Every major city in America possesses a particular inertia-a force that keeps you from getting out of town and regaining your sanity even when the high, buzzing whine of tension in your ear tells you, clearly, that you need it. In New York it's the pace of the city, the feeling that if you leave for a day your whole life will fall apart in a heap of unreturned phone calls, missed opportunities, and botched obligations. In San Francisco it's the line over the bridge, the very certain knowledge that to access one of the world's most beautiful landscapes, you have to pay up front with two hours of stop and go, fume-inhaling traffic. In Chicago it is just the raw size of the megalopolis. It feels like you can't get out of Chicago no matter what direction you try. It takes four hours, corner to corner, to get across it on a Friday...