Well, it’s over. As we sit here watching the rain fall outside the window of an airport lounge at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport, we think how long it’s been since we left home almost three months ago. We’re tired; we want to go home, and yet we feel a bit melancholy at the end of the trip. Maybe it’s just that endings are hard or maybe continuous travel is like a drug that we’re withdrawing from.
Certainly there has been nothing unrewarding about our activities since our last epistle. In Illinois, we sampled the pleasures of 19th-century Galena and learned about the life and times of Abraham Lincoln at Springfield. In Indiana, we relived old friendships and old memories at Wabash College in Crawfordsville before discovering one of our country’s greatest concentrations of modern and post-modern architecture in Columbus. Finally, in Chicago, we said goodbye to friends and family members before heading to the airport. It’s been our kind of trip, and it’s been fun. Allow us to expand a bit and recount some of what we’ve experienced.
Days Later at home in Istanbul . . .