Chi-town Part 2:

On Sunday, we got a taste for the real Chicago. First, we successfully rode two subway/El trains into the heart of the city. We made our way fairly easily to the Field Museum in downtown Chi-town. The museum is right beside Soldier Field and there just happened to be 60,000 people wearing Bears jerseys headed in the same direction. So all we had to do was follow them.

At the museum we saw Sue, the most complete T-rex skeleton ever found. Alex and I had previously read several books about Sue and the saga of her journey to the Field Museum, so we were very excited to finally meet her in person. She was beautiful. We also saw a lot of her other dinosaur friends, a bunch of mummies, hundreds of animal specimens, meteorites, ancient artifacts, and Lucy, the oldest known hominid skeleton in the world. It was a very cool experience. Little did we know how uncool the rest of the day would be.

At precisely 3:00 pm we decided to catch a train back to our car so we could hit the road to begin our 7 hour trip home. Of course the Bears game ended at 3:00 and of course 60,000 drunken, yet happy Bears fans crowded into the streets and the trains at the exact same time we did. The train ride was so crowded that the woman standing next to me for the 40 minute ride got to know me a lot more intimately than she ever would have liked. I felt like apologizing, but I just couldn't look her in the eye after passively violating her for such a long period of time. Finally, to her great relief, we reached our stop and spared her any further indignity.

Within 30 seconds of finding our van and leaving the parking lot, our fate was sealed. My navigation skills were no match for the insanity that is post-Bears game/ road construction Chicago traffic. We took a fateful turn onto what we thought was our path home. How wrong we were. When we finally realized our error, we were headed straight back into the heart of the city and we would have to drive thru all the traffic we hoped to avoid in the first place by taking the train. Again, we took a corrective turn, this time putting us on a path toward the interstate that we so desperately needed to find. After heading south for several blocks, Bethany said she felt like going west for a while. I found a road that appeared to take us west AND toward the interstate. It would have taken us there- eventually. Unfortunately it also took us through one of the roughest parts of inner-city Chicago.

At every red light we stopped for, more and more disenfranchised urban youth stood idly by, studying our cute little minivan with the daisy petal steering wheel cover and matching CD holder on the visor, hoping for a little excitement in their otherwise unfulfilling lives. Trash blanketed the sidewalks, bottles with brown paper bags wrapped around them lay in the gutters, and dozens of sets of curious eyeballs bore down upon us at every intersection. No Toto, this didn't look like Kansas anymore. In my paranoid state, I encouraged my lovely wife to treat stop signs more like yield signs and red lights more like green lights. She readily complied and eventually we saw an overpass for the interstate. There was just one problem. The police and fire departments had the road blocked ahead, leaving us no way to reach the interstate. At this point, I felt an urge to cry. It was now past 5:30, the sun was starting to slip behind the tall buildings, and I realized that we had about half an hour of daylight before our simple navigational error had a real chance of becomming something more than just a funny story to blog about. I somehow saw a cross street on the map that we used to link up with the highway, and by 6:00, we were finally able to breathe a big sigh of relief as we left Chicago behind.

We were finally headed home. In the first few hours of our trip back, not much was said. I may or may not have had a nervous breakdown at some point in the city. Let's just say at one point I begged my bride to pull over and help me find a way on the map to get us the hell outta there. When she declined, I may or may not have temporarily lost my tenuous grasp on sanity. Only when we were an hour or so out of Chicago, did she acknowledge that maybe she could have been more sensitive to the fact that I was curled up in the fetal position, laying on the floor, rocking back and forth, sucking my thumb, and saying "I'll be a good boy, Mommy. I promise," over and over again. Maybe, she said, she should have pulled over one of the first 50 times I asked/ pleaded for her to do so. I don't do well in an urban enviornment. I can admit that. Ask anyone who knows me. And Bethany knows me.

When we arrived at home at midnight, we all got out of the van and kissed the ground. Well, I did anyway. I told my family that I love them and that I was sorry that I don't travel well. They said they love me anyway, and we won't have to go to Chicago again any time soon. I was real glad.

Now I can look back and laugh and recall all the fun we had when we weren't utterly lost and scared out of our minds. Chicago- I'll see ya in about 20 years. I think I'll be ready by then.