After our quick two-day trip through DC it was out to the DC suburbs. Just a couple years after he and I moved to DC in the late 1980s his best friend from college, Laura, moved out to give it a chance. And not long after that his little sister Jeanne graduated from law school and came out, too. Fast forward 25 years and they’re both still there with families while we’ve long since moved on. No trip through the States would be complete without a visit so yup, Mark & I spent the weekend in the ‘burbs. Not exactly our typical milieu but for family (Laura counts), we’ll go damned near anywhere.

Not surprisingly, the weekend centered around food, with all the fun and laughter and drinking that entails. First up was dinner at Laura & Dan’s — a Chicken Marbella extravaganza. There was a time, it seemed, when every dinner party that was worth going to in the 1990s served this Silver Palate delight, but we hadn’t had it in many years. Yum yum! And of course lots of fun and laughter. And drinking, did I mention that?

Saturday night Jeanne cooked up a Middle Eastern delight: kibbe, some Moroccan beans that were to die for, chicken thighs that may have also had a Moroccan origin, salad, a yogurt-based dish, and I’m sure I’m forgetting some of it. Oh yeah, rice, but I always forget the rice. Again, a fabulous meal.

And then some of that staple of modern American life, afternoon soccer games. Jeanne’s kids, Leigh and Jamal, have clearly grown since we last saw them playing. This time it was fun to watch, a level of athleticism that was impressive. To be clear, when I was a kid girls didn’t do things like that. Who doubts that progress occurs in at least some realms?

My favorite story from the weekend was my Sunday morning run. Beautiful, gentle rolling hills on a cool late-summer morning. Five miles, so a good workout. Then stretching on the driveway and in the front lawn. Finally I went to go into Jeanne’s house, but the door was locked. Odd, I thought, since I was sure it wasn’t locked when I went out. I tried the door again. Definitely locked. And a dog was barking, but they don’t have a dog. I was about to knock when I thought “Maybe I’m at the wrong house…” I had my iPhone with me to track my run and when I looked up her address sure enough, I’d been trying to break into their neighbor’s house early Sunday morning. Funny, except in today’s America, where guns and property rights rule and “Shoot first” has practically become our national motto, I realized I need to be more careful in the future.

We made a very quick pass through DC, but made the most efficient use possible for visiting old friends and colleagues. Wednesday night NGP VAN sponsored Happy Hour at a local bar for staff and friends and – as we’ve learned over the years – if you offer free drinks, people will come. So we had a great time with a bunch of our favorite people from DC, and then had lunches and drinks with others. (Sorry, Matt, we forgot to take a picture, so you’re not here!)

The crazy thing about DC is how much the city has changed in the last 20 years. Entire sections that were all but war zones are now high-end development. And the funny thing is that when we lived here 25 years ago we liked working in DC but didn’t like living there. Now we we think we’d enjoy living in DC, but sure don’t want to work there anymore. I guess we just can’t be satisfied. Except when we’re traveling in exotic places.

From Iowa and the Harkin reunion it was a quick flight north to Chicago. We have some great friends there, it’s a beautiful and exciting city and – no small factor – we’re doing what we can here in the States to avoid connecting flights. We wanted to get to DC soon enough, but better to fly direct to Chicago, visit friends for two days, and then take another direct flight to DC rather than have a long, ugly connecting flight from Des Moines. So Chicago it is.

Much of our time there was with Chris and Todd. Chris is one of Mark’s oldest friends from college, while Todd is his partner of nearly 25 years. They made us dinner twice and both dinners were amazing. The first dinner included a wonderful Latina couple, Nina & Sonia. The crazy part about it is that Nina is the data director for SEIU’s fast food organizing campaign, in which role she is a serious and regular VAN user. When, just a week or so before our visit, she learned that Chris’s friend had developed the VAN and was coming over, she said she had to join us. Turns out that she and Sonia were both great fun besides filling us in on all the benefits of using VAN for union organizing. (Note to any NGP VAN staff who might be reading this: Nina would love it if the MiniVAN worked better for union organizing…. 🙂 )

Beyond the dinners with Chris and Todd, we had time to visit with Lisa, another college friend of Mark’s. Lisa teaches Italian in the Chicago Public Schools and – to put it gently – filled us in on the challenges there under Mayor Rahm Emanuel. Sounds like a tough position.

And we stopped by the Civis Analytics office in Greektown to see our old friend Ben Fuller. Over the years at VAN and then NGP VAN, we had a lot of great clients, some of whom became great friends beyond any client relationship. Ben was certainly that, having had key roles at both SEIU and the Obama campaign before joining Civis. It was great fun catching up, hearing how all the data work that we’ve done over the years is increasingly embedded in campaigns, recognized as a key part of an organizing campaign rather than just the geeks who are put in some back room and humored. Amusingly, when we first got to the office we ran into Civis’s CEO, whom we also know from campaign work, who introduced us to some guy he was going into a meeting with. You could tell the guy wasn’t interested in meeting us, and didn’t even tell me his name when I shook his hand and introduced myself. Turned out as we were leaving the office Ben observed that he was Eric Schmidt, head of Google and ranked by Forbes as the 138th richest person in the world. Guess I was just supposed to know who he was!

Fun footnote that gives a sense of how … easy … our lives are. While waiting to meet with Ben in his Greektown office, Mark & I had lunch at a Greek restaurant. We were enjoying our meal when Mark said “Maybe we should spend July and August in Greece next year.” And just like that, because we had an hour to kill in Greektown, we’re planning a couple months in Greece and Turkey. So if you want to hang around the eastern Mediterranean with us next summer let us know.

Next stop, Washington D.C. for more friends, family, and colleagues.