So here I am a couple of thousand feet in the air and who knows how many miles away from Chicago. I saw the skyline one last time just about 5 minutes ago. It was a fun trip. We’d been talking about taking a random weekend some time and flying somewhere random for quite a while. Two weeks ago, we committed to that random location being Chicago. Schedules were hectic. Swaffy was coming from Houston to Midway Friday night and had to be at work by noon today. Mr. Pennington was coming from Dallas to O’Hare Friday night and had to head out yesterday night to be at work first thing this morning. Me on the other hand….I came into O’Hare Friday morning and am just now leaving. I don’t know if that makes me more of a work slacker or more of a hardcore traveler. I’ll go with the latter. Here are the important stats:- Three guys.
- Two airports.
- Two Hertz rental cars.
- Four Hundred Twenty Five miles put on my rental car.
- One hotel room.
- Two double beds.
- One pallet on the floor.
- Thirty-five miles from our hotel in the burbs to Midway.
- Four and a half hours of sleep on Sunday night because of that fact.
- Five electronic devices necessary to find our way around.
- One and a half hours scheduled with something to do before we arrived in Chicago.
- Two, the number of times Funky got looked at funny for asking for Dr. Pepper.
- One time, the number of times that we had to run in downtown Chicago to get to a boat.
- · Almost one, the number of times Swaffy got to be painted blue and hung from his feet.
Needless to say, it was a pretty crazy weekend.
Once I got there, I didn’t know quite what to do. I had about eleven hours before the rest of the crew would be there. After having about an hour and a half of that being eaten up by rabid Notre Dame fans at the car rental counter. I had a whole new city to explore. Instead of braving the city on my own, I mostly stuck to the suburbs. I hit up some Half Price Books. I saw most of the route the crazy cab driver took me on when I was in Chicago last year for a few hours. I did get one Chicago meal out of the way pretty quickly though. Aside from the Food Network or something, I hadn’t really known of the Italian Beef sandwich, but I’m glad I found out about it. I passed by a random location of Portello’s and decided I’d better try one. French bread, lots of thinly sliced beef, peppers, and some sort of random gravy. It had any cheesesteak I had ever eaten beat by a long shot. Next, like any hardcore traveler, I ended up at the hotel and took a bit of a nap. By the time I was up, it was time to start making the trek down to pick up Swaffy at Midway. I took my time….mainly due to the pesky “avoid toll roads” option checked on the GPS. Add that to a little detour due to a mistake that led me to the Frank Lloyd Wright house rather than a Half Price Books near Midway, and it was a long trip. Too bad, I didn’t get to see the house in the daylight. I finally arrived at Midway right on time.
Once I picked up Swaffy, it was time to meet up with Funky to grab some pizza. I decided on Lou Malanati’s for our first shot at Chicago deep dish pizza. I think it was a pretty good first choice. The pizza was quite juicy, which I realize is a strange describing word for pizza, but it was very accurate. Lots of cheese, lots of veggies, lots of bread. It was quite tasty. We got a plan started and got it mostly hammered out by the time we went to bed Friday night.
Saturday was planned to started out with a visit to the Museum of Science and Industry. On our way down there, we caught a sign pointing us to Wrigley Field, so we figured we had to go see that. There wasn’t much to see there, but seeing Wrigley was a treat. I kept looking for Illinois Nazi’s, but there were none to be seen. That jaunt took a little while, but it wasn’t long before we were on our way to the museum. Real exciting, I know, but it was pretty stinking cool. The U-Boat tour was fascinating. A couple of hours weren’t near enough to see the whole museum, but it was worth the trip down there. Next came one of the worst decisions we made all weekend. Not knowing the layout of the city and trusting the GPS directions, we ended up driving down Michigan Avenue for a bit. I got to test out my cab driver skills for a bit there until we found parking. We didn’t have much of a plan for our time in that area other than to go up on a tall building.
We ended up walking into the Billy Goat Tavern for lunch. Cheezborger, Cheezborger, Cheezborger. No Fries…Chips. All that good stuff from the old SNL skit. A good burger and surly counter help are probably the best two things to describe the place. I’m going to have to dig up that skit again. From there, we decided to forgo the desire to go to the Sears tower because it is the Sears tower and hit up the Hancock Building observatory. It was a good choice. The lines were short and the tour was great. The views were great, and Ross Gellar explained Chicago to us. From here, we decided we had better head to Millennium Park to see the things Ross told us about.
When we got to Millennium Park, we saw my favorite sight of the whole trip. Cloudgate, the giant silver bean, is about as cool of a piece of art as I have ever seen. Good art is supposed to make you feel something, and this art was the kind that makes everyone feel something. I saw people who were queasy, I saw romance, I saw awe, I saw fun. Everyone seemed to have a smile on their face. That is good art. It is easy to see how it has become such an icon in the city in such a short time. The other sights and sounds of the park were great too. The Gehery amphitheater, the spitting fountains, the sculptures, the plants. It was an impressive park. Too bad Dallas hasn’t been able to get something like that together. It would be tough not to spend a lot of lunch hours there. Ross led us on a bit of a goose chase after this, but it was ok. Buckingham fountain looked like it would be a nice show to see if it weren’t under construction. By the time we had missed out on that it was time for dinner. Shaw’s Crab House was the location. We weren’t fancy or patient enough for the main room, but the Oyster Bar next door suited us just fine. Good food. Random conversation with a helpful Rockwall resident who was stuck in Chicago on business. The largest food bill of our trip. It was definitely good times. Our final stop for the evening was Second City, the only preplanned event of our weekend. No Country for Old White Men was the show. The cast was very talented and the show was hilarious. It was late, but definitely worth the loss of sleep.
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