Chicago

Some of you may wonder how I hid my love for camping from you so effectively all these years.  Erik was such a city mouse that I just didn't do it while we were together.  I do love nature, and thoroughly enjoyed reconnecting with the great outdoors after a 10 year drought.

But I also love civilization.

I love fancy restaurants and good wine.  I love witty, well-prepared entertainment.  I love talking to intelligent, creative people who are doing interesting things.  I love hearing viewpoints from people coming from many different walks of life.  And I love creature comforts like long showers and nearby salons.  I like being able to walk to any store I need within a few hundred yards of my front doorstep.  In short, I also love cities.

So it was with great pleasure that I stayed 3 days with my brother, Will, in the Lakeview neighborhood of Chicago.  He's finishing up his PhD at Northwestern and I got to catch up with him and crash at his place while soaking in the city.

Chicago was bustling with 2.7 million people filled with the energy stored up during 9 months of cold and the stamina to maximize their 3 months of warmth before it turns cold again.  Will tells me it was a cold winter and a late summer this year - it was still 40 degrees in June!  So it's no wonder that everybody was walking, biking or sunning themselves everywhere we looked during the middle of August.  Will tells me there some kind of festival here almost every weekend during the summer, and I got to watch (and hear) the Blue Angels practicing for the Air and Water show this weekend.

The Blue Angels in formation

People enjoying the concrete beaches
along the lake

The parks in Chicago are meticulous and plentiful

The famous fountain
I saw the "show" 3 times coming and
going from the marina

Chicago is widely acknowledged as a foodie city, second only to New York in this country.  Although I missed The Taste by a couple of weeks, we still got some amazing food at Naha - created by the James Beard award winning chef Carrie Nahabedian.  We noshed at Batter & Berries and La Creperie.  I had a fabulous Korean Taco.  There are countless more places I passed that I want to come back and try someday.

It was a lot of fun sharing fine dining with my student brother
who I hear is also a chocolate martini model 

French Toast Flight
The maple butter was incredible
so was the omelette (not pictured)

Wednesday was a day of fun . . . we got to take out a boat on Lake Michigan and then enjoy the Cubs beat the Brewers.  I'm a member of a boat club back in Houston (Carefree boat club) and they have locations all over the country.  So it was easy to reserve a boat when I added Chicago to the itinerary.  We took out a lovely Searay Sundancer and I learned why Chicago is called the Windy City!  We had to climb over huge, rolling waves to get behind the breakwater barriers by the Navy Pier, where we could anchor and enjoy the city view over the water.  I would have thought it was just how Great Lakes behaved all the time, except I saw the same water calm as glass the next morning!

We got back in time to enjoy the 2nd half of a tight Cubs game.  Over hot dogs, beer and nachos, we cheered on the home team all the way to the end of the 10th inning when they hit a homer and the crowd went wild.

11 years after landing in in the windy city . . .

Chi-town from the water

Cubs game from the rooftop

What a game!

My last night in Chicago, I finally got to watch Peter Sagal and crew tape this week's episode of Wait Wait  . . . Don't Tell Me! at the Chase Auditorium in downtown Chicago.  I had missed the traveling shows in both Austin and Houston and was thrilled to finally catch the recording in their tiny home auditorium.   It will be very interesting to listen to how they edit this one . . . I'll probably get to hear it from the car this weekend.

The audience-interactive section of the show

roughly translated:  He who lives
slowly lives healthier and longer

I even got to drop in on Vapiano after the show Thursday night.  For those of you who don't know it . . . I like the food here but LOVE the business model.  It's Italian food done by Germans so it is very very efficient.  I actually asked the owner what it would take to get involved with this chain after he opened the 1st one in the United States 5 years ago.  (The answer was $500K of my own money and experience in the restaurant industry . . . SOL!)  I hadn't eaten there since moving to Texas it was neat to experience it again.

While I was enjoying my pasta and wine, I ran into a couple of German students who seem to be doing my road trip in reverse.  I told them there was nothing to Mt. Rushmore and gave them lots of tips on Yellowstone.  They invited me to visit when I got to Germany.  It's a small world.

.Next Stop: Oklahoma City