I went to sleep around 12:30 and woke four hours later. After trying for half
an hour to get back to sleep I eventually accepted my fate and got up. I
availed myself of the internet once again and then headed out a little before 6
to find the nearest Starbucks. When I stepped out of the air-conditioned hotel
I was surprised at how warm and muggy it was for so early in the morning. I
haven't had this experience since the last time I visited Hawaii. I was clearly
the first customer at Starbucks - they had just opened when I got there. I
wandered back to the hotel, showered, and kept myself occupied reading the
paper and surfing the web till about 8, when I decided it was time to turn on
the lights and wake up Daisy. She sent me back out to Starbucks while she took
a shower, and then we started packing up. Before checking out I had to run to
the corner to get a picture of the statue of Mary Tyler Moore throwing her
beret in the air. What a proud legacy.
There had been storm warnings on the local TV station the night before, and by
the time we left town at 10, rain appeared to be imminent. There is no shortage
of public radio stations in this part of the country, which is not surprising
since Minneapolis is NPR Mecca. However, most of the stations featured
spectacularly boring panelists discussing amazingly uninteresting subjects
about local ordinances and various down-home issues. Now I understand the
public radio parodies that I used to see on Saturday Night Live. For my money,
KQED and KALW have it all over the Midwest public radio stations, and they
don't intersperse it with jazz or classical music shows.
With the exception of Billings, we had seen nothing but green landscape since
we had left Utah. Having grown up in the San Francisco Bay Area I'm continually
amazed by the vast expanses of greenery in the middle of July. This isn't the
way it works in the west, at least not south of the Oregon border - and not
even in eastern Oregon, which is one of the most isolated deserts in North
America.
Once we got through Wisconsin and into Illinois we immediately became
acquainted with the state's delightful system of toll roads, where for just
forty cents you can drive at speeds of up to twenty-five miles per hour while
all but one lane is closed for construction. Due to these unexpected and
repeated delays we didn't hit Chicago until 5 PM, a bad time to hit town in any
big city, but especially bad in a city as big as Chicago.
Now, I've got a lot of friends from Chicago and some of them are really
aggressive drivers, if not downright dangerous (and you know who I'm talking
about, Jim), but I hadn't realized until now that while California schools had
been teaching defensive driving, Chicago schools had been teaching offensive
driving (or nothing at all about driving). It's like everybody thinks they're
driving a BMW or a Volvo!
Anyway, we survived the Chicago traffic and made it to the town of Evanston.
Once you get near the campus it's a delightful neighborhood. I would have
thought I was in downtown Palo Alto if the thermometer had not been reading 89
degrees outside (about ten points lower than the humidity, I might add); there
was a Peet's Coffee, a Whole Foods, and various overpriced boutiques to keep
the professor's wives occupied.
When we got to the Omni Hotel, two blocks from Northwestern University, we
found out why it had been so hard to find a room at the last minute: the
All-star Game was being played in Chicago. It's an outrage when you can't book a
room at the last minute in a big city. What is this, Bethlehem?! Oh well, once
Al Qaeda makes it's next big play I'm sure vacancy rates will come back up to
an acceptable level...
Anyway, Daisy's friend, Curt heralds from the Chicago area and he had taken the
liberty of booking a dinner reservation for us at a place called Gene and Georgetti where various celebrity crime bosses are reputed to hang out. I had
been meaning to put out a contract on our president, so this seemed like a good
opportunity to network.
It was about a four-block walk to the Chicago Transit Authority, and then about
a half-hour ride downtown. The Chicago Transit Authority is a vastly more
convenient and efficient mass transit system than our BART system. It seems to
go everywhere, it only costs $1.50 to get anywhere. and the trains run a lot
more frequently than BART. On the downside, they're noisy as hell. If you
remember the apartment that Elwood Blues had in "The Blues Brothers", you'll
know what I'm talking about. Anyway, if the noise bothers you, you can always
bring an iPod.
Downtown Chicago is an awesome place and we both would have liked to have
stayed for days if it hadn't been for the oppressive humidity and the fact that
I had to get Daisy to Miami on time. I would love to do Chicago when the
weather is not too hot and not too cold, but unfortunately there's not that
much that you can do in thirty-six hours.
But seriously, I'll definitely be back to Chicago. I had visited family in
Chicago once when I was thirteen and I didn't have that much fun but that could
have had something to do with the fact that I broke my arm. That and the fact
that the Illinois wing of my family is about as hip as that family in American
Gothic.
But I digress. Once we got into town and got off the red line at Lake, we found
our way to Gene and Georgetti. They didn't have Sierra Nevada, but they had
Beck's dark so my initial impression was favorable. After about ten minutes we
were escorted upstairs to our seats, and within minutes we had ordered a T-bone
steak and angel hair pasta with tomato sauce and basil. When our salads arrived
I told Daisy to remind me in the future (until I get back to The Bay Area) to
ask for my dressing on the side - in a casserole dish or some other vessel of
sufficient volume to accommodate what seems to be regarded as a typical
portion in this part of the country.
Once our entrees arrived I gained some insight into why so many of my Illinois
friends hold Bucca Di Beppo in such high esteem. Life is cheap in Chicago, at
least where cows are concerned - and arteries. The steak was huge. Similarly,
there was enough pasta to feed a horse, if you could find one that
had not itself been eaten.
Since we had not been getting a lot of exercise on the road I wasn't that
hungry, and I was only able to eat a couple pounds of my steak. I had asked for
it medium-rare so I was a little annoyed when it appeared to be well done.
However, it was aged (which is a nice way of saying it was in the early stages
of decay.) and it proved to be tender. Once I had made my way a few inches
toward the center of the steak I got to the medium section, and eventually I
reached the medium-rare section. I'm sure if my stamina had held up I would
have gotten to the rare section eventually. These steaks have something for
everybody! Daisy helped me eat a few bites of my steak and I in turn helped her
with her pasta.
After the remainder of our dishes had been wheeled away the busboy asked if we
wanted any coffee. I asked if they had espresso and he explained that they did
not. We weren't in the mood for Folger's Coffee Crystals so we paid the tab and
waddled back out into the night.
We went in search of Buddy Guy's Blues nightclub but apparently we were looking
for 754 N. Wabash when we should have been looking for 754 S. Wabash, By the
time I realized my error we were fourteen blocks away from our intended
destination and the weight of the meal was beginning to weigh us down, so we
caught the CTA back to our hotel and called it a night.
