Starbucks saved my life

Ahh! Starbucks. After two days of being offline, I finally found you!
It is sad, but it is far easier to find wireless access in China than it is in the US. But, thanks to the miracle of Starbucks I was able to finally get back online. phew.
First off, on the way through security, I was stopped for the full security check. Seems single males traveling alone around the world are some sort of security risk.
Got in to Chicago and drove straight down to IIT to see the Koolhaas student center which was absolutely amazing. Milennium Park downtown was pretty neat and, without fail, I bumped into a former GSD student. Yun, who was an March II a few years back. Walked around the park a bit and then headed back to the suburban wasteland that is my hotel. Every 4 minutes a plane landing at O'Hare flies over the building and everything shakes. This trip is real, kid!
Found a Barnes and Noble (or was it a Borders?) in Schaumburg and bought travel guides for seoul and HK, and a map for Chicago.
The map was the most interesting thing, seems O'Hare cuts through something like three counties, 8 cities and a mess of unincorporated territory. Basically, it is impossible to "see" the area around O'Hare as anything. I drive around flipping through 8 different pages of the map just to get around one side of the airport.
Started driving around the area yesterday morning. The west side of O'hare is completely industrial with hundreds of small little industrial concerns. Industrial manufacturers, food distributors, everything and anything. All of them have a truck depot and it seems all of them ship through the airport.
Snuck into the airport shipping area, where all of the airlines place cargo onto the planes. 24-hours a day, the place is hopping.
Maybe its me, but there sure is a heck of a lot of security around this place. Driving around the airport alone with little reason to be somewhere taking pictures with security vans in back of you can sure make one paranoid.
The east side is the most interesting though. There are convention centers, John Portman buildings, arenas, office buildings. Basically, anything you could find in downtown Atlanta is here, sitting by the highway, in the open areas of the O'hare flight paths. Amazing.
Well, I should head back out there, luckily its Labor Day and so the place isn't too crowded. Talk to you all soon. I head out to Dallas on Wednesday. Talk to you all then.

Other observations -
The area around O'Hare is huge. Well, not really.
Looking through my map book I found a maps of downtown and the airport to scale. The airport dwarfs The Loop. In a big way, too. Luckily, though, driving around the whole thing only takes an hour or two. I think I can photograph the whole thing in a day or two.

Traveling alone, especially in the suburbs of O'Hare, is boring.
Luckily everyone seems to be really nice here. I've had waitresses, the staff at Borders, random people on the street, etc strike up conversations with me. I think its a midwestern thing, but its nice nonetheless.

There is a hell of a lot of meat in Chicago.
Every restaurant is a different combination of meat. My favorite was Steak n' Shake because, you know, the steak isn't enough to kill you, you have to add sccops of ice cream to really do yourself in.