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 that they’d catch up.

It felt good for perhaps a minute or so jogging in the cool, moist early morning air at 6 a.m.

But then it happened. A searing pain developed in my side.

I stopped and bent over.

Jack was laughing when they caught up.

He said adjusting to humidity in Illinois took a bit of time.

After returning to their apartment, they got ready for their last day of work for a week then dropped me off at the car rental firm we were going to use for a planned road trip.

Before they drove off, I asked them where was the closest store I could go to buy flour tortillas. It was back when I was eating tortillas the way some consumed bread.

They gave me directions to the nearest Piggy Wiggly.

I must have looked on every aisle twice before I found a clerk to ask where the tortillas were.

He said they were along the back wall.

I searched high and low in the back of the store and could not find them.

I asked another clerk who I found standing next to a bank of refrigeration cases about where I could find the tortillas.

She smiled and asked if I was from Texas or California.

I replied California but also asked why.

She then told me they don’t sell that many tortillas in Illinois so they were kept in a refrigeration case to keep them fresh.

Two days later, having dinner at an “upscale restaurant” with Jack and Gail as well as my former boss and his wife who had also moved to Champaign, I ordered a garden salad that was listed on the menu for $16.

Remember, this was 37 years ago. It would be the equivalent of shelling out almost twice that today.

My expression must have telegraphed my dismay at the lettuce having a healthy sprinkling of yellow. The waiter, who earlier likely overheard I was visiting from California, didn’t miss a beat.

He indicated it was fresh lettuce for Illinois as opposed to what I was likely used to in California.

Several days later, we were in Chicago.

Jack and Gail insisted we have lunch at what they called “a world famous deli” at the base of the Sears Tower in the financial district.

I was definitely out of place with my black dress shorts and watermelon-colored polo shirts as the sidewalks were jammed during the noon hour with men who looked as if they were auditioning for a part in the Blues Brothers.

There wasn’t a non-white dress shirt or a tie with a pattern or color that wasn’t black or dark blue in the bunch.

The “deli” seated 200 plus and had a menu with 130 items with bold letters on the top of each page that read “absolutely no substitutes.” All but one item, including all the salads, had meat in them, which was a bit of an issue for a lacto-ovo vegetarian like myself.

Gail suggested I try it, even though I had never heard of it before.

The waitress, after taking our order, returned and wanted to know if it was alright to ask me a question.

I said yes, and she replied she had a bet with another waitress she gestured toward that was standing near the swinging doors to the kitchen.

She asked if I was from California.

I said yes.

Then she proceeded to say she thought I was given how I was dressed but when I ordered the quiche she was sure I was and bet her co-worker a dollar that it was true.

I didn’t have the heart to tell her that it took me traveling to Illinois to try quiche for the first time.