55am. We caught a bus from the hotel at 4.30am, managed to avoid the queues and were through security by 5.15am. That’s the way you want to do it. 

By the time our flight pulled away from the gate, Travel Hell would have been in full swing behind us. It’s definitely something to avoid. Thankfully, we were delay-free, which is more than can be said for a lot of people travelling the I-95 corridor this Wednesday, where winter storm Boreas was causing prolonged delays from as far south as Washington D.C. right up through Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York City and on to Boston. O’Hare is famous for it’s frequent and long weather delays, but we had no such problems today.

I had a window seat on the flight today, and had a good view of the scenery. We took off out over the Pacific Ocean, made a few turns over the water (and battled through a bit of turbulence, too) and headed eastward, towards the Midwest. Looking at the desolate Mojave Desert from about twenty-thousand feet is quite an experience. It reminds me of a scene from a movie set on Mars.

Going from the west coast to the Midwest is a bit of a culture shock. Gone is the smog, insane traffic, giant highways and theme parks that dot southern California. We also left behind the warm weather. Landing at O’Hare, it was 26c Fahrenheit (about -3 Celsius) with scattered cloud about. A nice day, if it weren’t for the arctic-like conditions that are going to be the norm for the next three or four months. That said, I like Chicago, and it’s a good place to arrive in after the manic experience of five days on the west coast. Things move a little slower around here, which is a relief.

We’re staying at an Extended Stay America hotel near Wheaton, which is only about ten minutes’ drive from the Alley’s in Wheaton, where we spent the evening, and got to meet a bunch of people who dropped by the house. Jamie has really built us up to rock-star status here. Everyone wanted to meet the Aussies. It’s very humbling, because these are wonderful, wonderful people. We had an amazing night.

I can’t say enough about the Alley family – it’ll be a recurring theme of my blogs over the next few days – who have invited us into their house for Thanksgiving, which is a much better holiday experience when you’re able to spend it with friends or family. I’m lucky to have good friends and family around me this year, which is definitely something to be thankful for heading into tomorrow.