10/25/09 Tony and I visited Chicago

This entry picks up from last week’s entry.

After we left West Lafayette, where Purdue is located, we drove up to Chicago. The temperature was in the mid-eighties, which can be comfortable, but the humidity made it almost unbearably hot. There was a food festival there that weekend; “A Taste of Chicago” it was called. We were able to sample different styles of food. We enjoyed the boat tour of Lake Michigan. We went to the Sears Tower. The elevator ride took a minute to reach the top; the building is 103 stories tall. Looking out the window, down at the city, was a wonder to behold. After a few minutes, vertigo started to take its hold on me. If you’re ever in Chicago, you should visit the tower.

Tony and I spent a lot of our time visiting the Field Museum, the Shedd Aquarium, and the Adler Planetarium. I remember that there was a planetarium show that we wanted to see, which started a 2pm. I checked my watch and it was 12pm. We came back two hours later, only to discover that we missed the show! What I had forgotten was that my watch was on California time, not Chicago time (doing this helps me to deal with jet lag). So when my watch said it was 12pm, it was really 2pm; it was show time. Oh well, you win some and you lose some, I guess…

The best part of the trip was seeing a game at Wrigley Field. Wrigley Field is one of the few remaining traditional ballparks left. It is located in the middle of a residential area. There are apartment buildings across the streets surrounding the ballpark; on the top of those buildings are bleacher stands. The residents go up to the roof and get to take in a Cubs’ game; the downside is that their rents are higher because the owners figured in the cost for watching the games. Wrigley had a manual scoreboard in center field and is surrounded by the MLB team pennants. There is no diamond vision screen or scoreboard; this is what makes Wrigley a traditional ballpark. The Cubbies were playing the Arizona D-Backs, although I can’t remember who won. I was in Shangri-La. I can’t wait until I can go back and visit Chicago again.

My vocabulary words are:
Supercilious: haughtily disdainful (Webster's American pocket dictionary)
Seraph: a member of the highest order of angels (Webster's American pocket dictionary)