Batter's up, Party down

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 4^th 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

 The house wife from New Orleans at the Wonder Bar.

 Trying to figure out what was going on

Cellular Field

The Bean!

 Chicago from the Sears Tower

Out of Order...But Tim and Gavin did their part in getting us all free drinks as well! : )