So before I start the story of our trip to Chicago, let me fill you in a bit on the backstory.
A few months ago, we were set to go to West Virginia to visit my parents. We'd originally set the timeframe for August, which was then pushed back to early September, then to late September, then to sometime in October, and then canceled entirely when the Delta variant surged in West Virginia and started killing people again. All of this has been well-documented here on the blog and my feelings about not being able to see friends and family back home have not been hidden in any way or not clear at all times -- I am devastated and frustrated that yet another year has gone by where I haven't been able to reconnect with everyone back in West Virginia, though it's not like I really have much of a choice about it.
However, Daisy still had PTO to use, and had already put in for it. When the new firm takes over her company here in a few short months, she does not exactly know yet how PTO will be used, applied, paid out if unused, etc. The new firm apparently has an "unlimited PTO" thing, where employees don't accrue a set number of hours at regular intervals; rather, they can use it when they want. However, her current firm does have a set PTO plan, and it is as of yet unclear as to when or how accrued PTO will pay out once the new folks set up shop. So, therefore, she was taking this week off anyway as sort of a "use it or lose it" effort -- and also, she doesn't really take any time off throughout the year anyway unless she really has to.
I, meanwhile, have fairly "unlimited" accrual of PTO in my own job, as I am salaried and I get a set number of hours added to my bank every pay period. Those hours, with my tenure there, top out at 120, I believe. I will never get there, however, and never have yet -- I always take a few key days off every year, generally around my birthday/Christmas, around/before/after Thanksgiving, and for other reasons (Super Bowl Sunday -- regardless of who's playing -- and our wedding anniversary both immediately spring to mind). I work my required holiday(s) every year and provide backup coverage when necessary the rest of the time, if/when asked, so it's not like I don't fulfill my managerial duties, but it's not like I don't use the vast majority of my paid time. I strongly believe in a work/life balance and with that comes the use of actual PTO when I feel the need.
Well, I'd already set aside time this year -- this fall -- for the West Virginia trip, and had been slowly accruing PTO to use for it. The big holidays for the rest of the year -- Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve/Day -- fall on days I would normally have off or I'd already be paid for as a salaried employee anyway, so looking ahead I knew that I'd use remarkably little holiday PTO this winter. My goal is to almost always have 1-3 days in my bank that I can use if I get sick or there's a household or family emergency/crisis in addition to other scheduled times I need to take off, and for the most part I can usually do that. I think I've taken one, maybe two sick days since we've been working from home, days where they were more mental health days than anything else. Because of this and because I've been saving hours everywhere I reasonably can, I'd accrued about a week's worth of time between the South Dakota trip and now. That time was, of course, going to be used up by the West Virginia trip, but was now just sitting in my bank.
When Daisy told me that she still wanted to go on vacation somewhere, still wanted to do something during her week off in October, it sort of surprised me, but I understood the need. I put in for the week as well, it was accepted, and the days began counting down to when I could and actually would get some mid-fall downtime and breathing space.
We'd gone back and forth on several options. Daisy wanted (initially) to fly to Maine or Florida -- two places she had childhood connections with -- after all, she did live in Florida until she was nine. Most of the time I'm flexible enough, but this time around I was pretty strongly against either trip to either place -- it's far too much money and time, and going on a big vacation somewhere other than to see my parents is sort of like a slap in the face to them -- regardless of whether Covid is raging back home or not. It didn't feel right. Moreover, I needed some downtime at home without any real responsibilities of work or other stresses weighing me down -- I wanted to write, I wanted to clean and watch some television and play a few video games, all things that I don't get nearly enough time to do anymore. I wasn't opposed to going somewhere for a few days, though -- far from it; I wanted us to get out of the house, go do an overnight or two-day trip somewhere relatively close but outside of the city, just to reset our headspaces.
I floated a few ideas, including visiting her sister and family in Denver (said sister will be in town next week, so that wasn't necessary), going back to the Black Hills (hard no from her), or even jumping on one of those like $49 Southwest flights to Vegas for a few days and back. None of these ideas really appealed to her. I also suggested a beautiful nature lodge about an hour or so south of us -- but they're doing some sort of big festival right now and rooms were booked solid at least a month in advance for that.
Daisy eventually came up with two alternate ideas -- going up into the mountains of Colorado and getting a cabin (or somesuch) for a few days, or to go to Chicago and she could finally show me the sights and sounds of the places she loved there.
I want to state for the record here that I was not opposed in the least to going to Colorado -- I like Colorado a lot and the fall foliage there at this time of year is likely quite beautiful. It's also likely not that cold outside there yet, nor is it really "tourist season" anymore up there. But, for as back-to-basics I do occasionally like to be, an isolated cabin somewhere in the woods isn't really my thing. I like my cell phone and I'd like it to work, for one. For two, I like having heating and air conditioning and internet, and I'd rather not be attacked by a bear or mountain lion, or bitten by a rattlesnake or somesuch, without being able to at least get medical attention in a reasonable amount of time. So on the cabin aspect of it, I was lukewarm at best -- that's something I'd like to do with a big group of the family involved, like the South Dakota trip. More warm bodies means more backup when the bear decides he no longer fears mankind. I told Daisy that if we chose Colorado, we had to have an actual goal/destination in mind too -- we would need to be going to X city for Y reason(s) to do Z activity/activities. It couldn't be "let's just drive into the wilderness and find a cabin to rent" -- that's how horror movies start. Daisy's parents suggested Estes Park, a "city" that I think is missing the letter "T" from its name, or Breckinridge. Estes Park has an elevation of 7,522 feet. Breckinridge has an elevation of 9,600 feet.
I am a fat diabetic former smoker who currently vapes -- I like being able to breathe, too. Breathing is a thing. It is my jam.
When Daisy first floated Chicago as a possibility, I wasn't immediately turned off by it or anything of the sort. I found it...intriguing. I knew of her history with the city -- she used to go there at least once or twice a year with friends when she was in her twenties, before she and I got together (and at least once or twice after we became a couple, but before our marriage). And, unlike a lot of other possible destinations, Chicago isn't incredibly far from us. Deadwood and Sturgis were farther away, by a significant amount of drive time. So I was certainly open to it. To me, it was a far better idea than trying to fly somewhere or drive 10+ hours one-way (not to mention the drive back, which would also take the same amount of time).
So, Chicago it was. She found us a hotel the night before we left, booked two nights there (Wednesday and Thursday, with a return on Friday) and everything was all good to go....or so it seemed.
This post is the story of that trip, from start to finish. So, make a sandwich, settle real nice into whatever chair you're currently sitting in and get comfortable, because you're about to hear about how badly I ignored the fact that I'm diabetic for three days.
Enjoy.
Wednesday, October 13:
When Daisy plans a trip, she usually does so very meticulously. When possible, it is figured out a few weeks in advance, we get our affairs in order around the house -- making sure the cats have enough food and water, every door and window is locked, every system that can be shut down is shut down, security cameras are functional and at the proper angles -- etc.
I am no stranger to this mentality either -- if I know I'm going somewhere, my bag(s) are packed and ready to go as early as possible. I always include incidentals like a bar of soap, Q-tips, bandages, dirty laundry bag, eyeglass wipes, extra juices/coils/tanks/other vape materials, some alternate form of entertainment (usually a book) and at least one more "outfit" (shoes, pants, underwear, shirt, socks) than I'll need. I don't like being caught off guard and I like being unprepared for any eventual or possible problem even less.
As an aside, I've been asked "why a book? why not just your phone, or your laptop or a game system?" If you don't understand why a book is important for a vacation when the other things 100% are not, you obviously don't go on many vacations and/or are too screen-addicted. Put the electronic device down, for once.
This time around, however, because of the short duration of the trip and because of the actual short notice/timeframe, neither of us really did this. I was haphazardly, almost languidly packing my suitcase up with non-gang colors as best I knew how. You may laugh at that last sentence, but I'm a white tourist who will stick out as one in Chicago no matter how hard I try not to, so let's not draw any more unwanted attention to myself than absolutely necessary.
We had a rough plan in place -- get in the car around 9 or 10am, and just drive. Get to Chicago around nightfall, order some food for carryout or delivery to the hotel, or go to one of the vegan restaurants Daisy has had her eyes on for days, then pass out for the night.
This...did not happen.
A small note about the weather and about Daisy's mindset -- the night before we leave on any trip, I encourage Daisy to go to bed early so that she can get as much sleep as possible before the drive. This almost never happens. Her mind/body won't let her, almost like she's a kid on Christmas Eve. I don't know if it's excitement or anxiety, but her insomnia has been awful as of late anyway.
Around 2am or so on Tuesday night, we had the storms roll through the area that we'd been expecting to roll through during that timeframe for a few days. They brought some pretty strong winds and some hard, torrential rain for about an hour or two, but no damage to anything (at least not that I saw). I slept through most of it and only vaguely remember hearing the thunder and rain through my sleep, but Daisy was wide awake through all of it -- she didn't go to bed until after 5am...when our plan was to be on he road by 9 or 10.
At this point I have learned to expect from Daisy that we'll never leave when we say we will -- we generally have to add five or six hours to the start time for one reason or another. A number of factors go into that -- it can at times be my own anxiety (such as the storms and power outages prior to the South Dakota trip), and other times it can be Daisy's own anxiety and, well, laziness and lack of follow-through when it comes to sticking to a schedule. I don't mind a bit of flexibility, but when I was planning to be halfway to my destination and instead I'm still sitting in my office banging away on a blog post or scrolling through Facebook endlessly while I'm waiting for her to get her proverbial shit together, that's sometimes more of a problem for me than I'd like to admit.
By the way, it's good that we didn't choose to go back to the Black Hills -- the same storm system that brought all of the rain and wind and storms to us dumped 22.5 inches of snow on Deadwood in the span of 18 hours or so. The town looks like a winter wonderland, and it's on the news and the like. So, fun.
Anyway, getting back to my original point, while I waited on Daisy to get her shit together, I slowly, languidly packed my suitcase. I took allergy pills. I threw my old pill bottles, each with a few pills left, into my suitcase and said "good enough." I showered and got dressed for the day. I put travel notices on the two credit cards I'd be taking with me and using for the trip, each with a good bit of space/limit on them to where I wouldn't have to worry about paying for meals or incidentals. I threw in a few extra coils and one of my unopened bottles of juice from the shipment that the postal service was holding hostage, an extra charging cable for my actual vape devices, two disposable masks, two cloth masks, some cold/sinus medicine and decongestant, my bottle of stop-pooping pills (which I figured may become incredibly necessary, likely, when both of us are eating a lot of different foods from way outside our normal diets), and on a whim tossed a comb and a bottle of antacids into the suitcase as well. I wanted to be prepared for most any occasion. I always do this at least a little bit when I travel, even for short trips -- it's better to have and not need than need and not have, after all. I helped her get stuff out of the car, brought in the trash cans, got the mail (which had already arrived for the day), made sure the cats had plenty of food and water (she took care of readying the litter pans), got a bit of food in my stomach as well as my first pills of the day, charged and reloaded my mp3 player (even though I wasn't bringing it with me), charged up and refilled both vape devices, and...waited.
Daisy was finally ready to go a little before 4pm, so that's when we closed up shop and actually left the house. The delay, however, meant that there was no way we were going to be in Chicago before any of the vegan food places Daisy wanted to get dinner from were closed for the night. That meant we'd have to make do with what we had. Sometimes this is easier said than done, and sometimes I shove two pieces of pizza and the remainder of my cheesy bread from my Dominos order earlier in the week directly into my face-hole.
When going on a road trip, one can only prepare for so much. For me, the last real road trip we were on was the trip to South Dakota -- also a trip that had us leaving Omaha during the later afternoon/evening hours -- in this case, it was a lot of "prepare for driving in the dark and navigating the third largest city in the country by streetlights and GPS only to get to your hotel."
The hotel let Daisy know on our reservation confirmation that if we would be arriving after 9pm for our check-in, we'd need to call ahead to let them know. For some reason. The details on it weren't the clearest on the whys. So we called them while we were sitting in the driveway, as we knew even then we wouldn't be there until around midnight or later, and the guy who answered the phone sounded aloof, high, and confused as to why we'd feel the need to call and let them know -- with sort of a "yeah, okay, and?" sort of attitude.
"Dude sounded stoned," I said, once we were off the phone. I can't remember whether Daisy agreed or not.
And with that, we were on the road. We passed into Iowa almost immediately, and hit Illinois around 10pm or so. During the trip, I burned out the battery on my stick vape mod almost completely -- my old, trusty Smok Stick One Plus that I've owned for about...oh, six years now. Not an issue -- for road trips, I always plug in the charging cable to our USB charger in the car and let it charge back up. I plugged it in, and it didn't light up. Huh. That's interesting. I unplugged it, plugged in my other mod, the Eleaf iStick Melo I've been using as my daily mod for about three years, and it lit up and started charging...for about a minute or so. I unplugged and plugged it in again, and it did the same thing.
Huh, I thought. Cable must be going bad. I held the cable into the charging socket with my thumb, and the iStick charged normally. I did this with the Stick One Plus as well, and nothing. Well, shit. I held the cable firm into the charging socket of the iStick for over an hour to make sure it would continue to charge while we drove. This was all mildly concerning, but not overly so -- I brought a spare charge cable in my suitcase, and you can get a micro USB cable pretty much anywhere at any gas station or truckstop, grocery store or Walmart. I wasn't concerned.
It was a long, dark, boring drive -- until we actually entered Chicago.
For those of you who haven't driven to Chicago before, I will say that driving into town in the middle of the night in the middle of the week is a great idea. There's no sarcasm there at all -- I truly mean this. There's no traffic, very very few people around on the streets (if anyone) once you get off the main highways and thoroughfares, and this allows you to navigate the area you need to go to without blocking traffic or running over pedestrians. This is great when you have zero idea whatsoever where you're going and your GPS keeps throwing incorrect directions at you, and/or wants you to drive down streets that are closed for construction (or whatever). As you could probably guess, this is what happened to us. Getting to Chicago was easy. Getting to the hotel once we were there was a nightmare.
We stayed at the City Suites Hotel, an independent hotel with great reviews that ended up having a few things going for it, which we found out once we were there:
1.It's big but not too big, and is quite literally next to/halfway attached to the Belmont L train station
2. It is dead center to the area we wanted to be in and explore (Boystown, which they're now calling Northalsted (yes, spelled like that) because it's on the north side and the prime street for it is Halsted)
3. The entire time we were there -- from Wednesday overnight to Friday morning, though I'm getting a little ahead of myself -- we saw no other hotel guests whatsoever until we were checking out, and only interacted with three members of the hotel staff/cleaning crew
4. It was so cheap -- probably the most inexpensive hotel I've ever spent a vacation in, and
5. Our room was huge, gorgeous, and quite well-equipped/designed/fashioned.
Our only real drawback, at least on getting in and out of the place, was that parking was in a pay garage around the corner from and a block behind the hotel. This meant that you had to pack light and suitcases that roll on wheels are absolutely necessary -- and anything too heavy to carry for a block as you walk down the street and get up to the hotel (or the other way, going back to the car) is gonna be really rough. We knew about this beforehand, of course, and tried to pack accordingly -- it was a quick trip, so it's not like I was trying to take the whole house with me, just the essentials I'd need for two days, two nights and an extra change of clothes/shoes in the event we had any problems.
But I also had my cooler with me.
Let me explain. A few months ago, when I saw it on sale way cheap on Amazon for like $15, I purchased an Igloo Playmate cooler. I know you've seen them before, because almost everyone and their brother has one. It's the little red thing with the sliding lid:
If you've never owned one of these coolers, your parents or grandparents did -- even if it wasn't in this particular red/white color scheme. They were everywhere in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, and never really went away -- they just got some subtle redesigns here and there as the years went on.
Well, I never owned one before, and I really wanted one for trips...such as the trip to South Dakota and this trip to Chicago, so I picked one up and basically, well, put it in storage until it was needed.
The only reason I ever pull out the cooler is so that I can put energy drinks, string cheeses, sandwich stuff, and V8s into it and keep these things cold -- and if not "cold," at least cool enough to not really think about or worry about if it sits closed in the back of a car or a hotel room table for a day or so. For the trip to Chicago, I'd purchased some various energy drinks, which I loaded into the cooler along with some V8s and a few of Daisy's sodas, filled a gallon ziploc bag with ice from the freezer, and shoved all of that and a few handfuls of string cheeses into it before sealing it up. The problem is, when that cooler is full of ice and cans of liquid, it gets heavy. And it's not something you end up wanting to lug with you a block up the street to a hotel room in the middle of the night.
Daisy had her own issues -- her suitcase is much larger than mine and contains heavier items like her hair dryer, shoes, our vitamins and medications, makeup, etc etc along with her clothing -- which she always packs an extensive array of to suit any occasion. Especially if she's going to try to glam herself up before we go out somewhere for the day. In addition to her giant suitcase, she also was carrying the multiple shopping bags of dry goods/foods we'd snack on throughout the trip, so it was a cumbersome mess. Both of us were having some transport issues lugging the stuff a block up the street to the hotel, and because we'd been driving for eight hours or so at this juncture, we were both stiff, cranky, and exhausted.
We got our room keys at the front desk and checked in (at like 1am) and made our way up to the fourth floor -- where our room was. It was all the way at the end of the hall on the corner of the building, which meant the room itself was bracket shaped, like a ] style of shape. It was a "King Suite," meaning each end of the bracket was its own room space joined by a hallway. The front end housed a desk, some chairs, a couch, the fridge, and a wall-mounted TV; the back end was the bedroom and bathroom, dresser, and giant picture window that looked out on the L train as well as the far end of Boystown...and a second fridge (the mini-bar) and a second wall-mounted TV.
And the room was nice. I am not exaggerating when I say this room was nicer than some places I've lived. It was immaculately clean and well-kitted, the air conditioner was ice cold, there were ceiling fans in the rooms that were high-powered and moved air around like crazy, and the bed was the softest, most comfortable hotel bed I've ever slept in, in all my travels. I was delighted.
However, not everything was great. Once we settled in, I plugged in my stick to the charging cable again, and the light was still not coming on. I looked at the cable itself, because the fit into the vape device felt really loose. The plug end looked, well, bent. I fiddled with it a bit and it very easily snapped off, right in my hand. It must have been in the process of breaking for a few days or weeks.
No matter, I had the spare cable in my bag, and I needed to charge both vapes anyway, so I found it and pulled it out. I tested it on my normal mod, the iStick, and it sprung to life and began charging immediately. That mod was almost at a full charge, so I plugged in the Stick and...nothing.
Son of a bitch, I thought. I'd just had to trash an identical mod (in a different color) last week because the fire button had broken on it and would no longer press, which made it into a colorful battery-shaped tube and nothing else. I tested it a second time. Still nothing. I wondered if the bad cable had shorted and had burned out the control mechanism or the charging port. I looked into the port -- no scorches, wasn't getting hot, no dust in it or anything -- looked normal. But it was dead. I sighed and tossed both the old broken cable and the Stick mod itself into the trash, while thinking well, I bought the charging cable on the trip to Colorado a while back, and now I'm throwing it away on yet another trip. But, that's two mods that have died on me in the span of a week or so. I'm trying not to purchase any more actual hardware if I can possibly avoid it, because I'm just trying to use what I have so I can kick the habit overall, but I'm running out of working devices that I can carry with me and use everyday without needing to change batteries multiple times, which is frustrating. If my iStick blows out (and it will eventually, make no mistake) I'll really be fucked.
Oh well, though. I had the good charging cable and one working mod, so I was fine. I wrapped the tank of the dead mod up in a ziploc bag and tucked it away for the remainder of the trip. The tank, coil, and juice in it was still just fine.
By the time all of this was done, it was close to 3am. I don't remember much more other than that; I ate a few string cheeses and took my metformin for the night before I let sleep take me.
Thursday, October 14:
When I awoke to the sound of traffic and construction noise outside, I could see around the window edges that it was daytime once more. I got up, walked into the other room (the "living room" area of the suite) in my t-shirt and boxers, and pulled open the curtains. It was 8:30 in the morning, it was cloudy and gray, and below me on the street -- maybe 50, 60 feet below -- cars were backed up in rush hour traffic. Across the street from the hotel, on a cross street, I watched a construction crew working first with a jackhammer, and then lifting a cap and going down into the manhole to run some wiring. The trains, which had the station attached to the opposite side of the hotel, were running, and I was at the same level as the people standing on the platforms looking at their phones. On the sidewalks, people were walking holding hands, or pushing baby strollers -- going into shops or just getting to their jobs. The city was alive. It was the complete opposite of what it had been nine hours prior.
The wife got up a short while later and we planned our attack for the day, so to speak. We had noon reservations at The Chicago Diner -- the most famous vegan restaurant in the area (probably the tri-state area, actually), and it was a sort of religious pilgrimage to go there for Daisy. She's gone to The Chicago Diner every time she's been in Chicago. She has two of the Chicago Diner's cookbooks (at least one of which I've purchased for her myself). Daisy is a fan of this place, and I'm not kidding. She's a fan of the vegan restaurants like I'm a fan of sports teams or Star Trek. So, of course, we were going.
As an aside, I'd been looking forward to going there as well. The Chicago Diner has what is known to be a legendary vegan chicken fried steak as well as a legendary vegan reuben. I can't remember the last time I had a chicken fried steak, vegan or otherwise, and Daisy has a thing for reuben sandwiches. I don't know why, but in almost every vegan restaurant we go to, she gets the reuben either to eat there or to go. So, we've had some reubens of various quality over the years.
Yes, I took this photo myself.
The Chicago Diner was maybe a ten-minute walk from our hotel. In the Boystown area of Chicago, most everything you'd want is within a few minutes' walking distance. There's a Target, a movie theater, some record stores, liquor/smoke/vape shops, bookstores, various clothing stores, music/performing venues (including the Laugh Factory, which we walked by a few times) bars, dance clubs, churches, multiple restaurants, hair salons, sex shops -- you name it. Living in this area of Chicago, if you could afford it, you would want for very little.
Except for like, parking. I told Daisy that if I lived here, I'd just get one of those electric bikes, the ones that are like electrified mopeds, and just use that to get around everywhere. Because you're not parking anywhere in Chicago unless you're lucky enough to get a parking spot at like 6am.
Anyway, I digress.
We made our way to the Chicago Diner and sat down inside. Daisy ordered the reuben and some sort of kill-my-diabetes milkshake with whipped cream and mini chocolate chips in it, and I ordered the chicken fried steak and a side of poutine.
Before I go further, I want to say that I know that the foods I'm going to describe during the rest of this trip were and are horrible for me. I get that; I completely understand and recognize it. But I also believe in the adage of "rare and appropriate." A vacation to the third biggest city in the country is rare and appropriate enough for me to enjoy myself, especially when I've been eating like a rabbit for the past several months. A few meals in the big city isn't going to derail me from my diet any more than a hearty meal here at home would. Your diet, and your lifestyle, has to be live-able -- diabetes or not, fat or not.
The chicken fried steak was...eh. It wasn't anything super-special. Daisy agreed, and said that she thought it was a bit lackluster as well, or maybe she was just ecstatic to get it the last time she had it there because, at the time, it was really hard to get any really good vegan food in a restaurant anywhere. She and I split it between us and did the same with her reuben, which was amazing. The poutine was, however, incredibly lackluster -- not a thick enough, salty enough, or dark enough gravy, and the cheese was a cheese sauce, not curds as it should have been. The fries were fine. Overall, it was okay, but not great. We still ate most of it.
Stuffed with food and needing to digest, we left the Chicago Diner and moved on to some...drag-oriented vintage clothing store and thrift shop in the heart of Boystown. Daisy had bought wigs there before and was excited to go back. It was interesting, and the staff was helpful and kind (which I noticed was a trend in Boystown) and we spent well over an hour there -- it had an upstairs and a downstairs and Daisy was 100% in her element. She ended up buying several pairs of earrings, a pair of shoes, a pair of rainbow socks, and probably some other odds and ends that I didn't really keep track of.
Something else I need to mention -- Chicago has a hardcore mask mandate. As in, you wear a mask indoors, anywhere indoors, regardless of your vaccination status. It's a city statute and punishable by fine, so it is very required and many places of business even have signs up on the door that say "no mask, no service" or other various "we'll throw you out" verbiage for anyone who's anti-mask. The only exception is when you're sitting down at a table/eating in a restaurant...so it extends to every store you go into, every shop, the hotel, everywhere, even if you're only inside for a moment. This was, needless to say, inconvenient and sometimes frustrating, but we made do with it. No other choice, really. When I'd done my Tommy Wiseau underwear orders a few months back, one of the free gifts that came with said orders were some really nice semi-disposable KN-95 masks. So I took those with me (and still had two backups of other cloth masks in my suitcase as well, lest I break a string or something).
After that store, we wandered back up the street, bags in tow, to go someplace I really wanted to go into -- an Out of the Closet thrift store. I don't know how many of you are familiar with Out of the Closet, but they're a nonprofit charity thrift store where 96% of proceeds go to the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, providing housing and medical care to folks with HIV. There's a handful of them in a good chunk of the larger cities, especially those cities with large HIV-positive populations, but I'd never been inside one before.
Once inside, it was pretty standard thrift store fare with a few notable exceptions -- for one, they had a built-in pharmacy and free STD/HIV testing walk-in, onsite -- and for two, the stuff they had was surprisingly great and at decent prices, which is something I hadn't really seen in Chicago up to this point.
Let me be clear -- if you have the money, love thrift/vintage clothing stores, and are of average size, shape, and build -- Chicago will be your goddamn jam. I don't know if I've ever been someplace else that has as many vintage clothing stores as Chicago does, all with some simply amazing clothing to offer, most of it in fantastic shape. I just wouldn't fit into any of it and/or would not pay the asking prices for most of it. Paying $40 for a "vintage" band t-shirt that's heavily worn and less than 20 years old, or for a ugly Christmas sweatshirt from the 80s that's faded and worn badly isn't my scene. If it were cool and were in my size, I might consider it for the kitcsh value alone, but I'm not that person. I'm sure a lot of those people exist in Chicago and I'm sure a lot of them must go nuts for that sort of stuff, since there are clothes stores full of it, but as it's out of my price range and I'm too fat for all of it...meh.
Anyway, in Out of the Closet, the first rack I looked at had a really nice plaid short-sleeve button up shirt in my size for $8, and it looked barely worn. I grabbed it. While Daisy wandered the clothing racks in the women's section, I scanned through the rest of the store. They had a decent electronics section, including some fancy wireless routers and small kitchen appliances like espresso machines for pretty reasonable prices, but I didn't need any of those things and I wasn't about to carry them all around the city for the rest of the day. I scanned through the book racks and found a like-new copy of Piper Kerman's Orange is the New Black for a dollar, which I've been meaning to pick up and read for years, so I snagged that. I kept trying to go to the rack with all the CDs/DVDs/games on it, but there was literally a guy in front of it the whole time we were in the store, going through the discs one by one. At a glance, there wasn't really anything I was too interested in anyhow.
As Daisy was wrapping up, I wandered by the shoe rack, which caught my eye. I normally ignore the shoes at thrift stores, primarily because I have some issues with used shoes -- it just feels squicky to wear someone's old shoes, to stick your feet into a receptacle for someone else's old foot sweat. But my eyes fixated on a pair of black leather sneaker/dress-ish shoes, and they were in my size. I looked them over -- they were a little dusty (but nothing a wet wipe couldn't get off) but otherwise looked pretty fresh out of the box, maybe worn five or six times, if that. I turned them over and saw Kenneth Cole written on the bottom. Holy shit, I thought, these are $200 shoes, easy.
I looked at the tag. Size 13, $5. Had arrived on the shelf on September 27.
Five dollars? There was no way in hell I was going to pass that up. Along with my book and shirt, and a few items Daisy had picked up along the way, the shoes were purchased. I was so ecstatic about it that I whipped out my credit card faster than Daisy could get hers out and paid for everything myself -- I was whisper-screaming to Daisy in the clothing racks that they were $200 shoes when new, and there was nothing wrong with them but a little dust I could clean off.
As an aside, out of curiosity, I looked up the "model name" or what have you online once I got home, just to see what they were going for new or used on the internet:
...yeah, they sell for $225 new, I was right. And this particular used pair in the photo above was selling for $94.
I got a fantastic deal. I don't know how new/old the shoes I got are, or what year(s) this model was manufactured or anything, but mine are in great shape and almost look as nice as the picture.
We wandered around in and out of a few other thrift shops, where Daisy was able to find a cute bracelet in one and a mood ring in another, and we took a ton of pictures of the area, the city, and of each other. My gallery of these photos is already up on Facebook, if you're one of my friends on there and care to take a look. Daisy plans to edit through and upload all of her own photos later tonight.
It was around this point where we were both getting tired and needed to use the bathroom and get off our feet -- the other thing about Chicago is that nowhere you go has a bathroom to use. At least not for customers. I'd had two energy drinks already that day, not to mention two big glasses of water from The Chicago Diner, and I didn't know how much longer my bladder would hold out. We'd also walked a few miles and I'd been on my feet pretty much nonstop, so my feet were killing me and my knee joints were starting to seize up on me worse than a rusted Chevelle, so I knew it was time for me to get off my feet and legs.
So we went back to the hotel, where I drained every bit of pee out of me, cracked open and drank about 2/3 of a huge bottle of water (one of four giant bottles of water I'd purchased at a rando gas station in the middle of Iowa the night before), and...I don't remember much else because I passed out in the bed, mid-afternoon, for a few hours.
When I awoke, it was almost dark. Daisy had relaxed as well while I was asleep, but at this point, wanted to get out and do something in the evening, since we were really only there for the day, night, and morning of Friday before we'd kick off back down the road to Omaha. I certainly understood this, of course -- short trip, maximize your time, etc. We also needed to get something to eat for the evening hours, as we hadn't had anything since the Chicago Diner. Daisy had been looking up restaurants when we were still at home, even, and she found some place we'd never heard of called Kitchen 17 -- a little hole in the wall vegan restaurant fashioned, primarily, to be a vegan deep dish pizza place, but with lots of other entrees and options, too.
Kitchen 17 was about a fifteen minute walk away, but was still fairly close to the hotel. Daisy wanted a pizza -- I'd been pizza'd out after the recent Dominos order, half of which I left in the fridge when we'd left Omaha, but the menu had a lot of other little things on it that sounded good when I'd glanced at it before we'd left on our trip. I was sure I'd find something I wanted and something interesting. So, I put the same clothes back on I'd started the day in -- as I hadn't showered yet -- and off we went toward Kitchen 17.
I will note that we must have picked the perfect days to take our trip, as even well after dark in Chicago, the weather was warm and comfortable, with a slight breeze. We weren't cold or uncomfortable in the least; it had to be in the high 60s still. We also noticed that people are very out-and-about in the Boystown region after dark, even on weeknights -- but not to a stifling, thick-with-bodies on the sidewalks degree, for the most part. I noted in my head that the entire vibe of this part of the city seemed free-spirited and casual. Nobody seemed angry or stressed out -- far from it, in fact. I saw a lot of people who appeared to be really happy and enjoying life, walking their dogs or laughing and joking as they walked down the street with their friends to get food or see a show or what have you. I imagined what living in Chicago must be like, and what it really felt like to be in a big city in the upper midwest. It's been mentioned/compared that in DC Comics, the city of Metropolis -- Superman's city -- was originally modeled on Chicago (Gotham City was a stand-in for New York, Coast City was a stand-in for Los Angeles, Central City was a stand-in for a mix of all the other big cities of the midwest, like St. Louis, Kansas City, etc, and National City appears to be a stand-in for the Pacific northwest/northern California -- San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, etc etc). I'm not sure in current canon how much of those templates are still followed as different writers over the years have arbitrarily changed around locations and geography, but I can absolutely get Chicago as a Metropolis-like city, especially when you're downtown and the high-rises tower above you.
Kitchen 17 was a very small restaurant, maybe 3x the size of our living room for the dining floor. There was a small kitchen/bar/counter area in the back, and it was very obvious the place used to be a little bookstore, coffee shop, or bodega at some point due to the architecture, but it was a cute little place. At 8pm on a weeknight, however, we were the only customers there -- which surprised me. We ordered at the counter; Daisy got a vegan New York-style jalapeno popper pizza, and I ordered the vegan chicken platter, which came with a side salad and vegan mac and cheese. The place closed at 9, so we knew we'd have to eat fast and then box up what was left.
We had the food and were mostly finished eating by 8:30. It was fast.
The jalapeno popper pizza was...ehhh. It wasn't bad at all, but it wasn't great. It had a lot of sauce on it, the vegan cheese was passable, and the jalapeno poppers were flattened onto/melted onto the pizza. It wasn't something we'd order again, but we weren't mad at it -- you know the old saying, "even bad pizza is still pizza"? Well, substitute the word mediocre in there and you will understand our feelings on it.
My chicken platter, however, was superb. The side salad and their homemade house ranch vegan dressing was really good and the mac and cheese was pretty good and reminded me of when Daisy makes it at home herself, but the chicken...oh my, the house-made vegan breaded seitan chicken with buffalo sauce was, hands down, some of the best vegan chicken I've ever had. The texture was great, the spicing was great, the breading and buffalo sauce were amazing. I told the guy running the place (who appeared to be the owner) that it was some of the best vegan chicken I've ever had, and he blushed and got all bashful when he thanked me. It was cute.
While we were there, another couple came in and ordered something else off the menu that Daisy and I almost got; I can't remember what it was now, but it looked great as well. We'll definitely return to this place when we go back to Chicago. I just hope they're still around and in business when we do, because they didn't appear to be doing a whole lot of business that night. That's disheartening for what may be the best kept vegan chicken secret in Chicago.
Fully stuffed and finding it hard to move, Daisy and I left the restaurant and headed back the way we came. By this time it was well after 9pm and a lot of the foot traffic through our part of the city had died down, meaning we were able to take a relaxing, leisurely walk/stroll back to the hotel on the side streets, just taking in the Chicago experience. This included a good number of pictures of us together in cool places, as well as just...some relaxed banter between us.
Internally, I was struggling a bit. My feet and knees had not completely recovered from all the walking we'd done earlier in the day, and were sore and hurting me much more than usual. Coupled with a full stomach, even with my nap, I was pretty tired. Daisy had mentioned before dinner that she was interested in going dancing/drag karaoke singing (or something like that) at a bar across the street from our hotel, but because of my fatigue and pain I wasn't into that idea at all. I truthfully wasn't into it before we'd left the hotel to go to dinner, which she knew, but I gave her a "maybe" at that point because I wanted her to enjoy herself.
Once we got closer to the hotel, there was an ice cream shop we'd noticed earlier in our travels that day, which proudly proclaimed that they sold many vegan flavors on their window display. There were a fair number of people inside, and it was a cute little place. I only wish I remembered what the name of it was now, but it was, basically, adjacent to our hotel. Not that either of us were hungry, but because we knew it would be a fun little experience and would likely be our last real Chicago experience before we left in the morning, we went inside.
This place sold something called Ube ice cream. Neither of us had ever heard of it before or seen it before -- it was a deep, dark lavender purple. I expected it to be grape-ish flavored. Daisy got a scoop of that (it's vegan) and a scoop of the vegan mint chip.
Ube, as it turns out, is a tuber of some sort -- a yam/sweet potato sort of vegetable -- and the purple color is 100% natural. That's just the color of them. The flavor was very clean and sweet, with a little nuttiness, and in the ice cream itself some vanilla and coconut milk had been added to give it its consistency. I'd 100% try it again. While we were there, enjoying our ice cream, the shop owner came up to us (we were obviously not his "regulars," so to speak) and told us what it was made from and how they made it in-house, asked if we'd ever been there before, etc. He was kind and warm in a way I've come to associate with most folks in Chicago at this point -- Omaha people are rude and invade your personal space and generally are pretty brusque -- Chicagoans are kind, and funny, and especially in little mom-and-pop owned businesses like this shop appeared to be (as well as the restaurants we went to) grateful and truly happy that you'd choose to give them your business. These people are social. I couldn't believe how truly wonderful the people seemed to be in that city.
The ice cream was amazing. Daisy and I wanted to come back to get more for breakfast the next morning, but unfortunately the shop did not open until the mid-afternoon.
By this time it was well after 10pm and the ice cream shop was closing up for the night, so we left, made a turn, walked twenty steps, and we were at the hotel lobby. I was full of chicken platter and ice cream (as well as two slices of Daisy's wholly mediocre pizza) and my body was achy from all the sugar and carbs I'd loaded into my diabetic ass for the past two days. We took the elevator back upstairs and once back in our room, Daisy sat down for some quiet time with her phone. I charged mine, as well as my one working vape, and took a wonderfully hot, comfortable shower in the large tub shower in the large bathroom in our suite -- after which I laid down in that comfortable as fuck bed, played on my phone for a bit, and eventually felt sleep taking me. I turned off the lamp and rolled over, and I was out.
Friday, October 15:
...until 4am.
I awoke slowly over a long period of time, perhaps an hour or more. I did not feel quite right. Have you ever felt so ill out of nowhere that it's awakened you from a dead sleep? Yeah, that's what I was feeling. Once I was fully conscious, I knew there was something wrong.
I very gingerly, quietly rolled out of bed so as to not wake Daisy (I'd passed out hours before, so I had no idea when she'd actually come to bed and gone to sleep) and made my way to the bathroom, where I violently shit my guts out for about half an hour straight. And I mean that, too -- it was pretty continual. Thankfully, I'd packed flushable wipes and a matchbook in my go-bag for the trip.
When I was done, traumatized, I stumbled back to bed and slept for another hour or two before waking up again and doing it all over again. This time, there was a good deal of nausea involved.
I was terrified; this was not good, this was not good at all. We had an 8+ hour drive back to Omaha ahead of us, coupled with many stretches of road without publicly-accessible restrooms (or any restrooms, for that matter) along the way. I was convinced that I'd either contracted a stomach flu or some sort of food poisoning.
When the room stopped spinning that second time around and my butthole felt raw (yeah, you're welcome for that visual), I was able to get my bearings a bit more. I felt okay after round two -- a little queasy but not really sick. It was nearing 7am at this point, maybe closer to 8, and once I felt that I was good enough to move, I went back to the bed -- where, as I wasn't vomiting, I ate a little something and cracked open a Monster so that I could take my pills.
You're all right, Brandon, I kept telling myself. It's okay. Everything's fine. I'm not sure I trusted my own thoughts at this juncture, as I knew that when you have the stomach flu or food poisoning, you will have those in-between times where you feel perfectly fine, perfectly normal, between the pain and sick. Those of you who have had it before know what I'm talking about. Every time you leave the bathroom, you'll think it's done, and that you're okay -- that you got it all out of you -- only to go running back in there twenty minutes later.
Over the course of the next hour, while Daisy slept peacefully, I gradually began feeling better and better. By the time it was daylight outside I knew that it was going to be a passing thing and not an all-day, all-night shitfest (literally). By the time Daisy began waking up -- to find me sitting in bed next to her playing Pokemon Go and casually sipping a Monster as if it were fine coffee -- I was back to complete normal.
In hindsight now, writing this after we've been back home for a bit, I now know that it was my body's response to stuffing it with a bunch of different foods -- high calorie, high-carb foods with little nutritional value aside from the fact that they were all vegan. I'd eaten a lot on this trip, and all of it was stuff that I'd never normally put into my body. Also consider that in the two days leading up to the trip I'd eaten an abnormal amount of Dominos pizza, and that during the trip itself, to keep my energy levels up, I'd been drinking Monsters and Rockstars like they were water. My body probably had no clue what the fuck I was doing to it. My meds -- the metformin and allopurinol -- were probably throwing up their proverbial hands and being like "fuck this guy, I have no clue why he's doing this to himself."
But man, that chicken platter was good.
Ahem. Anyway.
Well after 9am, we both got up and dressed for the day and started packing everything up. I had everything mostly packed already, but was having trouble stuffing my new shoes and the shoes I'd worn into my suitcase along with all the other stuff. Eventually I just laid flat on my stomach on top of the suitcase and used my body weight/counter-pressure to get it to zip closed. Up until the last few seconds before 11am, Daisy was running around the suite making sure she'd packed up everything and even asked if I'd doublechecked things as well (I had, because I'm me), before we unceremoniously checked out of the hotel and made our block-long trek back to the car in broad daylight, lugging suitcases and a cooler.
We could not have looked more like tourists if we were wearing Hawaiian shirts and straw hats, or if we'd had some of that green sunblock on our noses.
Mind you, this was the first time we'd been back to the car, and to the parking garage itself, since we'd parked the car there on Wednesday night. I wasn't even sure that the car would still be there -- I'm paranoid about that sort of thing. Multi-level parking garages in downtown Chicago are fairly sketch anyway, and the last thing I wanted was for us to lug all of our shit back to the car to find that it wasn't even there, or that the windows had been smashed out and the interior stripped, etc. Yeah, we were in one of the better areas, but Chicago is still Chicago.
We found the car intact, because of course we did -- my paranoia will almost always be just that, paranoia -- and loaded the suitcases and cooler into it. But we weren't just up and leaving the city -- for one, we needed to get something to eat, and for two, Daisy wanted us to explore a little more first before we made the trip back to Omaha.
I will note that Friday morning was chilly and there was a bit of a cold, misty drizzle coming down. Not enough to soak you, but enough to make you mildly uncomfortable if you had to be out in it for more than a few minutes. We'd decided we were going to get our lunch (and probably some food to go) from Native Foods, the closest thing to a vegan food "chain" we were going to find -- they have multiple locations in multiple states, including four locations just in Chicago alone. This is also likely the only one of these restaurants you may have heard of if you're not vegan/vegetarian, as they have a very popular, bestselling cookbook that's been on the market for many years (we have it; I bought it for Daisy several years ago). It also just so happened that the closest one of these four Native Foods locations was...legit three minutes up the block from the hotel and even on the same street. I did not know this until Friday morning, though Daisy did. If I would've known we probably would have gone there more than once.
Anyway, I digress.
In the interim before going to get lunch, Daisy wanted to explore a bit more. We went into a few more thrift-store like places, overly-priced vintage shops, and I wanted to go to the Target at the end of the street.
Why did I want to go to Target, you might ask?
Yes, I can go to a Target anytime in Omaha. There's one about a mile from our house. But the Targets in Chicago are far more likely -- or so I thought -- to carry souvenir-like items for, well, tourists like myself. All I'd wanted on the entire trip was to get some sort of item to remember it by, whether that be a coffee mug or a Cubs t-shirt or hat or something that said "Boystown" on it with a rainbow flag (don't you judge me) -- anything that I could point at and say "yep, I was there, I brought this back with me" and, throughout the trip, I'd come up empty. There were a few interesting things I'd come across, but nothing that made me be like "yeah, I need this," or anything that was really within my price range. I had been getting discouraged.
Plus, if you know me, you know that I have this strange fixation with visiting random department stores (like Walmarts and Targets) in random places I visit, just to see what I can find. Sometimes I find regionally-specific food items, or weird clothing items like local high school football apparel, or local impulse-buy souvenir-y stuff.
This Target was not the place for that. This Target, if you could call it that, was barely a Target. It was likely the smallest Target I've ever been in. It had a great food and alcohol section, because Chicagoans have to eat, and a moderately-sized women's clothing section (Daisy found a sweater there she liked) but a one-aisle electronics/video game section and a half-aisle of toys. Housewares was an aisle and a half, and the personal care section (like makeup, body wash, oral care) was dismally small as well. I did find Utz potato chips, which are exceedingly difficult to find on this side of the Mississippi -- remember, the Iowa/Illinois border is the Mississippi River, so we were on the eastern side of that in Chicago -- and I did find our dish soap that every store in Omaha and most places online have been sold out of for months. Daisy picked up her aforementioned sweater and two bottles of blueberry wine -- one for her, one for the parents, and I also got us some glass cleaner for the inside of the windshield, as it was prone to fogging up due to the fact that vape collects on it on long trips. I did not, however, find one single scrap of any Chicago-branded souvenir-y merchandise.
The total was $60-something. Since Daisy had paid for most everything else on the trip aside from some of the thrift store stuff, I put that $60-something on my Discover card -- one of the two cards I brought with me on the trip. On the way out the door with our bags, we walked directly into rack upon rack of Chicago Cubs, White Sox, Bulls, Bears, and Blackhawks merchandise.
It figures, right?
I glanced through it, pointing it out to Daisy as we went. There was a lot of Bears stuff (it is football season, after all), but nothing I was interested in. The Bears aren't my team anyway, and it was all very clearly not my size.
"Meh, I'll find something someplace," I told Daisy. "We can stop at one of the truckstops right outside of town, I'll surely find something interesting there."
In case you didn't know, I have a fixation on random truck stops too. At this point, it's almost more of a fetish. I love truckstops and truck stop culture. It's pure kitsch, pure Americana. You'll never find something more delightfully white trash in America as its many, many midwestern truckstops -- places where you can gas up, get a hot meal from one (or many) places, take a shower, grab an American flag t-shirt with a bald eagle or an alpha wolf on it and a three-dollar Dwight Yoakam cassette tape, and hit the road again. I love that environment. It is everything this blue-collar country truly is, all wrapped up in one building.
It should also be clear that I love truckstops in an ironic fashion only. I think they're hilarious. But, over the years, I've gotten a lot of good food from truckstops, and I've purchased many a kitschy souvenir or discounted CD/DVD from their bargain bins. Sometimes I've even purchased a t-shirt or three. Each truckstop is a goddamn adventure. You never know what you're gonna see inside.
I've also found that the same thing applies to atlantic Canada too, up in the maritimes.
Anyway.
We left the Target, bags in tow, and made our way back up the street to the Native Foods. It was now midday, into the afternoon hours, and I was personally wondering whether we'd actually be able to sit down and eat or whether it would be too busy and we'd have to take the food to go in order to eat it in the car in the parking garage.
We went inside and....there were three people there. During lunch hour in Chicago, on a Friday. In the biggest restaurant we'd been inside throughout our entire trip.
I was stunned. Like, this is a good place. Native Foods is well-known; it's not one of those little mom-and-pop places that survives on word of mouth. There was a lady and her father (it was apparent; family resemblance) having lunch together about 30 feet from us, and a Doordash guy who had showed up to pick up an online order...and then us. That's it.
We ordered and sat down; I got the "Bistro Steak Sandwich" (it's the main photo on the front page of the website, if you clicked that link above) with fries, and a vegan chicken avocado wrap to go, planning to either eat it later in the car in the evening, or to save until we got home to Omaha. Daisy got the "Kale Krunch Salad" to eat there, and ordered the "Poppin' Jalapeno Burger" to go. We didn't really look over their menu that closely, just went with what sounded good at the time at first glance. Looking over the menu later once I got home, there's about ten other things I would've picked before I picked what I got, but oh well.
The Bistro Steak Sandwich was phenomenal, but rather small. I'm a fat guy, and even when my stomach had been bothering me, I polished off the sandwich in about five minutes, the fries shortly thereafter. It wasn't the absolute best thing I'd eaten in Chicago while we were there (that's still the chicken platter) but it was very, very good. Daisy took her time eating the salad, and I believe she took a good chunk of it with us into the car. She also ordered their signature fresh drinks, whatever they were -- I don't remember the first one, but I know that the second was a lavender lemonade that was heavy on the lavender.
After digesting for a few minutes and getting our to-go orders brought out to us, we were on our way. I was sort of kicking myself, because there was so much more on the menu that I would've wanted to eat while we were in Chicago if only I'd known we were so close and if only we'd had more time.
The entire time we were in the restaurant, only two other people came in to eat. I was amazed. Some of the best food I'd had in the entire trip, and everyone in this city had access to it at one of four locations every single day and they looked like they were barely doing any real business at all. It boggles the mind, man. Maybe business generally picks up in the afternoons or evenings, I don't know.
Bags in tow once more -- now with an extra one, containing our to-go-food -- we turned around and went back up the street to the parking garage where our car was waiting for us.
The parking garage situation in Chicago was strange. It's a public parking garage, but Chicago is very much like New York insomuch that people don't really drive their cars everywhere -- there's no parking anywhere for that but these garages, really. These unmanned (but camera'd) garages have a sliding pay scale -- 30 minutes or less is $4, all the way up to 24 hours being something like $25. We'd been there for over 36 hours at this point, and figured that they'd charge us for two full days because, well, if I ran a parking garage, I would.
When we'd pulled in at 1am two nights before, the garage was pretty packed. We squeezed into a spot next to one of the support pillars, between a large sedan with dust on it (yeah, not kidding there, it had been parked there a while) and a big SUV, and were barely able to get in and out of our vehicle. When we returned, there were many more spots open, and different cars pulled into the ones that were taken already. It was clear that a lot of people parked in this garage at various times for various reasons -- some people leaving their cars there for long stretches of time and others just parking there for a few hours or an overnight. Our car had not budged since Wednesday night. We loaded everything up, then went to the kiosk to pay the parking fee (as they instructed you do via multiple signs).
Daisy inserted the ticket and the machine read it, and said we owed something like $35 or $40 or something.
"That can't be right," Daisy said, trying to do the math in her head. "It should be more I think."
"Fuck it, don't question it," I replied.
So she didn't, put in her card, and paid for the parking.
When we pulled out of the garage ten minutes later, we had to go through the gate at the bottom, where you had to scan your ticket proving you'd paid before the gate would raise. Daisy scanned her ticket and it beeped at her, telling her -- yes, you guessed it, we owed $4 more because we'd been there 30 minutes or less.
"Such horseshit," I said.
"You'd think they'd give more than, say, a ten minute window to get in the car and get out of the garage," said Daisy.
She begrudgingly put her card back in the slot and paid the extra $4, and we exited the garage into daylight in our car, once more on the streets of Chicago.
For those of you who have not experienced it, Chicago during the day is way different than Chicago at night. For one, as it's a large city, there's always traffic. Doesn't matter the time of the day. Doesn't matter where you are. Doesn't matter where you're going -- always heavy traffic. Our GPS routed us, basically, through the hardcore downtown and along Lakeshore Drive -- which, if you're familiar with the area, is called Lakeshore Drive for a reason. As you're driving down it, look to the side and BOOM, Lake Michigan.
If you've never seen Lake Michigan in person...it's big. Like, really big. From the shore, it looks legitimately like any ocean you could imagine. And Lakeshore Drive takes you right along it for a few miles.
I grew up in West Virginia, about 200 miles south of Lake Erie (give or take). Even that far away, lake-effect snow was a thing, frequently, in the winter. I can't imagine what it's like to live in one of the many apartment/condo complexes along Lakeshore Drive during a bad winter.
Our drive took us through, and then around, the busiest part of the city, and we legit drove right past and under the Sears Tower. Daisy got a few photos of the giant skyscrapers, and then we were out of the city almost as quickly as we'd come in, on the interstate headed back towards Omaha. It was an overcast, drizzly day -- as I'd mentioned before -- and we left the city around 2:30pm or so. Our trip calculator told us we'd be getting home in Omaha around 11, give or take. That was fine; that's basically how we'd planned it.
About an hour or two into our drive back, on the Illinois/Iowa border, we stopped at a truckstop and gassed up. I went inside to look, as my last option, for anything Chicago related souvenir-wise and to get a few Monsters (the truckstops/gas stations almost always carry all the flavors and also usually have a 3 for $5 deal or something like that). What I found was a bunch of junk and typical chintzy truckstop fare, but on a rack in the back, while rummaging through some stuff, I came across a Chicago Cubs baseball cap -- $12.99, or 2 for $20. I immediately snatched that up as it was not a cheap one, but one of the officially licensed, MLB-merchandise ones.
"Do you like the Cubs?" Daisy asked me.
I like a few baseball teams actually, but don't really follow any of them that closely. Growing up outside of Pittsburgh, I was always a Pirates fan -- but of course, they've been terrible for the past thirty years or so. When I moved to the Kansas City area, I sort of became a Royals fan, but ehhh, they were also terrible (until a few years ago when they finally went to the World Series, two years in a row, and won one of them). The Cubs were always my favorite underdog team, because they were sort of in the same boat as the Pirates and Royals, but even they went to the World Series and won a few years ago, so I was on board for that. If you asked me what team I like the best now as an adult, I'd still say the Pirates, but I will always have a sweet spot in my heart for the Chicago Cubs.
Satisfied with my find, we went back out to the car and ate our carryout food from Native Foods -- I'd ordered some sort of chicken avocado wrap, but they put it on a bun as a sandwich (I hadn't looked at it when we'd left the place). It was fine, but nothing to write home about. Daisy's jalapeno popper burger, however, was the shit. It was amazing. It may have tied with how good the Kitchen 17 chicken platter was. I immediately wished I would've gotten one as well.
The rest of the trip was...long. We drove through a little rain here and there, but as we got further west it cleared up and we were driving directly into the sunset, where the glare was horrible and we couldn't see anything. By the time we hit Iowa 80 -- the world's largest truckstop (per what they say on their signs), we pulled in and got off the road. We both needed to use the facilities, and I wanted to see Iowa 80 in all its glory.
I was...mostly disappointed.
Their food selection was amazing -- they have a giant food court like a mall would -- but as I'm vegetarian, a lot of the options were off the table for me. We ended up getting several bagels from Einstein Bagels and took them home, and I mulled over getting an Iowa 80 t-shirt, because they had my size...but I wasn't paying $30 for it, so I didn't. By the time we came back out to the car -- as I was hoping -- the sun had set and we could actually see where we were going.
We ended up rolling back into Omaha shortly after midnight, where we found the house and the cats safe and sound. I made sure they had food and water, Daisy cleaned out their pans, and I immediately began doing trip laundry and disassembling our suitcases. I grabbed another mod from my box of vape supplies (my old, red Reuleaux RX Mini), and screwed the old tank off the one I'd thrown away onto it, and we were good to go there -- and I plugged both mods in to charge up. We were home, we were safe, and we were both very tired. I don't know what time Daisy eventually went to bed, but I passed out in my chair around 3am, after I'd allowed myself some wind-down time and could decompress.
So now that the trip is over, here's the list of things we didn't get to do on it:
1. Ride the L train. We saw it a lot, as the station was connected to our hotel, we just didn't need to ride it anywhere.
2. Go to the Chicago Field Museum, Sears Tower (driving past it a few times doesn't count) or to the Navy Pier or actual lake shore -- no real time to do any of these things, honestly.
3. Find a White Castle. There are a lot of them in and around the Chicago area, including one several streets/blocks from our hotel, but we never saw any of them and didn't go to them.
4. We didn't, really, get to do anything touristy. This was basically just a getaway for us for a few days.
5. See anything but the Northside/Boystown area. I would've loved to venture to the more "dangerous" or interesting areas of Chicago where Shameless takes place (and where all of the exterior shots are filmed; yeah, they do film it there).
So there you have it; that's the story of our trip to Chicago. We got fatter, basically. In the days since our return, we have been trying to figure out how to pay the tolls for the automated Illinois Tollway (their website doesn't work correctly for either of us, on any browser or on our phones...soooo I guess we'll just get a bill in the mail, then) and life has pretty much returned to normal. I have tried to eat somewhat better, but our microwave has died (see the normal October post for more details on this) and even though I feel fatter, when I weighed myself upon our return I did not gain a single pound throughout our trip, nor have I since, so that's a plus.
Onward!
