{"id":24625,"date":"2016-05-15T00:01:24","date_gmt":"2016-05-15T07:01:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/?p=24625"},"modified":"2016-05-15T00:01:24","modified_gmt":"2016-05-15T07:01:24","slug":"willis-tower-acrophilia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/willis-tower-acrophilia\/","title":{"rendered":"Scaling the Mighty Willis Tower — With My Acrophilic Husband"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"View<\/a>
Looking east over Lake Michigan and downtown Chicago from Willis Tower. Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By Barbara Falconer Newhall<\/em><\/p>\n

The Willis Tower — aka the Sears Tower — is Jon’s kind of place. High up, with a view that goes on forever.<\/p>\n

I’ve known about Jon’s acrophilia for a very long time — ever since we made\u00a0a trip\u00a0to Europe together, early in our romance.\u00a0I’d been to Europe before, so as we planned our\u00a0trip it fell to me to\u00a0suggest an\u00a0itinerary.<\/p>\n

\"Willis<\/a>
Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But what\u00a0would Jon want to see in Europe? I hadn’t a clue. I knew what I liked\u00a0— gothic churches, medieval castles, Mosel wines, Br\u00f6tchen.\u00a0\u00a0But Jon? He didn’t seem to know. And once we were in Europe though Jon seemed to be enjoying\u00a0himself, his sightseeing\u00a0preferences\u00a0remained a\u00a0mystery to me.<\/p>\n

My Husband the Acrophiliac<\/h5>\n

It wasn’t until we got back home that Jon’s travel\u00a0passions revealed themselves.\u00a0There they were for all to see in the\u00a0photos he’d taken during our trip. In town after town, Jon had identified the tallest structure in the neighborhood, placed me in front of it — or on top of it — and snapped a picture.\u00a0If there was a view from on high to be had — from\u00a0a church steeple, a Rathaus\u00a0bell tower, a castle rampart or a finicula — there I stood, in the middle of it, smiling.<\/p>\n

Forty years later, thanks to the\u00a0very\u00a0nice folks at Independent Publishers Book Awards, I was able to treat my husband to the view from yet another place high in the<\/p>\n

\"Looking<\/a>
Looking northeast from the tower. Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

sky: the 99th floor of Chicago’s Willis Tower.<\/p>\n

The IPPYs —\u00a0Atop the Willis Tower<\/h5>\n

Taller than the World Trade Centers when it was built in 1973 and\u00a0for 25 years the tallest building in the world, the Willis Tower juts 108 stories into the sky\u00a0over Chicago. When I found out that the IPPY book awards<\/a> would be presented on\u00a0its Sky Deck on May 10, I invited\u00a0my acrophilic husband to be my plus-one. It took two ear-popping elevators and an escalator to get to the Sky Deck, but we braved the heights and attained the 99th floor without incident.<\/p>\n

Yes, it was Jon’s kind of place.\u00a0And, yes, he got a photo of it — and me. And while we were at it, I caught one of him.<\/p>\n

\"Author<\/a>
That’s me. Photo by Jon Newhall<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Entrance<\/a>
And that’s Jon. Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

More travel stories at “The Poop on China — And the Pee.”<\/a>\u00a0 And “Wrestling With God on the Shores of Lake Michigan.”<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

\"Entrance<\/a>
Entrance overhang of the Willis Tower. Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Willis<\/a>
Our ticket to the Willis Tower.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"View<\/a><\/p>\n

The 108-story Willis Tower is my husband’s kind of place. I first noticed Jon’s acrophilia early in our romance, when we took\u00a0a trip to Europe. Read more.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24661,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,30],"tags":[1721,1686,1688,34,1690,29,689,55,82,33,872,1722],"class_list":["post-24625","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-a-case-of-the-human-condition","category-my-changing-family","tag-acrophilia","tag-book-awards","tag-chicago","tag-dont-miss","tag-ippy","tag-jon","tag-marriage","tag-family-stories","tag-on-the-funny-side","tag-travel","tag-travel-adventures","tag-willis-tower"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24625","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24625"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24625\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}