Chicago, anyone?

This weekend the wife and I (I can use that in a blog entry, since she's not physically present) made a visit to the Windy City. As was mentioned previously, we went primarily to see our new friend Kaya and her handlers, as well as attend a couple of concerts. As is always the case with our little weekend trips, it was the unexpected little moments that made the highlight reel.

First off, I would just like to note that I truly am starting to feel like a grouchy old man at club concerts. Friday night was a visit to the Riviera Theatre in Chicago. We stood in front of an inebriated denizen of Cook County who provided ample evidence of why people in other countries might have a problem with Americans. This guy talked loudly through the whole concert. And for a guy who just spent $35 to see a show, he obviously hated the band, with the exception of three songs -- the names of which he shouted as loudly as possible during every pause. He called the singer names, made insults about the country the band was from, and just generally made an idiot of himself. After several people had relocated to get away from him, I threw my hat in the ring and turned around to tell him to "can it." I think it surprised him. Luckily his buddy stopped responding to his inane babbling, and we weren't treated to his pleasantries for the majority of the rest of the show. I must say that as I turned to tell him to stop, I imagined what it would feel like to hit him. But then I remembered that I'm a former choir boy with a gimpy right arm due to my horseback riding prowess and prayed silently that he wasn't the fightin' type. Score one for the weenie.

We spent a lovely Saturday afternoon with the Longs. Kaya was charming, as usual. They took us to a delightful Costa Rican restaurant on Saturday afternoon. Unfortunately the Costa Ricans had a rebel uprising in me this morning, which makes me think I should stick to eating my usual turkey sandwiches and the like for lunch. In any case, it was great seeing Kaya...and the other two Longs. ;)

Saturday night we went to another show at the Vic Theatre, and this time we sat in the balcony. I couldn't handle the thought of having to turn my vengeful eye on a fellow concert goer for a second night in a row. Following the show, I got the bright idea that we could cut quite a bit of time off our ride on the El if we took a bus a couple of miles straight down Belmont Street. On the surface, this seemed like a great idea, but we ended up on the CTA's "Bus of the Damned" for that week. The driver was in a bad mood upon boarding, and the bus was full of people coming out of the show. So we stood, clinging to the poles of life while the bus raced down the street (please note that I have all sorts of issues with "hanging on" in any kind of public transportation...somehow I always imagine that the last guy to be hanging on to the bus in the position I'm holding probably was slowly dying from Ebola. It always provides a nice OCD moment for me.) In any case, after several near head-on collisions and an altercation between the driver and an angry man on a bike whose stop had been passed by the bus at approximately 60 miles per hour on a city street ("My bus is full" was the driver's excuse, but by that point, the bus was maybe half full...kudos to the guy on the bike for being able to catch the bus. I didn't figure the Batmobile could have caught that bus...), we arrived at the El station and headed back to our hotel.

All in all, a pleasant but tiring trip. The only real new discovery we made about Chicago was that their I-PASS system for bypassing the toll booths is very nice. I'd heard guys at work talk about blowing through the toll plazas at 80 miles per hour, so I couldn't resist buying one of the gizmos. What they neglected to mention was that the plazas you can drive through at high speed are the new "open tolling" plazas with no booths, merely cameras mounted over the highway. The ones where there is still a booth, but you don't have to stop, are tricky at 80 miles per hour. It's sort of like threading a needle, except the thread is a mid-size Hyundai and the eye of the needle features concrete barricades and a moderately terrified state employee. Not pretty. The horror of being beaten senseless by my angry mother-in-law always makes me slow down though.

Bret