June 25, 2015 - Chicago O'Hare Tarmac

The last two days have been a whirlwind. They included finishing up the visit to Iowa State and driving back to Illinois via Des Moines through some squalls resembling a monsoon.

One of our traveling companions was booked on a flight scheduled to stop at Chicago O'Hare airport before continuing on. Since we were planning to drive back to Chicago at a more reasonable time than the flight in question we tried to persuade the airline to allow the first leg of the trip from Des Moines to go unused and permit our traveller to board the scheduled flight at O'Hare at no extra charge. The airline refused. They claimed security reasons and that this change would result in a rebooking and a steep penalty. Echoes of September 11 made corporate?

So we drove to Des Moines in a monsoon and dropped off our traveler at the airport there. We then continued on to Chicago to pick up said traveler at O'Hare stopping along the way for gas, dinner and for 'technical adjustments'. After a 5+ hour drive we still arrived at the airport a few minutes before the weather-delayed 50 minute flight.

Here's some monkeying around in a kiosk that takes your picture at the DeKalb oasis, one of our stops. 

An innocent bystander gets swept up in the monkeying around. 

Finally Mother Nature treated us to one of her lovelier displays in DeKalb. 

As I write this we are aloft and heading to Bilbao via Frankfurt, a major step that is bringing us closer to our start on El Camino de Santiago in two days.