I didn’t need to worry about breakfast - I’d bought it on my way back to the hotel the night before. This meant I could get up a little later, have breakfast, and then finish packing before heading to the train station to get to the airport. At least in theory, but I found myself awake before 06:00 once again.

Rather than flying straight home as I often would, I was on my way to Canada to rejoin James who had left whilst I’d been running a marathon. When I left the hotel it was pretty easy to find the train station I needed and was then on my way back to O’Hare International.

The person at the check-in desk seemed the most bored and uninterested person I’ve come across on this trip. Maybe she’d been flying overnight prior to this, and was nearing the end of a shift. Security was then the usual fun - I emptied the usual items from my backpack, and took off my shoes. I was then told to remove my cameras from the bag as well - when he saw my lenses he told me to remove those as well.

“What?! This is the only airport in the world I’ve had to do that” I told him in surprise. I left out that I meant this covered every continent - he didn’t need to know that.

“Well it’s a crazy world out there,” he replied.

I’m not sure his definition, and my definition of crazy are quite the same. From my point of view it’s the US that is one of the crazy places, in part due to their love of guns. I didn’t think it a good idea to mention this so removed all my lenses and passed through the scanner.

Once I’d got through security I found my flight had been delayed by forty minutes - this was allegedly due to a previous flight needing to make an emergency landing due to a cracked windscreen.

I thought my arrival in Chicago had been one of my quickest arrivals ever - but in Toronto, once deplaning I walked swiftly to the immigration desks. I found I was the first one there for the non-US passports queue, so was almost straight through after a few questions, and then saw my suitcase coming around the corner when I arrived in baggage claims. In total it took around five minutes!

My swift clearing of arrivals meant I’d gotten there ahead of James, but as it happened he’d been delayed in traffic so it was almost an hour before we met up. After the drive back to his house he sorted dinner on the barbecue and relaxed for what little remained of the day. Even with only an hour time difference, it was amazing just how much of the day had been taken up by travelling from Chicago to Ajax.