And if you are wondering what I did, I waited until it seemed real, and then I walked to the corner bodega where someone was screaming that now things were going to go THEIR way, and then I walked to the other corner where people spilled out onto the streets, where fireworks (the real kind) joyously erupted from stoops, where strangers wept into my arms and wept with me, poured champagne for each other, danced on the sidewalk, cheered with their arms in the air, screamed with happiness as cars and city buses honked in symphony with the collected relief, disbelief, feeling of finally that changed everything for everyone. I phoned Hyde Park, I phoned Indiana, I heard from Manhattan and Toronto and Los Angeles and Vancouver and then I watched the skyline of my childhood projected on the wall of the restaurant, everyone in the room both somehow silent and bursting all at once, and in this moment I desperately missed Jeff, desperately missed Oliver, and I watched the city I grew up in make an entire country, an entire world proud, not change everything but change something so so big and I never before felt more homesick or more at home.

A lot of my friends see my proclivity for constant travel as some sort of chronic disease: I don’t know why. Life is really short, with so many awesome places to see and so many lovely people strewn all about who I miss all the time. Why shouldn’t I take advantage of occasionally poor financial judgment, the freedom of a flexible work schedule and the shameful environmental impact of capricious air travel to enjoy this world of ours? I am polycivic. Eat it.

In any case, leaving town only ever makes me love love and miss Brooklyn more more more. The walk to the A train to get to Kennedy always takes me through a little park in my neighborhood. It is supposedly called Fulton Park, after Robert Fulton, inventor of the first commercially viable steamboat, but a plaque embedded into the ground on the west end of the park will tell you that it was originally named Steamboat Park (much cuter.)

I got my first crush on Bed-Stuy coming out of the Utica Avenue Station into this park one year ago. (Ghetto nothing! Even the public bathroom was clean!) and I fall in love with it again every time I have to leave town. In April before I left for beautiful San Francisco I walked through a park full of blossoms. This morning I trekked past remaindered puddles, clearing October sun, wet leaves. I will spend the next couple of weeks of travel looking at inexplicable pine trees and prairies and listening to Biggie, excited to be flitting about the west and midwest but also excited that I get to be home soon for a good long stretch. Home is good. It is good to finally have one.

Steamboat Park is my portal in and out of home, and it is, also (stop laughing) where I learned to ride a bicycle, just now. At an age where one is far less fearless and near to the ground than a small child is. At an age where the little kids in the park ask daily if you’ve “got the hang of it yet” and where countless “friendly” neighbors heckle you for walking your bike to the park not realizing you are not street safe to ride it two blocks.

So to Susan K. for the bicycle and all the indignant Torontonians (sorry your bikes got stolen so often it never got to be you who donated me those wheels, Sasha) I thank you for berating me into what I obviously already knew. But also thank you Brooklyn for being so easy and inspiring to get to know: I’m kind of glad I’ve already traced the lines of this neighborhood in so many other ways that now I get to love it anew, maybe the way it was supposed to be.

So, yeah. There ain’t nothin’ quite like waking up early to bike through the projects towards the friend you just stole from Canada and a cup of coffee. Time enough to love, pause, squeeze your city tightly before slipping past that little bronze steamboat to points yet to come…

[one-sided cell phone conversation on New York City-bound train]

“No! I never called you from his house.”

“Don’t you remember that was when you said you never wanted to see me again?”

“Look, maybe we should just get a divorce.”

[long pause]

“Are you still going to pick me up at the train station?

I’m home right now, home being the 150-some-odd-mile swath of freshwater shoreline that stretches ever longer with the passing years, centerpointed at 5200 S. 1700 E. Chicago, Illinois, USA, but reaching to Milwaukee, Indiana, Michigan. Trips home become more scattered and complex every time, but even better for their contrast to the rest of my life and the rest of the world. The midwest encompasses. Vowels tilt and mine join them within minutes. And everything is unified by the lake, great, unsalted and sharkless.

I drove around Michigan City (or as the guy on the train called it, Machine Gun City) tonight, pre-sunset, a couple trainspotters stood staked out with their sports zoom lenses on 11th street to catch the train driving down the center of the road when I dropped off my dad to go back to the city. I ate a Dairy Queen sundae in the parking lot. Clouds billowed from the power plant. I made a lot of right turns on red. Carefree living. Lots of beachgoing; I didn’t drown. The Hawaii of red states?

It’s kinda weird to live far enough from home to need a plane now. Or weirder still to fly into Milwaukee, but what a good idea. Thanks Kayak for thinking MKE is a viable “nearby airport” serving Chicago. Just to be clear how much of a nerd I am, I could pick out both the Brewers-Cubs game and an Alterra store from the plane.

A couple years back I made a commitment to visit the Cream City more often, at least once a year, because it seemed irresponsible not to. I have done well in holding up my bargain with myself, third time back this year with more to come. Everyone is immediate and friendly and unpretentious and wants to feed you and you don’t need any real plans. Excessive dairy or frying are not considered noteworthy. Pabst is not an ironic beer here. And city you are gorgeous.

(Also, within minutes of arriving in Milwaukee I saw a guy in cardboard antlers, a vanity plate referring to bowling, and an unironic tirade over brewery preference. Someone on my 10 bus hired someone else on the bus to work housekeeping in their Best Western franchise. Heartland dairyland kindness.)

After midnight people had petered out around me but I figure if you have more than one thing you can go do in Milwaukee at 1:00am you probably should: a good 30 minutes of Scheid, bus-side, and an hour of sleepy radio-sitting in at WMSE. Hardly any talking if you can believe it. Just company.

I walked a lot of Milwaukee downtown alone late that night, expansive and solid, riverfront sausage neon and the mocking curves of the Intercontinental Hotel. I found bowling shoes on the street, in my size, and though the night was desolate the few people I’d pass on bridges and historic wards seemed more like date-rapists than muggers. In the late cab home my driver asked if I believed in UFOs, and when I offered my dissenting opinion, turned the dial from AM to FM in a gestural huff, edging the volume knob ever louder as he gauged I wasn’t being punished quite enough for my skepticism by last year’s dance music.

In the morning Courtney took me to the shuttle (sadly not Badger Coach Lines, or even better, Lamers Bus Lines) to Chicago for baseball. I almost had a peaceful ride to myself the whole way until the Germans got on, and the luggage compartment opened up somewhere along the Edens. Then I had to figure out a place to ditch my oversized bag. Making-friends-with-coffee-shop in 15 minutes or less. Do it. Thank you Adam.

And now Indianaside it smells like the beach and I smell like the beach. It is easy to be here, more than it was to come back to Toronto and more than it is to be at home in real life now, debris and a year of unpacking and unbalance scattered in each corner. It’s so far removed from my new routine, this version of reality, this constant Chicago-Obama-urban-intellect sales pitch, this land of Indiana strip malls parked full by Veterans’ license plates, and the outlet stores filled with endless racks of unsold XS and S clothes because no one, no one here is small. And though the roads twist between these time zones, I am both faraway from and ever interrupted by home, by the New York coffee shop sticker on my friend’s notebook while we play Scrabble among the crickets, by the technology I use as a lifeline (at least I do not bring it to the beach).

I used to complain that there wasn’t enough continuity between all the different parts and places of my life, and now that they have folded into one tiny crumpled wad it comes as a surprise. In the subconscious navigation of these old streets and the seconds’ distance from the shoreline and the people from forever ago (and six months ago) that care and the dreamlike state of eating tacos every day, it’s a version of paradise. But just one take on a larger theme, regional and historical and personal, and not one I’ll ever stop turning over in my head. Next 500 miles of Great Lakes coastline, look out. Here I come.

[Wisconsin Ave, downtown Milwaukee, 3:00pm]
“I drink Miller!!!!!”

[South Shore Line, near Beverly Shores]
“You’re not a Cubs fan…you’re just an asshole.”

[Sheridan Beach, Stop 2]
Mom: “No whining at the beach. It’s the rule.”

Kid: “But I allllllllways whine at the beach!”

[Niagara Falls]
“You have to put your shoes on ma’am. It’s a safety feature.”

[Buffalo]
“This is where William McKinley died.”
“What was he doing on this street?”
“Dying.”