Scenes From My Flight to Omaha

I’m going to be in Omaha this week, from Tuesday afternoon through Saturday morning to represent Shopify at Big Omaha, the startup conference that’s been described as “like South by Southwest, before South by Southwest got crazy.”

I flew from Accordion City’s Pearson Airport to Chicago’s O’Hare. I caught this shot of downtown Chicago from the air a couple of minutes before we landed:

Taxiing into the terminal, we passed by a good chunk of the United fleet, including this “Classic”, the aviation nickname for the Boeing 747. I haven’t been on one of those planes in ages — probably since 2000.

Here’s Butch O’Hare’s plane — they named the airport after him:

Good old O’Hare with its familiar curved ceilings. I’ve passed through this airport a fair number of times in the past couple of years. I know that I lot of people hate connecting through it, but I’m kind of fond of O’Hare.

If you’re at O’Hare, hungry and have a reasonably long stopover (at least an hour), you should make your way to Concourse B…

…and make your way to the spot between gates B10 and B11. That’s where you’ll find Tortas Frontera, a restaurant by Rick Bayless, whom you might have seen on the Food Network. He’s the chef behind Frontera Grill and Topolobampo, twin Mexican restaurants with amazingly good food that are always booked solid.

As the name implies, this place specialized in tortas — sandwiches — and they’re far better than your standard airport fare. They do take about ten minutes to prepare, so you shouldn’t go here if you’ve got little time to catch your next flight. They will box your torta if you need it “to go”.

I picked up my torta and started making my way to Concourse C, where the gate for my Chicago-to-Omaha flight was. Concourse C is separate from the rest of the airport and requires either taking a bus or using a tunnel which goes underneath the tarmac. Here’s what you see as you descend into the tunnel:

And here’s the tunnel itself. They could’ve gone “ugly and utilitarian”, but they didn’t:

The coloured panels on the wall look like something out of a 1960s science fiction movie:

And on it goes…

…and goes…

…and goes.

Here’s the approach to Omaha. It’s brownish fields…

…giving way to green…

…then the river…

…and then you land.

I saw this sign at the end of the jetway. You know you’re in the midwest when you seen these things:

You also know you’re in the midwest when you see ads like this. I’m familiar with RFD TV because it was home to The Big Joe Polka Show, which is wall-to-wall accordions. Ethan Zuckerman showed me an episode ages ago, and it was pure polka-and-accordion magic.