Real Human Moments

Well, I am going to finish up the road trip tale once and for all. After driving the better part of the day across Americas upper heartland we arrived in the city of Chicago. We knew of nothing to expect other than we were staying at a high class hostel. I recommend the HI in downtown Chicago, a very professional and fun place to stay. We all checked into our rooms (although they were on different floors) and called it a night for the first time on the trip.

In the morning we woke up just in time to see the free breakfast being taken away, and we made our plans. We bought tickets to the observation deck of the sears tower, asked around for a good pizza place and a museum and began our day. We made the long walk to the “magnificent mile” and took in the beautiful architecture about which we new next to nothing. The sears tower was slightly anti-climatic, although it did afford amazing views of the city. After the tower, we made our way towards the Art Institute of Chicago. It was half price for kids, so it made the sights that much better. Among the many exhibits in the museum there were two which really stand out in my mind, even today. The first was the Contemporary wing which house a few exhibits in “new media”, one was a room with large ceiling to floor, kitty-cornered scrolling LED bars displaying various messages. I had never known that this type of “new media” was accepted at traditions art institutions. Another neat exhibition was one with miniature rooms from every period in modern times. Each little piece just reminded me of the many dioramas I created as a child, and how crappy they must of been.

Later in the day we made our way to the Museum of Contemporary Art which had an interactive exhibition of a skinny kid trying to cut a large tree using an old fashion lumberjack saw. He kept stopping every minute or so for breaks, you’d think they could have found someone with a little more muscle, even contemporary gym muscle (compared to old school lumberjack muscle) to man the exhibit? Another neat feature was they had a car cut to look like it fell from the sky and crashed into the sidewalk in front of the museum. Our penultimate destination of the afternoon was Millenium Park, which included the Cloud Gate, and Crown Fountain. Cloud gate is a large 3 story tall stainless steel, reflective, donut like structure, only with no hold. You can walk under it, and it provides awesome reflections and distortions of yourself and surroundings. Crown Fountain, is a huge rectangle structure with LED display that can change, and fountain fixtures that spew water out the front and sides. They had several images up, I believe the most interesting one was a female head which looked like it was spitting on everyone. We finished up the afternoon with a deep dish pizza from the original pizzeria UNO.

At night we made our way across town to the hip, jazz bar district where we caught a live act. It was an interesting evening, however I most distinctly remember Pete and I were drinking expensive beers, while Sasha managed to get free PBR from the bartender because he asked her what its “vintage” was. Back at the hostel we bumped into some Irish lads, who traveled all the way from the Green Isles for some KISS music festival? They apparently had gotten drunk that night and went to a strip club, then though they could take us in ping pong, hah.

What conclusions can I draw from the trip? Maybe in another post…