Arrivals and Davenpartures

Nothing better than seeing a smiling friend when you walk out of an airport gate in a strange new city. Already amazed at the sheer size of the city's footprint, I was even more thrilled to hear about H's airport exeriences so far, and to see O'Hare's funky future hallway:

We quickly and excitedly met up with Jo, found luggage and our rental car (the Cobalt--not a bad little ride! Nice and peppy, good on gas). Then we hopped the El train to downtown. (For those who, like me, might take a really long time to figure out why it's called the El, it's because much of the train's route is along an elevated track, built about one storey in the air. Like an old-school skytrain.) Along the way our eyes were innundated with the brick, brick, brick Chicago has relied on since its great fire in the... oh, I forget... 1870s maybe? Historians, help me out here. Anyway, the buildings are crammed together, sprouting up one on top of the other, buzzing with urban energy. The train dove underground for a while, and when we emerged into downtown, here is the first thing we saw:

The pic doesn't do it justice, but it was damn cool.

After some strolling and noshing, we checked out the Chicago Cultural Centre. Sorry, Center. Gorgeous! Mosaics, engravings, marble, illuminated dome ceilings--ah! Beauty. We perused the mildly disturbing and oh-so-funky Soundsuits exhibit (not the Nick Cave, but cool nonetheless).

We hopped the El to Wrigley Field. Now, I'm not normally all that interested in baseball--it ranks somewhere above golf and soccer in the ranking of boring sports--but this is one hell of a place. Gotta love the historicaliness of it, the thick ivy on the outfield wall, the blind devotion of the fans (despite the Cubs sitting at dead last). We got to see the organ, the bleachers (from which you can see the manual scoreboard), the visitors' clubhouse, the dugouts, and my favourite, the press box:

Of course, Heather was aglow the entire time.

After obtaining some souvenirs for the Cubs-obsessed coordinator at VoicePrint, we headed back to O'Hare to nab the car and get on the road to Davenport. Gotta love the toll highways, with their reflective lane markers and shoulder posts; kind of a pain to be handing over the cash every few minutes, but there is the fun challenge of chucking the coins into the toll bucket. Three points for Jo! We stopped midway at the "oasis" before ghosting past the dark cornfields on the way to the Quad Cities.