Published: September 12, 2008 02:23 pm            

Larry Penkava – Sept. 10, 2008

I spent a week in Chicago on Friday night.

I was on the way back from Boise, Idaho, a beautiful city that calls itself the City of Trees.

It seems a misnomer considering it’s smack dab in the middle of a semi-desert. That is, until you see the place.

French trappers in the 1820s called it La Rivière Boisée – the river of trees – for the tree-lined river valley. The green is accentuated by the dry brown, 5,000-foot mountains surrounding the city on three sides.

Ginny and I flew out on the 30th to help care for her mother, who was ailing after a fall. While there I had a chance to see and learn about Boise.

The climate is quite a change from Piedmont North Carolina.

The air is dry and clean, and during my stay was unusually cool, with temps ranging from the upper 40s to mid-70s.

Just outside my mother-in-law’s backyard is a stretch of sagebrush, tumbleweeds and goatheads, a bush that has brambles reminding me of sandspurs.

A couple hundred yards beyond, a brown mountain, covered in tawny cheat grass, stood vigil over the valley. The mix of dry brush and irrigated lawns can be hazardous.

Just the week before, a wildfire driven by strong winds up a steep slope destroyed several fine homes built along the Oregon Trail.

Those watered lawns are everywhere, afforded by Boise’s supply of reservoir water fed by mountain snows.

While the valley only gets about 10 inches of precipitation per year, snows in the mountains are measured in feet. Even the wells seem to hold an endless supply of water.

Downtown Boise is new and clean, every stone and brick building appearing almost new.

The pride of the city is the Boise State football Broncos, which have earned national attention in recent seasons with their excellent play.

While Idaho is known for potatoes, Boise has entered the 21st century by attracting such corporate giants as Micron, maker of computer chips and the city’s largest employer.

The population in 2006 was estimated at 211,000, and more than a half million in the municipal area.

Boise is very pedestrian-friendly, with biking/walking paths everywhere. The city still takes pride in its greenery, calling itself the City of Trees.

My visit was enjoyable but getting back home, well, wasn’t. I had to change plans in Chicago’s Midway Airport, necessitating a four-hour layover.

About two hours in, there was an announcement that the flight to Raleigh-Durham Airport was cancelled because of Tropical Storm Hannah.

After a week in Boise, I’d lost track of the storms in the Atlantic.

I had a choice of finding a hotel in Chicago or staying in the terminal. I, being tight with my considerable funds, decided to stay.

I found a fellow Boise traveler named Michael to commiserate with.

We were told that cots would be provided for stranded ticket-holders.

After wandering throughout the huge terminal looking for the cots, we found them in a relatively quiet corridor off the beaten path.

Airport workers brought out cart after cart of folding cots and lined them up along the corridor.

We thought that strange since there were only a handful of us looking for a place to lay our heads.

Finally, Michael and I picked out cots, placed them in more suitable locations and bedded down.

The tiny pillow and olive-green blanket weren’t quite adequate for my needs and the cot would make loud noises whenever I turned over.

When I finally drifted off into a sound slumber, someone said something to me. It was a security guard.

“He said we have to get up – they need to take up the cots,” Michael told me. I looked at my watch – 4 a.m.

I reasoned that if they had just put out one cot for every one of us wanting one, we wouldn’t have been in anybody’s way.

But Michael figured they were just bureaucrats carrying out directives from above.

We agreed that lowly cot-pushers aren’t allowed to make rational decisions.

Michael and I found plastic seats in the waiting area of our gate, hoping against hope that our flight took off before the day had advanced too far along.

We weren’t going to get our expectations up until we were strapped in and our plane was speeding down the runway.

As it turned out, we left as scheduled, arriving at RDU just 13 hours later than our original flight plan.

I told Michael that Hannah wasn’t high on my list of favorite names.

Speaking of which, Boise will outrank Chicago on my list of favorite cities – notwithstanding the Mayor Richard Daley quote at Midway that he was glad to have us there.



Larry Penkava, who has written Now and Then since 1994, plans to go through Vegas next time.

        

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