Prologue

Friday 5/22/2009 - Arrival

We left work at 4 pm. I even shut down my laptop rather than just putting it into standby mode. It seemed more official for a long weekend away. The ride to the airport was a little bit stressful – there had been a rollover and part of the road was closed. We arrived at the airport shortly after 6 o’clock and checked in at a self-service kiosk. We went to McDonald’s for our typical airport fare. We each had burgers and fries and (for some reason unbeknownst to us – it’s not like we “Super-Sized it”) an incredibly huge orange Hi-C. As we sat eating our food, we overheard random bits of conversations. Kristin Hersh always Twitters random eavesdropped snippets when she’s in airports. We were tempted to do the same thing. We overheard some interesting things from a family sitting near us: “So two guys went down onto the moon and the other guy stayed to guard the spaceship…” “Well, Tom and Brett are nice and all, but they’re dirty boys…” We kept ourselves entertained. After eating, we went to gate B35. I went to Dunkies to buy donuts and two bottles of water. There was a lady sitting next to us at the gate with a little puffy white dog. It was vibrating at a high frequency, and made everybody smile as they walked by. When we were boarding the plane, we noticed a cardboard box which was labeled “Fragile, live animals.” We made a couple “Snakes on a Plane” jokes and wondered exactly what type of “animals” they were. The flight took off on time at 8:20 pm. The couple in front of us kept complaining about their bulkhead seats because they couldn’t put luggage at their feet. The woman was very shrill and shrieky. The plane was very chilly at first and I was glad that I had a sweater. It was an uneventful flight that went by very quickly. Craig had a Cran-apple to drink and I had apple juice. As the plane was approaching for arrival, we got a gorgeous view of the city skyline. The city looked so small. We landed at O’Hare 10 minutes early at 9:50. We went to the ground transportation area of the airport and bought a “Pair Fare” on the Go Downtown Shuttle for $40. It had been several years since we had been to Chicago, and on the drive we noticed some significant changes, including the Trump high-rise on the former site of the Chicago Sun-Times building. We got to the Westin Michigan Avenue at around 11 o’clock. It was apparently prom night and there were gussied up high school kids everywhere you looked downtown, including in our hotel lobby. We checked into Room 425. We normally stay at the Omni, but the Westin had had really good rates, so we decided to give it a try. After getting settled in the room, we headed out onto the town. It was a rather chilly 58 degrees. Our hotel was right next to the Hancock Tower. We walked by the Water Tower, which was lit very beautifully. We walked down to North Clark Street, where there were some bars and clubs that we had visited in the past. As we looked around, we noticed that the place where we had bought hot dogs at 2 a.m. on our last trip was no longer there – it was just a building under construction now. A local on a cigarette break outside started to chat with us. We walked down the street past the 2 Blue Chicago clubs. It was nice to see that they are both still around, though The store where they sold merchandise is now closed. We then went into the Clark Street Ale House and sat at a table. Loved their slogan “If you can’t get into heaven, go to Ale’. We started out with a round of tequila shots. Why? Well, we had randomly had tequila shots the last time we were here (2003), and now it somehow seemed like our "thing" (even though we had not had tequila since!) We followed them up with a couple of Two Brothers Dog Days beers for Craig, and a vodka and cranberry juice for me. Then we had a nightcap of tequila shots before heading back to the hotel. On our way out of the bar we picked up a copy of The Onion. We had never had a hard copy of this parody newspaper before; we usually just enjoy it online. We went back to the hotel and went to bed at around 2:30. We realized the fatal flaw with this hotel in the middle of the night. There is a one inch gap under the door, and any noise in the hallway echoes right into the room. We heard some prom attendees yelling at 3:30 and then again at 8 am. It wasn’t the most restful sleep. Perhaps next time we will go back to staying at the Omni.

Water Tower Water Tower Tequila Shots at Clark Street Ale House