Big City, Big Lake (Chicago Part II)

The night in Chicago had worn on a little bit longer, into the early morning really. That’s why I thought I could push it on to the next post. We eventually made our way back to Jeff’s place and hung out in the hot tubs while looking out the window on this beautiful sight.

Jeff entertained us with stories of his shenanigans as the night wore on until we found ourselves needing to get home at around 2:00 in the morning. Eric, Tweedy, and I thought that we would just go back on the train, but Matt started freaking out and saying we could not ride the blue line at that time of night and eventually ended up just getting us a Lyft home. Remember, it was the blue line that we were told would be a bad train to ride late at night, this detail will feed into the story later on. So we got home and crashed hard once again.

The next morning, we had planned to meet up with Megan once again since the other guys hadn’t really had a chance to get to meet her. Not to mention she said she would love to go on a walk with us along the coast of Lake Michigan and Eric and Tweedy were looking to start their list of great lakes that they had swam in. This time we took the train into town by ourselves and managed to find our way to her place with a little help from the all-knowing Google. We spent some time chatting until we came to something like a swimming bay that was blocked over entirely with cement. Apparently even the beaches in cities are made of cement. Anyway, Eric and Tweedy both got their dips in the lake. I had left my swim trunks behind and something told me that skinny dipping in the middle of the city would be something of a no-no.

After our little walk with Megan we went back to Millennium Park to check out The Bean on a sunny day. The day before had been cloudy and Jeff told us that it would be wrong to get a picture of a cloudy Chicago reflected in The Bean. The day before was a whole lot less crowded. That Saturday afternoon the pavement around it was crowded with people, including two separate wedding parties. Apparently everyone gets married in Chicago on Saturday, at least that was what Megan had told us. We also had first hand evidence. We had seen four different wedding parties that very day. Yeah… I’m going to believe her. And Jeff was right about The Bean too.

Oh, in case you are wondering, that sculpture is not technically named “The Bean,” but that is the only name the locals know it by, and if you are having trouble finding it just tap one of the people who looks like a city person (see the description in the last post) and ask them which way to go to find The Bean. People in Chicago are super helpful and nice despite what their expressions while walking the streets might suggest. In fact we had to incite the assistance of three local girls in order to locate the entrance to the blue line again so that we could get back to Matt’s for some authentic Chicago style pizza that Matt’s parents were kind enough to provide for us. (The only food we had purchased in Chicago had been some McDonald’s because our budget does not in any way allow for eating out. Honestly the McDonald’s was even a little pricey for our price range.)

Yes, we were back on the blue line, heading back into town. With how well we managed to navigate the train system on the way in I was sure we would be fine just remembering to get off at the last stop, but then we found ourselves just sitting in the train at one stop for about five minutes straight before the conductor came on the intercom. She told us that everyone was to get off the train due to “police activity.” I know, government is always so good at specifics. We had no idea what to do, all we were told was that we had to get off the train and that there would be no refunds given. We’re a group of guys that like to hike so we decided we just continue to walk along the route of the rails and just watch for the trains starting back up again and then get back on once we saw that happen. As we were deciding this we caught some chatter around us that seemed to clear up “police activity.” The word circulating was that someone had been shot. All of this happening on the blue line that Matt had said we should not ride the night before-- I guess the locals do know what they are talking about. No one seemed all that phased by the idea of someone being shot at one of the stops (aside from being irritated that they had to get off the train because of it), but then again gang violence has been at an all-time high in Chicago. Since no one else seemed to pay it any mind we decided that walking would still be a perfectly fine plan of action. (We learned later on that if we had just remained at the entrance to the train stop a bus would have shown up to pick us up, but the conductors and workers on the train didn't seem incredibly inclined to let the passengers know about these buses.)

As we walked along the houses began to have a larger percentage of boarded up windows. We walked past a guy with a shopping cart full of old, rusted, long pieces of rebar. Things were starting to gain that vibe—you know, that one you get as a person born from privilege walking into a legitimate ghetto. Not too long after that we came upon a group of young black guys lingering on the sidewalk with a few cars parked right in front of them, and we even saw single cars driving by one by one, stopping for a second before driving on. I’ve seen the show The Wire, (Warning! The clip I have hyperlinked has explicit language and violence) so I had a good idea as to what was going down. Tweedy thought that they were standing there to mug people. Eric thought that it was just a gang of dudes that would leave us alone if we just kept walking on through. Whatever the case we had a decision to make: continue on our original path or find a longer way around.

We debated for a while as to what we should do and then eventually just ended up walking on through the conglomeration of young men. Upon first stepping up to them a guy in a somewhat nice white jacket approached us and started asking if we wanted to purchase any “chemicals” at least that is what I deduced because he was using some of the same slang that I had heard Jeff using while conducting his “business.” Eric told him we were just trying to get home and he turned around and told the other guys to just leave us alone and let us keep walking home. They paid heed, though the much younger boys around yelled taunts that made me think they thought we were cops. The “muscle” guys half unzipped their big coats while one guy went and stood by a wheel of one of the parked cars. If you have seen The Wire you know what all of that was about.

The good part is we were left alone and continued walking until a couple blocks later we got a call from Matt telling us that as soon as his Mom heard the area we were walking through she got in the car and now they were on their way to come pick us up. We got back to the house and stuffed our face with some delicious Chicago style pizza.

Next day we got in the cars and set the GPS for Des Moines, Iowa. We would have set it for a national forest in Iowa, but there aren’t any of those there. Anyway, Iowa is for another day. Chicago and Illinois was now officially checked off the list.

For video remember to check out Eric’s and Tweedy’s Youtube channels.

Big City, Little Drug Lords

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.

As always, check out here for video footage: Eric and Tweedy