It was June of 1989. I had left Sacramento on a 101 degree day boarding a Piedmont Airlines flight wearing Ocean Pacific corduroy shorts and a polo shirt without a drop of sweat on my body.
By 10 p.m. that night, I had landed at my destination.
Friends I had flown to visit were waiting for me just inside the terminal. It was perhaps a 200-foot walk from bottom of the ramp stairs to where they were.
I was sweating profusely by the time I reached them. Ninety percent humidity with temps slightly below 85 degrees can do that.
It was my first clue that being a Californian in a “foreign land” was going to be eye-opening.
Jack, my best friend at the time, just laughed when I commented how I couldn’t believe how much I was sweating.
He said I’d get used to it.
No, I wouldn’t.
It was my welcome to Champaign in Downstate Illinois and a new understanding of why generations of Americans kept heading to California long after the easiest gold pickings played out. It was the weather.
The next morning, I joined Jack and Gail on their morning run. They told me I needed to go at my pace — which was far from blazing — to recover from the flight.
They described the route and told me to go ahead and t...