I awoke on Sunday morning groggy and exhausted. I spent the prior evening visiting some of my hacker friends back home. We stayed up until the bewitching hour chatting about life, work, and all things Linux. I only managed to get around 4 hours of sleep but it didn’t matter. They were the ones I chose to spend my last day at home with.

There was no time to waste. I jumped out of bed and immediately began loading my vehicle with my belongings. “Okay. I’ve got the duffel. I’ve got the cot. Where is my…” I began to search frantically.

While I was searching through by boxes, my GPS was searching for a signal. Fantasies of my upcoming day began to flow to me. I had been in contact with my first host periodically throughout the week. He informed me that he was also hosting a couple of Australians currently and that later in the week a South African was to join us.

One of my major reservations about the whole situation was that he is a fundamentalist from the deep south. He is essentially my arch-nemesis archetype. He calmed my apprehension somewhat by telling me that he is “too liberal for his conservative friends and too conservative for his liberal friends.” Arch-nemesis or not, I had to swallow my pride. It was either his place or the street.

My first order of business was to get a hold of James. James is my fail-safe in the city. He’s a childhood friend whom I can trust. He’s proven in the past that he is loyal to our friendship even when the stakes are high. There was an incident we went through once where I could have been facing jail time and he stored some sensitive documents for me. His house will be my base of operation as I travel throughout the city.

It was a half-hour after I had planned to leave and I was dumping boxes of papers all over my apartment. I was becoming increasingly anxious as I sifted frantically through my papers. “There!” I declared at the top of my lungs. “Fuckin’ FINALLY!” I saw the embossed dog tags brandishing the name “dissident” and I grasped the chain. I hung them around my neck as I paced swiftly toward the door. As I drove away, I glanced in my rear view mirror to see my sneakers dangling from the telephone line, retired the night before at about 4am. “Fuck this place.” I declared under my breath.

The drive went slowly. As I came around a bend on I-90 I saw the skyline of The Second City appear on the horizon. I don’t know why, but until that moment none of this seemed real. I was suddenly overcome with the sentiment that “this is home now.”

I arrived at James’ house at around 3 in the afternoon. He helped me unload some things from my car: a roll-under storage container with my summer clothes, a couple of computers I had implemented as a server and an IDS. When we were done he said, “How about a beer and a smoke on the back porch?” I accepted his invitation.

“Welcome to the city.” James said. Tom Waits’ “Chicago” began playing from his phone in the background.

“Thanks. I’m terrified that it’s gonna shit on me.” I replied.

“Well that’s a distinct possibility.”

“I think I’ll be able to figure it out, though. Most people view all adversity as a generally bad thing. I consider most adverse situations to be opportunity for growth, and most often welcome them.”

“Well, you’ve certainly picked the choice time for adversity in the city.” James said. “You know, it’s one thing coming to visit in the summer, but true Chicagoans have seen at least one winter here.”

“I guess I’m earning my wings right from the start then huh, James? I came to the city jobless, homeless, in the wintertime with $100 in my pocket. That’s how all success stories begin, right?”

“You’re destined for greatness, my friend.” James replied.

I don’t know about greatness but perhaps delusions of grandeur. I spent about another hour there and it was time to go. I got in my car and programmed into my GPS the address of Howard, my host for the upcoming week. I began revisiting my apprehension about sleeping in the lion den. I called Howard and informed him that I was on my way. I was a few blocks into my journey and my GPS unit displayed a banner stating, “Lost satellite signal” and then crashed.

I was too far from James’ to find my way back easily, and too far from Howard’s to know how to get there blind. I was northbound on Lakeshore Drive with no good place to get off and get my bearings. “Welcome to the city indeed, I murmured and I grasped the wheel with both hands…”