Turns out those doors in airports clearly and boldly marked “No Return” really were one-way. All I was looking for was the train from terminal four to terminal two, and all I found was exile to the baggage claim floor of Chicago O’Hare International, where I embarked on hour 19 of my meandering trip to Mud City. While I was waiting for my co-writer and companion, Gavin, to arrive, I wrote this story of life in a place hostile to the sedentary.
Here hang the words an airport traveler meant to remain on the inside most fears reading. This marked the beginning to my baggage claim odyssey. Photographed by Finn Martin/BruinLife.
Five square kilometers in area, O’Hare was a city unto itself. Its gates were strewn across four terminals, and walking to and fro the airport felt infinitely involuted as the endless corridors curved you a degree slightly to the right so that you never saw the extent of the hallway. Compared to the airport in Orlando, that wheel-and-spoke like simplicity where I hunkered away five hours awaiting my connection, a flight into O’Hare could leave you confounded and cursing the airport gods. The touchstones of civilization I encountered after landing in the outer rim of the airport were scarce: an ambiguous and religiously ambidextrous prayer center that looked more like a wood paneled steam sauna, a coffee shop bannered “Coffeeshop” and Ethiopian Airlines who were the only ones to clerk their gates and whose serious but Delphic attendants directed me towards the inter-terminal train. I set off again into the Zamboni glossed wilderness with a prophecy of turning right at the Dunkin’.
Soon, I found myself holding a Dunkalatte, looking vacantly at my new neighbors. People! Society! Business folks dressed seriously with one, two, three-breasted suits, and a gray hoodie and sweatshirt-wearing figure munching on Chick-fil-A. I discovered that the inter-terminal train was on the second right, not the first – the first led you through a Candy Land-like road surrounded by duty-free booze and Ana de Armas sponsored cosmetics. I also discovered, rather too late, that the train to the Spirit terminal where I would meet Gavin did not actually lead to the arrival gates but instead to the ticketing and check-in counters, beyond the TSA perimeter sanctuary of the airport inside. I was at the fringes, beyond the city walls, and where I would wait another … five hours before taking the final hour-long train that would conclude this delirium and mark the start to the actual assignment.
Whatever peace you may find will promptly be challenged by the pinging, piercing alarm of carousels starting into action. These moving bagways offer up an interesting new addition to the tradition of watching things. Photographed by Finn Martin/BruinLife.
One of the three views permitted by the baggage claim benches. These vending machines compete fiercely with Hudson News, but have forfeited the sale of Skittles to its down claim rival. Photographed by Finn Martin/BruinLife.
Fear the Zamboni and its reflective wake! The chevroned tiles of the baggage claim provide an ethereal experience without the usually required ether. Photographed by Finn Martin/BruinLife.
Life in the baggage claim could be charming with a few changes in perspective. A quick strut across the glossy chevron tiling, the Zamboni strikes again, can leave you with an ethereal feel of walking on a reflection of the ceiling. While trekking from the length of the claim, a hike longer than a football field, you’ll pass by the many different bag carousels and can take up a new hobby spun on the long-standing, time-killing tradition of watching things. Bags of all shapes and sizes, and their equally distinct owners, cycled through pecking at the carousels to the chosen rhythm of the airport gods and their bag dispensers. If you decided to take a rest, three benches flank one pillar, which offered you a view uncomfortably close to a rising escalator where you could exchange intimate and immediate looks with a randomly generated person. Closest you could come to gambling at O’Hare: will it be a traveler, a Clear employee, a pilot, who knows? The second most interesting bench faced off against a vending machine that seemed to be the sole, and surprisingly fierce, competitor to the Hudson News shack at the other end of the floor. (There were no Skittles in the vending machine, sorry, Victoria.) The one sting to sitting opposite this vending machine was that it also faced the cause of your exile: the escalator, which reads: “DO NOT ENTER.” Should you want fresh air and proof that you’re in a new part of the country, a brisk chill that, to an East Coaster like myself, feels more apt for the springtime, you could step outside through the two-way automatic doors and stroll down the paved sidewalk past the lines of taxis who’ll stare at you thinking that doing so will have a tractor beam effect on you.
Taxi cabs line the pavement hoping to tractor beam you into their shuttle service. A man asked me for $20 so that he could hitch a ride. Photographed by Finn Martin/BruinLife.
A view of the outside. Catch some fresh air, walk along the curb, then return to life inside the baggage zone. Photographed by Finn Martin/BruinLife.
I thought the article had come to its end when a bout of journalistic inertia overcame me, spurred on by some keen editorial enthusiasm from the home team in LA, so I decided to seek information from the information desk. I turned to ask the cheery woman behind the counter, whose name was Kamisha, what she recommended baggage claim stragglers do. “There’s a tunnel that runs across under the road, and there’s a café and a restaurant on the other side,” she said. When asked if they’ll get you there, Kamisha nodded in the affirmative: “uhhuh.” I soon discovered the secret tunnel that had avoided my grasp, and I dropped down into its depths.
A tunnel that no so many people know about (mostly me) leads travelers beneath the trafficked road and to the Hilton. Go a little further and you will find access to the U metro line. Photographed by Finn Martin/BruinLife.
The cafe that serves both Starbucks products and Grand Marnier. Hilton's like these are home to the traveling businessperson and wayfaring reporter like me. Photographed by Finn Martin/BruinLife.
On the other side, I felt like I had broken into another universe, a technicolor world filled with fine hotel décor for regional business conferences and wayward, sleep-deprived travelers like me. I quickly pounced on an iced, uncompensated caramel macchiato from the café, then observed quietly that cafes hidden in Eden like that one sold entire bottles of Grand Marnier on the side. At some point at my subterranean speakeasy, between sipping suavely at my sweet treat and trying to read more of my YRL checked out book “The Uncomfortable Dead,” I received a text from Gavin that his plane had landed but that they were apparently pulling a U-turn because they “practically Tokyo drifted into the terminal” so he would be a minute. I shut my book, downed my macchiato, packed my things, and pranced back into the tunnels ready to meet my friend.
On the other side, I came to my conclusion. With the writing of this final paragraph, miraculously, came Gavin, my compatriot, which meant the end to this article. Cycle through all these things, and you’ll become a true native expatriate to the O’Hare baggage claim. It helps to have a book and an aptitude for napping in tough places, too. This began the weekend of articles and exploring, so browse through our collection and read what BruinLife has to bring you from the city of Chicago!
