Planes. Trains, and 80 year olds

We took a trip out to Chicago last weekend for Kelly's grandmother's 80th birthday party. It was supposed to be somewhat of a family reunion with a lot of people coming into to town for it. So the plan was to catch a flight Friday afternoon (5:30ish), get into Chicago around 9, hang out for 3 days, and leave late Monday night. So Friday rolls around; Kelly's got the day off work and I get out of work early so that I can pack. I get home, throw some close into a bag, and then we run off to an eye doctor's appointment for Kelly. They told us 30-40 minutes tops. Well an hour and a half later we have a slightly nervous Andrew and Heather and some really shitty Friday afternoon traffic. Andrew's driving and going as fast as he can in spurts but we keep hitting traffic jams. Ugh. Then we park in the econo-lot at the airport, power-walk to the security check-point which we thought was going to be the hard part--it actually didn't take that long--and then waited forever for one of the trains to the C concourse. We book it up the escalator run to the screens to find our gate...where's the Chicago flight? It's not listed? Ohhhh, it left without us.

Try Again

Luckily we were able to get on standby for a flight Saturday at 7:00am. The best part about a fllight at 7:00 am is that you get to wake up at 4:10am! I said I'd drive since Andrew drove us on our last attempt. The good part is that there was no traffic and it was a breeze getting to the gate. All of us made it onto the plane and a couple of hours later we were at Chicago-O'Hare. We didn't check any bags, so we deplaned, walked right out and our ride was already there waiting for us.

Day 1

I meet 18 of kelly's 200 Chicago relatives

We went into the city on the train (there's a station in Northbrook where we were staying). Now for all of you who haven't taken the Metra into Chicago, this is in fact a real honest-to-god train. An above ground, double-decker, with an ever elusive club car. For some reason I always like being able to take a train into the city so this was cool for me. It was a lot like the CalTrain b/w San Jose and San Francisco.

It turns out that I am in fact the only person in the group who hasn't been to Chicago before so I end up kind of dictating where we go. Right off when you get out of Union Station there's the Sears Tower which is pretty impressive surrounded by the rest of the downtown buildings. I'll let the pictures do the rest of the talking:

The picture in the middle there is the new art installment in the new Millenium Park affectionately known as The Bean. It's done by a man named Anish Kapoor. There's a lot of neat public art in Chicago.



Below is a picture of an installment Picasso did for the city. The story is that they were discussing commissioning him for the piece and he decided it was going to be so ridculously expensive that he would just do it for free. It's a really cool piece. From the front it looks like a dog or a horse, but when you go behind it and slightly to the left, it's the back of a woman's head. Genius.
Sorry its so dark...it was getting late by this point.










This is actually a 50ft digital tower where the face makes all sorts of expressions and then at the end it spits a giant stream of water.

We also happened to luck out and be in Chicago just in time for the annual blues fest. We went in, had some delicious Chicago pizza and some ridiculously expensive beers and jammed out for awhile. Anyways, it was a fun trip. The last pic of the trip is the rarely seen picture of the foursome of Kelly's sisters.

Anyhow, we've been pretty busy so there's plenty more to come. Stay tuned.