Have you ever woken up not entirely sure where in the world
you are? That was the feeling I had that first morning in Illinois. Once again
we had driven late into the night, and since we had no connections in lower Illinois
we had just driven into a national forest and had chosen a random turn off to
set up camp. This random turn off happened to be a field full of tall grasses,
and when we pulled off at night we just figured that it was a naturally
occurring field in the midst of the forest. In the morning light we became
keenly aware of our mistake. We had accidentally ended up on private property.
Thankfully the owners of the property didn’t seem to mind since we were able to
wake up late and break down our tent without ever running into another human.
Of course the house we spotted was the lot over, and the farming equipment was
a lot over in the other direction. In our credit we were able to find the one field on the property that was empty.
After a breakfast of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches we
were back on the road and heading up through the center of Illinois towards
Chicago. About halfway up we stopped at Rend Lake to take a little swim. The
water was a bit cloudy, but refreshing. It was still at that temperature that
makes those of us from Colorado distrust it, because how can water that is
outside ever be warmer than 70°F? It was delightful though.
Our diet consists of three different meals that are always
nearly the same though sometimes one is rotated with another. In this case our
usual breakfast of oats traded place with the usual peanut butter and jelly
sandwiches for lunch, which means there by the lake I pulled out our kitchen
box and made us some oats. For the first time I added peanut butter to the
oats. Since then peanut butter has been an essential ingredient. (Got to get
your protein somehow, right?)
After the elongated break we returned to that all familiar
companion—the road. On the way up to Chicago the sun began to sink below the horizon,
granting us a colorful entrance to the City and livening up the otherwise flat
and fairly boring landscape (though it still outdid what we saw going along
I-70 through Kansas—I’m pretty sure that is what Hell will look like).
Finally, we pulled up on Chicago, and that view was
incredible! Chicago at night is like a sea of stars that is fountaining out of
the ground. Most of the time I don’t really get the romance of city lights at
night, but that view made me realize that there is something to it after all.
That also happens to be one perfect picturesque scene that I did not get a
picture of. This is probably due to the fact that driving in a caravan through
the city of Chicago is just about as difficult as pushing a camel through the
eye of a needle. Trying to operate a camera while doing that is border line suicidal. Despite that being the case we somehow survived and ended up
finding the home of Matt, one of Eric’s and Tweedy’s roommates from their last
year at UCCS.
After a long drive all we really wanted to do was go to
sleep, but since Matt's family had already finished their dinner we got out our kitchen
box and made some extra dinner while chatting with one of Matt’s friends. Now I’m
going to have to use an alias for this friend for reasons that will become super clear soon enough. Anyway, we’re
going to call him Jeff. Now Jeff is a very small dude. Tweedy, Eric, and even I
towered over him, plus he was rather scrawny. He was very white and had been
raised in the wealthier suburbs of Chicago. This little white guy who spoke
with a bit of a lisp was about nose deep in the business of distributing “chemicals”
of the unlawful sort to apparently a fairly large clientele, he also was a
Chicago native that lived right in the middle of downtown and offered to show
us the city the next day. Honestly his method of income took me a bit by
surprise, but getting a tour of a big city like Chicago from a native was too
good of an offer to pass up, so we agreed to meet up with him the next day
before bidding him farewell and passing out for a long night’s sleep.
Public transit is a beautiful thing, just as a heads up to
everyone out there. We were able to keep our cars parked the entire time we
were in Chicago, which is a very unique situation for a group of roadtrippers.
The next morning, we rode the blue line into the city center (that is one of
several trains/subways that go through Chicago, which cost 2.50 for a ride—a little
steep for our budget, but we also had Matt there to buzz us through that day). It moved pretty slow, but still much faster than walking and much less stressful than driving and (even more so) parking.
Popping out of a hole into the middle of a city is not
something I am particularly used to. Even when I have been to cities in Europe
I end up walking around rather than using the subways. As a hiker I might stray
into a cave every once in a while, but when I come out of those I’m surrounded
by wilderness, not a forest of steel populated with flocks of people. Now flocks is
an inaccurate description. We noticed fairly early on that a true city
person walks by his or her self and does not smile or look at anyone else but
instead plows forward through the masses, not even stopping for red lights at
cross walks.
We slunk into these teaming masses and eventually found our
way to Jeff’s apartment on the fortieth floor in the new east side, or as it is
known in the street slang—The Plastics. It’s called this because just to get an
apartment anywhere in that square mile of the city you have to prove income and
have sources from several other places. Don’t ask me how Jeff managed to obtain
all of that, because I got confused while he was trying to explain it to me. I
think I lost him three times total and was fuzzy on the rest of it. Part of
this may have been due to the slang he was using (though part of it was just doing illegal things is way far outside of my specialties). Sometimes I was wondering if
he was even speaking English. Still, he managed to get into that area and the
view from his window was something else.
That night we were planning on checking out the final
concert of the Chicago Symphony at the giant bandstand in Millennium Park, but
before we did that Jeff had some business to take care of and so decided to
invite us along for the walk. Once again I found myself shaking hands with a
little white guy who also was involved with “chemicals,” though his main
product was more “herbal.” I don’t know what it is about the water in white
Chicago suburbs, but clearly there is something there that stunts the growth of
the youth and gives them strange ideas that they turn into business
opportunities. Once again though I was shocked that the quality of the view that was
just outside this little man’s window as well.
I could not linger though because I was supposed to meeting
Megan, one of my friends that moved to Chicago a little while ago. For this reason,
I did something that I have a feeling will make mom give me a call shortly
after she reads this blog post. I decided that I would go off by myself back to
Millennium Park with a phone that had a dying battery just as the sun
disappeared entirely for the day. That is probably breaking at least three rules of city travel, but then city people never follow any of those rules, so why should I? I eventually met up with Megan and her
beautiful dog.
Sorry, that dog is just so beautiful that he deserves his
own picture in the blog. Now some people may find this blasphemous, but I think
he might have been just as beautiful as the nighttime skyline of Chicago-- he definitely got as much attention if not more attention than the skyline--though that was absolutely gorgeous as well.
Anyway, the plan had been to watch the concert with Megan,
but that beautiful white fluff-ball of a dog was not allowed in that part of
the park. It was a sad day, but we still could sit and watch the face fountains
spewing water while we caught up. Then I started freaking out because the guys
had not texted me in a while and were not showing up either. So we began to
wander around the edge of the park, and as we did so my phone died, which
freaked me out even more. Honestly I could have gotten back to my car that
night by myself, but I had done my lonesome traveling and Megan had to leave
soon and I didn’t really want to finish watching the concert by myself and then
wander to the subway and ride it back all by myself either.
By the miraculous random nature of the world though I caught
sight of them right as they walked to the green space in front of the band
shell. Never have I felt so grateful to see those tall goofy idiots! (They are not
idiots by the way, very smart, but my stressed out self definitely wanted to
call them idiots) I introduced them to Megan and then we took a seat on the
lawn and listened to the last 20 minutes of the final summer series performance
of the Chicago Symphony. That was quite the sight and sound. No better way to
end our first day in Chicago.
I’ll hopefully get the rest of the blogs finished and caught
up over the next week. This is just part one of Chicago, I’ll have to do one
more for Illinois and then it will be Iowa, lower Wisconsin, Minnesota, upper
Wisconsin, and now we are in the upper peninsula of Michigan.
No comments:
Post a Comment