Tuesday our office closed at 4pm. I went home to pack. Packing is so much less stressful when there's no chance of airport security going through my luggage.
Wednesday is travel day.
530am - I went for an abbreviated run with the St Paul girls. Hilariously, no one wanted to go the full four miles. I came home and had bacon and eggs for breakfast and finished up my 'to do' list for travelling.
815 or 830 - Car Buddy arrived, hopped up on caffeine, and we headed out. We talked some, listened to music some, and listened to several episodes of my guilty pleasure, Car Talk. The trip can be summed up in one word: Construction.
There really was a bit of a fiasco that lead to me leaving Car Buddy at a little Mexican Cantina to wait for her family to pick her up. Only marginally better than being on the side of the road. I headed into Bloomingdale to see Mom, her cousin Julie and whomever else is living with Julie at the moment. We hung out at home the rest of the night and caught up with each other.
Thursday was the big day of the trip.
6ish - I got up for a run. There's trails by Julie's house that I love to run on because they're that awesome crushed pea gravel. It's a super soft but super smooth trail. Absolutely a pleasure. In past years there was killer bird watching too. This year it was all red wing black birds. Not even a Blue Herron to entertain me.
8ish - go time.
Mom and I headed over to a Metra station to take the commuter rail into Chicago. It was on that trip I learned the difference between commuter rail and light rail. We got into the city around 10am. I immediately hit up a Jamba Juice for a fruit smoothie with protein powder. After the run earlier I knew I wouldn't last much longer without food.
We walked by the Art Musuem and headed over to Millenium Park and the Bean. While this was the most anticlimactic part of the day, it definitely led to the best pictures.
After the Bean we walked through Grant Park and along the lake shore. It was about 80* and sunny so it was a perfect day to be out walking. Mom was shocked at all the tourists but I was nonplussed about the whole situation.
We'd originally planned to see the Shed Aquarium but the line was literraly out the door and it was packed with school kids. I kind of wanted to go to the Natural History Museum, Mom had no inclination. I had a moment of sadness about this when I saw they had an exhibit about Lascaux (yes, I know what Lascaux is without having to consult Wikipedia). I came to my senses and instead congratulated myself on escaping art museums twice in one day.
Neither one of us was super excited about the Adler Planetarium but we were both mildly curious and we accepted it as the least of all evils for the day. Man, were we ever surprised. This was totally the highlight of the trip. We spent about 3 hours in there, including lunch and a show, and didn't really get to see everything. It was really well done. Having worked in museums and aquariums most of my life, I'm really hard to please when it comes to these things. The best was the exhibit about the big bang, The Universe: A Walk Through Space and Time. They also had a setup where there was an astronomer explaining his work and the different kinds of telescopes being used, and how and why those get used. It was really interesting.
The planetarium closes an hour before the aquarium so we wound up heading over there for the last hour and just perused the main tanks. It was pretty relaxing since all the school kids had left. We could just take our time and enjoy ourselves.
After the aquarium we made our way back to Union Station and had quite the adventure finding the right track and train. Everyone is all "Union Station is Amtrak not Metra". I assure you, Metra trains leave from Union Station too. I made my mom walk really fast through downtown to make sure we caught the train. She didn't believe me when I told her we walked 6 miles, so I drew a map to prove it.
We got back into Bloomingdale and had dinner somewhere I can't remember. Seriously. My mind is blank. Then we watched the season finale of Scandal.
Friday was much less busy.
I took a quick easy run, around the lake on the other side of the condo. More red wing black birds.
We spent most of the day tooling around Elmhurst, a different suburb of Chicago where Mom and Julie raised hell as teenagers. Probably Julie more than Mom. We had lunch at a Mexican restaurant that had 'the best salsa bar in the world'. It was definitely legit. We saw Julie's kids and then had dinner with a bigger portion of the family.
Saturday I went for a quick run and then Mom and I took one last walk around the preserve before heading our ways. Mom was going to hang out with Julie and then take the train into Chicago and pick up the Megabus. (The Megabus wound up being a whopping 90 minutes late.)
Car buddy made her way to Julie's house. Since the Powerball was around $600 million, we bought a few tickets. More out of self defense than anything else.
It was an easy trip home, not much traffic. I know this because my car clocked in a 37mpg. Thank you cruise control. All in all it was a great trip, and nice to be with Mom on neutral territory. We didn't fight at all.
Instagram
No comments:
Post a Comment