Where to start, after leaving Rapid City, SD Thursday
morning I drove straight to the east side of the state to pick up Carly in
Watertown. She welcomed me with open arms, meaning tequila, friends, and BBQ
chicken. We took a night quad ride to the ballpark where her parents were
working the softball games and then headed to Kempeska lake…bad idea. A wall of
Mayflies attacked us. Carly pulled over so I could look at the lake but there
was no lake to be seen, just a bazillion pesky bugs. The only option was to
peace out and head home. In the morning we went to breakfast with her wonderful
family and then started our ten-hour drive to Chicago.
The drive was far from boring. In Wisconsin we hit a
ridiculous rainstorm, where we couldn’t see ten feet in front of our face. We
came along an asshole truck driver who was cutting people off left and right.
Let’s just say he was presented with two deluxe death glares (and a little
thing we like to call the bird). The next obstacle we came across were the
annoying pay tolls. We missed the first one completely, were exempt from the
second one due to construction, and finally managed to pull our shit together
and make it through the next two. We made it to our hotel safe and sound at
8pm.
Now for the good stuff…
Thanks to Carly’s brother we were able to get the hook up
with our hotel. We stayed at the Marriott right next to the O’Hare Airport and
the Blue Line train station. After getting settled into our hotel we walked
across the street to experience Chicago pizza first hand. It was quite
delicious. We then decided to go to the bar in our hotel for a nightcap before
calling it quits for the day. Well as you all know, there is no such thing as
“just one drink”. Sitting next to us at the bar was Mike (a fifty something man
from Laguna Beach) and a married couple from St. Louis who were in town for the
Jimmy Buffet concert the next night. The lady (who we will call Piper because
that’s her “bar name”) bought us Patron shots. Mike soon followed by buying us
more Patron shots. Add that to our
two martinis, tequila sunrises and a daiquiri and that leads to a SPLENDID
night. Mike talked us into all getting a cab and going out in downtown
Chi-town (mind you it was mid-night…did I mention that bars don’t close until 4
there?) While waiting for the cab to come, “Piper” and her husband bailed and
decided to stay at the hotel. We heard a couple guys behind us with an accent
and of course our little South Dakota fireball had to find out where they were
from. The answer was Australia…perfect! We decided that Mike and us would share
a cab with Tim (not Tim McGraw although I called him that all night) and Gavin
our new friends. When the cab finally came there were only four spots and Mike
decided to stay back since he had a flight at 7am. Upon saying bye and wishing
us luck Mike handed us cash to pay for the cab.
Somehow we ended up at a bar called The Wonder Bar…which
Carly and I for sure thought was a strip club. It was not. We got in and it was a tiny (but hopping) jazz bar. I decide I needed to find the bathroom so I headed
downstairs… the bathroom is NOT downstairs. There was some kind of 10-person
rave going on, and it was super awkward. After successfully finding the
bathroom I met up with the gang, we bought drinks and sat at one of the tables.
The tables had white paper for tablecloths and crayons to draw on it with, our
kind of bar! Carly tried to set the bar on fire by putting the paper in the
candles, the cocktail waitresses were not down with that. Tim and I played
tic-tac-toe, which intrigued the guy next to us and just like that we found
another couple offering to buy us drinks all night! The couple was from New
Orleans and come to Chicago once a year. The husband was a nuclear chemist and
the wife never worked a day in her life.
We drank and danced all night, even exploring the creepy rave that was
going on downstairs. We then ended up going to a second bar just for the hell
of it around 3am. Drunk and tired Carly got the wonderful idea to buy Jimmy
Buffett tickets for the four of us. She found some for FIVE DOLLARS each …if it
sounds too good to be true it’s because it was. She ended up purchasing them
just to find out the next day, when we were more coherent, that they were indeed not
entrance tickets, they were simply just the “fast passes” so you didn’t have to
wait in line. Welp, you can’t win them all! A crazy night that we somehow still
remember thanks to all the awesome people we crossed paths with.
We got off to a late start the next morning seeing as how we
weren’t in bed until around 7am. After one set back of confusing the Cubs
stadium with the White Sox stadium (*Cough Cough CARLY) and getting off
at the wrong stop on the Blue Line we finally made it to the ball game. We may
or may not have only made it to the 4th inning of the White Sox vs.
Indians game due to a lack of sleep and nodding off in the stands. We decided
we had to get up and walk around if we were going to make it through the day.
We got back on the train and explored the rest of downtown Chicago. We saw
Cloud Gate, or as I like to call it “The Bean,” walked through Millennium
Park, meandered through a really awesome art fair, walked along the bay, and
went to the very tip top of the Willis (Sears) Tower where we were able to
watch an amazing sunset! We got back to the hotel around 10 o’clock, somehow
finding a third wind and buying the movie “Chasing Mavericks” leaving Carly
crying herself to sleep. The next morning we’d be checking out and heading on
our way to our newly rerouted trip.
-AK
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| The house wife from New Orleans at the Wonder Bar. |
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| Trying to figure out what was going on |
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| Cellular Field |
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| The Bean! |
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| Chicago from the Sears Tower |
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| Out of Order...But Tim and Gavin did their part in getting us all free drinks as well! : ) |
