Back home feels good. Quite a trip, Montreal offers some of the best of city living: a vibrant, diverse, human culture.

The only negative: from the city to the airport, too many cars, too much pavement.

It seems we believe technology will save us; at the same time our advanced technology is choking us, seperating us from nature, drowning us in the culture of machines.

The cab ride from O'Hare to home: ugly streets, strip malls, endless suburban sprawl. Bland, parking-lot, ugliness, everywhere.

The City of Big Shoulders and Flabby Bellies. The Midwest grows them big, bland, slow-moving --- kind of like the bloated cows that become juicy burgers on over-loaded plates.

Of course, Chicago is too big, too diverse, to be one thing. The beauty of a 'city' is the incredible energy of millions of people: every shape, every size, every race, creed, color spilling into the streets like some frenetic 24 hour carnival (see especially New York City).

I bought a t-shirt in a little shop in Old Montreal. My new credo: 'Life is... to eat, to sleep, to skate.' Of course, for me to skate is a metaphor, as per Jethro Tull: 'skating away, on the thin ice, of a new day.'