A weekend in Chicago

Lily placed well enough in her regional bouldering competition that she was selected to compete in the divisional competition in Chicago.  It was the same weekend Eli needed to return to college, so we thought we'd make a family adventure out of it.

An unseasonably warm January meant that exploring the city in the free hours of that weekend would be much easier.  Oh hindsight, you nasty thing, you.

We took off Friday and headed out in the morning.  The fact that Lily could take some driving shifts helps on long drives such as this.  As someone who really really loves driving, it's tough to give up any driving time to anyone, but when Lily drives we get to chat.  That and she is always happiest when driving, and I like to see her happy.  (Especially in these tumultuous days of high school)

Somehow I managed to miss getting pictures of the Oasis we stopped at in Illinois, but it was a first for the kids - and I hadn't been to one in a very long time.  It was the church of gluttony and consumption that I remembered it.  But we ended up getting a ton of treats and food, as well as some polish kolaczki for our breakfasts.  We really made out like bandits skipping the toll and hitting the oasis.  We saved at least $-35 doing that!

Traffic was as bad as usual but Lily ended up driving into the city and did a great job.  She even got to "assert her dominance" a time or two, under my ever watchful eye, of course.  Our AirBnB was in the Humboldt neighborhood about a mile from the gym where the competition was held.  It was a nice brownstone in a neighborhood of brownstones, and we got the whole second floor.  It was really nice having a room for each kid and one for Jill&me.  They made themselves at home by retreating to their rooms and shutting out the outside world.

We rousted them for a dinner excursion and we walked down to the Ukrainian Village neighborhood to a few restaurants, sure that one of them would work for everyone.  The second one we hit was The Lockdown Bar and Grill and it was perfect.  Eli and I had been talking about gentrification and the state of Uptown in Minneapolis, and I had lamented the loss of the Uptown Bar and Grill, and this place had a similar vibe.

We walked home through an area known as “Paseo Boricua” (or “Puerto Rican Promenade”) and it's bordered by these huge sculptures of the Puerto Rican flag:

Sixty feet tall, spanning the street!

 Our AirBnB was decent, quiet, and had all the comforts of home.  Including a heating system that took a bit to understand and master.  By the time we left we were able to manage.

The competition on Saturday went great!  We dropped Lily off for her isolation time at the gym, and Jill and Eli and I went to a Dunkin Donuts to begin the great destruction of my calorie counting for the weekend.  But those are some tasty donuts.  Don't judge.

We returned with enough time to get good places to watch Lily climb.  At four minutes per climb and only four routes for her class it was over pretty quickly.  In the end, she ended at #16 out of 22, but that's not bad considering it makes her the 16th best in her class for a 12 state group.  We're quite proud.  She was just happy to have gone that far.

I have videos of her climb on my Facebook page but the best photo I took was this picture of her calloused and chalked up hands:

After the competition we went back to let her decompress and we planned the rest of our day.  We had a good portion of the afternoon and all of the evening, so we got out the Chromebook and planned our tourism.  The plan was to uber downtown, snack, tour, then get some amazing Chicago pizza and maybe take a train around town.  We headedto a food hall where everyone had a great choice of foods.  That was the last of the plan.

It had started snowing a little bit by this point, but not even enough to bring winter hats.  Arriving at the food hall we discovered it was closed on weekends, and we were on our own.  Also, it was now snowing quite a bit.  With wind.  And ever cooling cold.  Heading toward Millenium park to see "the bean" we figured we'd find something on the way.  Within a block or two we found our "something" ion the form of the Berghoff.  A classic Chicago restuarant with a heavy German lean, the kids got pretzels the size of your head, and Jill and I got good German fare.  My sausage trio with slaw and potato salad was flat out amazing, and Jill's schnitzle was just as good.  What had intended to be a snack turned into a giant mean and we wouldn't be hungry for hours.  Not to worry, we had a lot of walking and touring to do, so it would be fine.  (Real Life 2, Expectations 0)

By the time we left the restaurant we had discovered a full-on blizzard.  Snow, wind, cold and a poorly outfitted family meant we had to think on the fly.  We ran into the lobby of the Art Institute of Chicago to re-replan.  It was bad enough out that Eli thought maybe the museum wasn't such a bad idea after all.  Problem was that it was closing in less than an hour and we didn't want to spend a ton for a short amount of time.  Not to worry, we can check out the bean and head to the train and head north further into the city for something else, probably indoors.

It felt so much worse than this!

I got my tiny picture of the beginning of Route 66, though!

Venturing to the bean (Cloud Gate) past the ice skaters - they were also clearing snow around the bean and it was fun to watch the other tourists running away. 

Eli didn't actually know what we were going to see until we got there, and thought it was pretty cool.  Lily was pretty cold and de-stressing from the competition, so between that and the weather our evening was starting to look shorter.

And why did the bean smell so strongly of pot?

  

This is going to be the cover art for our first album

Typical reactions to a proper Craig
Tourism Death March

We bailed to the subway and decided to go back and call it a day.  Cold, tired, frustrated but still in moderately good spirits.

Although I was starting to think of ways to clearly tell the guy smoking that he wasn't being sly, it stank, and he should stop.  But I didn't.  Probably for the best.  But boy did he look like he thought nobody knew he was smoking.

This is not posed.

Back to the AirBnB and the comfort of our evening.  We ordered some amazing deep dish local joint pizza and watched The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the desert.  Tired and happy.

Sunday we hit the road early, grabbed some more Dunkin Donuts and headed for Mount Vernon IA.  Part of the drive was on route 30, the Lincoln Highway.  I told Eli when he was older and I was old we would have to drive the Lincoln Highway from New York to San Francisco!  After we dropped Eli (many hugs and well wishes later) we headed home.  For only being two days, it really felt like a much longer trip!  And Lily got a ton of night driving hours in the end.