New Mexico Part the First.

Well, I'm finally sitting down and hammering this out.  We took the trip back in Mid-May.  It is now the second half of July.  Sure some/most of the details have faded, but this country is built on people making strong statements based on half-remembered impressions. 

This was my second trip to the Land of Enchantment. I shall say now that, for me at least, Enchantment must be a euphemism. Though not on a scale that one would expect with the crossover from “Genocide” to the milder sounding “Ethnic Cleansing”. But not so tame as how “Auto-tuned” has come to mean “covering up for a talentless singer.”

The first time I ventured forth to the American South West was back in the fall of 2007. Though it was something new and relatively interesting, I don't generally have good memories of the experience. That was the year that Robert Jordan died. Actually, I was at my folks house in Albuquerque when I read the news. That was a kick to the gut, moreso than the death of either my Uncle or my Grandmother. Horrible as that might sound, but in reading his stories I feel that I knew him better than either of my estranged, introverted relatives.

We ventured out somewhat, but mostly I was there to keep my mother company while my dad was on a trip back up in Alaska. What this translates to is that, I hung out at the house all day while she worked, and then I hung out in the house all night while she napped on the couch after work. We are not exciting people. We did visit the used book stores that Albuquerque – that is a dorkly tradition that I started in high school. New city: visit used book stores. Mission Fucking Accomplished.

Aside from that we hit up a few tourist traps and sampled the local restaurants. I hung out on the couch and read and wrote(which was what I did at home). I had finished my first two zombie novels and was working on the second pair. The air conditioning went out in the first couple days after a lightning strike. This wore harder on the mom than it did me. I have been living without Air Conditioning for years, and the midwest has some brutally hot and humid weather in the summer time.

Largely I avoided going outside in general. I hate hot weather.

This is what I recall most about my first adventure in New Mexico. That and our visit to Taos. Taos was a trip in and of itself. If you ever goto New Mexico, be sure to visit Taos. If you can skip over the rest of the state, all the better.

Now to the more recent adventure. The folks have been after the sister and myself to come down and visit for years. They offered to pay the airfare, so we took a long weekend and went on down. I spent the weeks leading up to it by psyching myself up for a huge panic attack! Getting up at 4:30 in the morning and then flying? Wheeeee!

I really don't want to do this. I hate heights. I hate being trapped in public spaces. I hate heights. I really don't want to do this. I hate being trapped in public spaces. I really don't want to do this. I hate heights. I hate being trapped in public spaces. Over and over those thoughts wore on my mind. Until I realized that this was a stupid attitude. Flying most likely won't kill you, it's just a hugely uncomfortable drag that I would rather avoid. That helped, and after the fear freaking out passed I actually rather enjoyed some aspects of the flight. I love looking down at the landscape below. There is nothing as awesome as a bird's eye view of the world.

Texas sucks.

Aside from a few sweaty-palm inducing jolts of turbulence, the flight down went smoothly. But damn, I do hate when an airplane drops several feet and shudders about like a Fundy thinking about the naughty bits on a human body. After a rough patch on the approach to the Albuquerque airport, we set down and were ready to go.

Firstly, New Mexico is brown. I don't mean this in the sense that the state has a bevy of sexy Latin folk meandering around, though that is fairly true. I refer instead to the landscape, with the largely unbroken drab sandy soil that is spotted with green bushes like some sort of rash. I tried to like Browntopia. But as a resident of the evergreen midwest, I could only ever keep coming back to the question “Who would want to live here?” I am not terribly fond of the city I live in. It does nothing for me. But I would gladly take it over Albuquerque.

The folks met us at the airport. This is to be expected. But what is a narrative without a few obvious points?

Nearly entire city seems to have jumped on the Adobe theme. Even the McDonalds. Which is cool. It gives it an exotic flavor to us out-of-towners, and to be honest visiting a city that isn't exactly like the sprawled hole that I just left feels nice. Sometimes it seems like too many towns across the country have become carbon copies of one another. Seeing a place with an identity of it's own is refreshing. New Mexico is not the midwest, and I don't see any reason that it should look like the midwest. Or vice versa.

We had breakfast-lunch at ChileRio. It was Fantastic. At least through the filter of not having eaten yet that day. Else, I'm sure that I'd need to downgrade my review to merely Good. The folks like it enough to have gone back several times, and to have brought their offspring along. Whatever, it was food and I was hungry.

Now the vast sight-seeing extravaganza could begin.

Albuquerque is a vast sprawl of a city. It spreads over the valley floor and is cut into a grid. I was not at all fond of it. I think I've mentioned it before. The only real homey sight for me was the belt of green that clad the Rio Grande. Notice that I did not add River to Rio Grande. I am just that sophisticated.

Our first stop on the itinerary was the petroglyphs on the edge of Albuquerque. For those who don't know, they are a series of figures carved into boulders on the side of a mountain outside of town. The weather was pleasantly sunny and warm, so we engaged in a small hike up and around the hillside to see the marks that long centuries of past generations had left behind. In my mind these crude carvings aren't great achievements in human art, but they are rather cool still. They are a mark of the past and to be enjoyed.

The coolest part of this hike(and all of the others to follow) were the signs that warned visitors to remain on the trail. Else beware the wrath of the rattlesnakes. Sweet! I so wanted to see a rattlesnake! It was a crushing blow that I didn't even catch the faintest jingle of a rattle. Stupid lofty dreams!

After the Petroglyphs the folks dragged us to a housewarming party at one of my dad's co-workers. He had long since decided to 'introduce me' to one of said coworkers. A pretty redhead. I do like pretty redheads. But I do not like people trying to prod me in a direction. I dig in and resist. Especially when they cannot answer a simple 'why is this a good idea?'

Sometime back the Mom took it upon herself to try and reintroduce me to her best friend's daughter(a very pretty girl). We had played together a few times as kids. I got mulely. Because that is how I do. This is just an aside. Feel free to read and judge.

The reasoning behind these shenanigans damn well better be 'she's pretty and you're both single. Thus a perfect match!' This cannot be the extent of our commonalities that might connect us. Though I do like pretty redheads. I viewed the encounter with the same nervous trepidation that have with all forced social meetings. I did not look forward to it. Thus why I am still single.

All in all, it was moot. He never got around to introducing us.

Well, it was a long day. I decided to crash out around 9:30 PM local time. Weak, I know, but I had been running for about 19 hours by that point. Much longer than I like. And tomorrow, Taos and the Earthships!

Have you done much traveling? I liked the trip to Taos the first time. Sure, the way is grey, but you finally get into the mountains. We moved away from Alaska in 1997, and I've not seen anything larger than a hill since. I forgot how much I miss the beauty of mountains – some of that is why I yearn to move out to the Pacific North West. Alaska lite.

The downside of the weekend was going to be that I was spending it in the back seat of a car. Sight-seeing from the back seat of a sedan is not really sight-seeing at all. Mostly you get one angle. Worse yet when that angle revealed the drab, post-apocalyptic wasteland that is New Mexico.

I must say that Taos makes for a pretty trip. Relatively speaking of course. The highlight was the Rio Grande, which is a sparkling green that high up. It was even more fantastic in the gorge.

Segway time!

The gorge was just that. A deep cut in the rock face where the river has worn through for hundreds of years. I think that at the apex it is some 450 feet deep. We got out of the car and decided to walk the bridge. I don't like heights. But I tried walking out on the bridge anyhow. Self-inflicted pain is the best kind.

I made it somewhere between an third and halfway across before I decided to turn back. My legs just got squiggly and I decided that I really didn't enjoy what I was trying to do. What bothered me the most was sudden gaps in the guardrail between sections. They were maybe an inch, two tops, wide. But it was enough that my hand lost contact with something solid. My brain didn't like this. My feet reversed course and walked us back.

The mom and sister made it all the way across, and laughed at us.

Earthships! I how I natter on about them. I want one. This is why I spend so much talking about them. A house that heats and cools itself and also grows some of the food the residents need? They seem so solid, built with tires, earth and concrete. Enough to repel any invaders. This is an Apocalyptic novelists' dream come true. Honestly, writing zombie stories has been made so much easier by the years I've spent daydreaming about surviving the Apocalypse. I admit, part of my brain is always devoted to that line of questions.

The mom asked over and over what we wanted to do on our visit. My only goal was to roadtrip to Taos and visit the Earthships. Now, that's two and a half, or three hours of sitting in a car for a man who does that for a living. Not really appealing. But, Earthships. For $7, you can take a self-guided tour of the compound. And for a couple hundred dollars you can even rent an Earthship for the night. While we weren't down for the former, we were up for the latter.

I am a cynic and a pessimist, but only when it doesn't get in the way of my mindless and boundless optimism(read this as I play the lotto and hope to win). This is a funny mix of personality traits, one that involves no little amusement on my part. After weeks and weeks of build up, I was wary that the self-tour might not live up to my expectations. I mean really, we just flew to New Mexico and drove up from Albuquerque. I've been waiting for this for weeks! Months even, as I have long daydreamed about taking a long cross-country tour that involved visiting the Earthships as I passed through the South West.

I had been waiting for this moment. And was of course disappointed. It's a running theme in my life. The tour involved a gift shop, a video that you could easily find on the internet – not to mention the fact that, if you're into Earthships enough to visit the landing sight in Taos, then you know all of that already – and the rest of the welcome center. After that, you're free to walk around the parking lot and take the 'self-guided tour' of following the ropeline.

If you were to take the tour as a form of exercise, then you'd just be as well off walking back and forth from your couch to the fridge. Tweren't much there. We didn't even get to go inside any of the other Earthships. Just the visitors center, which is set up as a visitor's center. Very un-houselike and dull. Darker than I expected too...though on second thought it is largely an earth-sheltered house. All in all, I think that the Visitor's Center was a bit like trying out Lucky Charms cereal for the first time while only eating the drab cardboardy bits that most people discard.

Seeing the outside of Earthships from a distance is Lame at best. I have a few other choice words that would fully express my feelings, but I don't feel like getting that base.

The highlight of the tour was the pretty blonde girl. Not only was she a beauty with a dazzling smile, but she was pleasant and knowledgeable, as well as borderline fanatical about the movement. Then again, she was working as the greeter in the Earthship visitors center, so this is to be expected. I myself, though devoted to the idea of personally acquiring an Earthship and experiencing the lifestyle, am not so interested in being part of a large scale social movement. Sure, it seems keen. I just don't have the personality or the energy required to bring folks into the fold. I am not an evangelist or used car salesman. I'm a dorky wannabe hack novelist with a negative charisma stat. Come to think of it... my talking about Earthships here is probably harming their cause.

Sorry hippies.

You see how many times I wrote Earthships in that last bit? Well that's about what my folks had to endure. Truly mine is a Rain Manesque obsession.

Though I do dabble with the idea of settling down with a few like minded friends and forming a community of homesteader types. This usually seems too damn communesque, hippieish, etc. for my liking. Not to mention I don't think I have a core of friends who would be remotely interested in such an endeavor. And I'm really not good at making new friends. Though it is all a pleasant fancy. Maybe I'll just weave it into a story that I write.

Despite all that, I still want an Earthship. Maybe after I pay off my student loans and hook up with a girl that one of my relatives thinks I should meet. I of course will be stuffing my lotto winnings into a mattress by then, so the expenses won't be an issue!

Back in town, we got out of the car only to have lunch. We played a game that is a sign of dysfunction in my family. I call it “Where do you want to eat? I don't know. Where do you want to eat?” Oh the Passive Aggressive Midwesterners are on vacation, how cute! But finally we decided on a local(as opposed to chain) place that was down town. Taos, is an art colony. Which means that it is full of A) hippies and B) tourist traps. Some of the latter being run by the former.

I think we finally went with a place called The Gorge.

The food was delicious. They get my seal of approval and I am willing to pimp them here... to all 3 people who might actually read this. I had my usual, burger and fries. Can't go wrong with that. I would go back(if I were in Taos again).

More later.

Tards run amok in the Windy City, news at 11.

Our little group doesn't have a good record when it comes to the land navigation skill set. Really, if you gave us the task of "Walk down this straight hallway, the one with no doors or turns, to the far side." At least two of us would get lost, and the rest would arrive late. We decided to goto Chicago. Originally we were going to get a hotel and stay for the weekend. But the Fat Man was all like 'sod that, I live an hour away. Let's just day-trip this bitches.' this sounded better than laying out cash for a hotel in Chicago. We're cheap and they aren't.

-There we are kids, three of the four members of Brotherhood of the Anchor, we'll be spinning in your town real soon -

Back in 2005 I visited Chicago for the first time for a class trip. Two full classloads of art students from the back woods were packed into a pair of buses and driven around eight hours right smack into the middle of the largest city in the midwest. There are a lot of hickoid jokes that one might be tempted to make on our part, but doubtful that any of them would be overly accurate.

-Godzilla will make little work of your Windy City unless you pay me one billion Yen, and get me Morena Baccarin's phone number. -

True, it was my first time in the city of Chicago. But hardly the first visit to a major city. If one counts Detroit, Boston or Seattle. Yeah, I sound like a defensive bumpkin with delusions of sophistication.

We spent several days seeing art of various quality (the piece that sticks out best was a film that involved a hobo fucking a skull - I stuck around until he started painting on a wall with some nail polish and then I was out) in museums and galleries, being herded between one and the next by our professors/chaperones. In between events we were left along to explore at our leisure. The weather was amazing for October, high 70s, sunny and a pleasant breeze from beginning to end. When we got home we found that the summer had faded and that fall had finally taken its rightful place.

The high-points for me were two. Chicago Style Stuffed Pizza is the first. An inch of cheese mixed with various toppings in reverse Chicago order. We had it two nights in a row, and for other meals in between. I raved about it for months afterwards. And the second was the Blue Man Group. If you haven't seen one of the shows yet, go see them.

-This is exactly why Tim Curry was so damn creepifying in IT -

The Art Institute was killer, as were the legions of females, both the natives and our own contingent, who were still dressed in their summer clothes. I hate hot weather, but love all the girls in their summer outfits. Some things are just worth bearing if you get good enough compensation in return.

The entire class trip can be summed up as 'fucking awesome'.

So yeah, in Febtober of 2009 I asked the Fat Man if was down for a trip to Chicago one of these weekends. He was. Chicago after all, Fuck Yeah.

-Well fiddlesticks, what we have here boys and girls is a major case of historical language FAIL. Who wrote this? What it really should read is 'Fuckin-a G, your dope ride is the Shizznitt! Didja used to use it to cruise for pussy with your boys back in the hood?' Do some research damn it, you're working in a museum.-

I had one real plan at the beginning of our planning process. Locate Pizza. Acquire pizza. Eat pizza. Four years later, and I just wanted to get some freaking pizza. How messed up is that? Just hook it to my veins and I'll be happy! Sauce!

Really, Chicago is around 3 hours from here, and a mere Hour from the Fat Man. So why not kick in and have dinner. Head in the morning, and While we were in the area, we could easily kill time before dinner. Museums, Chicago has them. Lots of them in fact. We'll get back to this later.

The Field Museum was running a pirate exhibit. Goal number two had quickly emerged. See pirates and eat pizza. What combination could be more natural? In the mean time, we might throw in some dorktastic shopping experiences if we could fit them in. A used bookstore here, a gaming shop there. Chicago has a lot to offer if you're willing to look.

Turns out that we weren't that willing to look. Chicago also has expensive parking if your ass gets there late and you have no idea where you're going.

-Shiny things rule!-

The weekend started friday night. Evil and I made our way to Indiana with the intent of getting up early, breaking fast, and roaring into our funtastic weekend and making as much of the city visit as possible. That was the intent. Portents boded poorly for our trip from the getgo. We remembered the laptop/jukebox but forgot such important tools as our toothbrushes. Easily enough fixed. The dollar store has everything one needs to mount such an expedition. Including the hot pink star-shaped Hannah Montana bubble necklace which was bestowed onto the Fat Man. Mad props, the man wore the goofy ass thing through the entire weekend.

This was the high-point of the trip. Sad huh? The rest of it involved poor navigation, missing an exit and adding an extra thirty minutes to the trip. Fun fun fun! This does lead to a question. Along our route we found some kickass billboards advertising for an adult toy store. Vibrators and dildos and what-not. The whole array. Found them later on the internet. Stop judging me. Back to the store. Who are these billboards aimed at? Who is driving down the highway at 70, sees an attractive woman inviting them to a sex-shop and says to themselves 'I'm there?' Myself aside, who are these horny bastards? Kindly put your pants back on before raising your hand.

The reality involved our dumb asses staying up till two in the morning and playing the card game Bang. Wild times. After that I had all the joy of trying to catch some sleep in a warm room, wrapped in a warm sleeping bag, on an inflatable mattress with a slow leak. A combination that is mutually exclusive with a decent night's sleep.

After breaking fast we ended up succumbing to the temptation of material goods. Yeah baby those little vending machines in the lobby of the restaurant were our downfall. The Fat Man spotted one that was packed with rings priced at 25 cents a piece. He bought one. The rest of us were dragged along by peer pressure and a healthy sense of ridiculous. I wore mine for most of the trip. Bling bling! baby. I'll make Leroy Brown himself jealous of my pointless accessorization.

Northern Indiana is a depressing place, especially the closer one gets to the border with Illinois. Gary, what you can see of it from the expressway, is a real pit. Not the kind of town I'd enjoy getting lost in. The houses were rundown and decrepit. The same mess is mirrored along the so-called rust-belt. Saginaw, Flint and Detroit. Miserable places where the people seem to be trapped where they are. Like a pit of quicksand. This was a good time to stop watching the scenery pass by and close my eyes.

-Midair terrorist fist-bump for the win. Really, we fit right in with the 8 year olds who were running around the museum.-

Through the skyway and 16 bucks worth of tolls later, we were in Chicago on what would become Lakeshore. Success! We'd gotten so far without getting lost once. Mind you, it's basically a straight shot, once you get on the Toll Road, from Southie to Chicago. If you get lost here, well then we'll start a club for the dreadfully incompetence. A club with cake, supplied by people who aren't associated with the likes of us. It'll be fun. Except for our inability to conduct meetings or actually procure said cake.

Coming from the south, and I imagine any direction, you can see Chicago rise up out of the lake from miles and miles off. Majestic is way too corny. But the skyline is an impressive sight. A range of man-made spires. Or maybe a jagged cliff rising above the blue lake. I imagine that on clear summer days that the view is dazzling. For us it was cloudy.

We rolled up Lakeshore searching for two distinct goals. The first was Fields. The second was a place to park so that we could attend Fields. The Field museum is a giant concrete building designed in a neoclassical form that has been for so long popular with Western European cultures and their descendants. In America the style of architecture has been used to connect ourselves with the culture, learning and 'values' of the ancient Greeks(the democracy part, not the man on boy action). So, someone had the brilliant idea to mold our center of learning and culture in the style of the Greek and Roman buildings.

-Despite what you might think, this is not the Field Museum. In our defense, it is an actual Museum. And there is a field in front of it.-

And there it was. A giant concrete building in the classical style, with the Greek columns and the Roman domes sheathed in oxidized copper. Our collective reaction was a drawn out exclamation, probably in the form of a colorful metaphor. The building was enormous. We were going to need all day to explore it. Score one for the away team. Now to locate that parking garage that the Fat Man had found via the internet and we'd be golden.

We didn't come across the garage, as we circled the streets pulling further and further from the museum. So we backtracked and bingo, there it was, an underground garage attached right to the museum itself. What kin of luck is that? Not the good time kids.

I figured out we were somewhat off when I went to buy a ticket and it was ten dollars cheaper than expected. When I asked if it would get me into the pirate exhibit. The girls behind the desk stared at me and informed my pasty ass that this was the Museum of Science and Industry, I would find no such exhibit here. That sort of shenanigans was housed at the Field museum.

Fuck.

-Take that bitch. Always lock your wheel and frame to the bike post.-

So, we gathered our forces and exited stage three stories up and leftish. And then tried to find the Field Museum on foot via a tour of the perimeter. For those who aren't laughing along at home, the Field museum is around five or ten miles further north. Evil noticed a definite lack of Shed's Aquarium, which shares a space with the Field Museum. We had undershot our destination then payed for parking. With the Field nowhere in sight, we decided to surrender and check out the Museum of Science and Industry.

First thing one notices, the building is ginormous. And it's infested with a horde of monkeys. The bald kind that run around fully dressed. Make a lot of noise. And generally were rather obnoxious. We fit right in.

I was wearing my I Kill People On Weekends t-shirt that the Fat Man had specially made for members of our gaming organization back in school. It was intended to be rather catchy and on the edge of good taste as it referenced perceived social bias towards violent video games and those who play them. I've had the shirt for years, and love wearing it, especially on weekends. Well, this time I forgot what shirt I was wearing. It was black with white text, like 10 other t-shirts that I own. No, I'm not a goth.

But as such, with a legend like 'I Kill People On Weekends', on a Saturday, the shirt drew a lot more attention than was intended. The first instance was one of the workers at the museum near the ticket counter who asked about my policy. I was dumbfounded as I had forgotten I was wearing said shirt. In the end, the five bucks offered was not enough to kill his supervisor. Sorry to disappoint. Moving on. Cheap bastard.

First up, we hit the Uboat exhibit. Imagine a full sized German ww2 submarine residing in someone's basement, and that's about what you have here. Along the way from the main building to the hanger where the sub is housed, is a multimedia attraction about how the sub was captured intact by the allies. We skimmed right by it. Stopping from time to time when something caught our eye and then moving on without really waiting to absorb the entire presentation.

-That is impressive. Next, the full scale model of the USS Enterprise NCC-1701(I admit, I had to google that.)-

What we found was a living breathing WW2 era German Uboat. I mean we knew it was there. But really, most museums might be expected to contain part of such a machine, or a mock-up. This was the real deal. All one hundred and fifty feet of it. And it was quite cool. The walls were line with information about the workings of the sub and the daily lives of the crew. It's enough to dissuade me from taking up the submariner lifestyle. It looks a lot like being in prison, only underwater. And with more rape.

The museum offered the option to explore the sub proper. We didn't go inside, that'd of cost extra and we're cheap/poor. So on we went to kill time till dinner.

-Those wacky Germans sure do love their Skat.-

The rest of the museum is really just 'science' for children. It reminds me of the Imaginariam in Anchorage, only a thousand times larger. They had models by the hundreds. Not the good kind of models, the ones dressed in lingerie and bikinis, but rather the informative ones representing in scale real world objects that just wouldn't fit in such a small space.

The model that got the awesome vote for the day was that of the city of Chicago and how the railway system works in tying interstate commerce together. Yeah, pretty dry stuff. I had to refrain myself from Godzilling the model. Following through with the impulse would have involved some extensive fines and jail time, but damn it was tempting. If not for the destruction, just for a pic of myself 'attacking' scale-Chicago. Nothing can stop Godzilla! Might have been worth being expelled from the museum.

The rest of the afternoon was spent wandering around and posing for goofy pictures. If I have one disappointment, it is the Fat Man's unwillingness to Whinnie-the-Pooh the jet engine in the airliner exhibit. That would have made a fantastic picture, one to embody the entire trip. Damn that man and his pride. I suppose that I could have substituted myself, though my bony ass sticking out of the front of an engine as such would have lacked the humorous punch.

-You see, had he cooperated, in this space right now you'd be reading some classic Pooh-bear line like 'Ohh bother' or 'Mmmm honey'. But no, so all you get is some Weebl and Bob. Ready? "What the greasy poop going on here?"

Then there was the obligatory pass through the gift shop. Expensive shit. Some of it was passingly interesting, but not enough so for any of us to be willing to part with our cash for. Oragami Plane? Are they airworthy? I doubt it.

Finally we came to our true purpose. Pizza.

We grabbed the car, paid our fare and trekked north further into the heart of the great city. Yea and behold, there it stood, our original destination, the Field Museum. Bigger than life and far more intimidating, with banners proclaiming that the Pirate exhibit was located inside for those who dared to tread those hallowed halls.

I am a fat man at heart. Of all the pizza I've ever tried, I like the Chicago style stuffed the best. Fred's here in town falls into second place. I had spent four or so years building up the pizza we had had into mythic proportions. Enough to get me off my lazy ass and over to Chicago.

-You are correct. I am a schmuck. If we had been visiting Italy, I'd be the dufas who was 'holding up the Leaning Tower' in at least one of the photos we brought home. Can't help it, I just love cliches.-

We decided to hit up Giordano's, a restaurant that both the Fat Man and myself could swear by, and often did. This involved finding another parking lot, getting lost in said parking lot (we are a sad lot) and hiking down several blocks. About three blocks into our hike, it started to rain, and then it began to pour, then the level of rain ascended to whatever cosmic level is beyond mere cats and dogs.. I was greatly amused. Rain wasn't about to stop us. We just kept on going. After stopping to look up the address again, and then continuing on once more, we finally stormed the front of the restaurant and asked for a table. There was a 20 minute wait, the cute girls informed us.

Yeah. Twenty minutes, no problem. Well, if you ignored the fact that the the interior was roasting warm. Dutch held a plastic slice of pizza that marked our place in line while the rest of us were standing out front of the building watching the rain and talking with the other potential patrons. The hight point was a creepy bastard paced back and forth staring at us, he did that for around 20 minutes. That was the first and only “Wish I had a gun.” moments that I faced on this trip. I could tell that he was pondering the message of my t-shirt, and maybe considering testing the authenticity. Was it an idle boast? Or was it just a joke? The wheels were turning.

We met up with my cousin Spank-daddy about half an hour into our wait for the pizza, turned out that he had busted his face a week or so earlier with an alcohol fueled chance encounter with a similar storm and a local curb. Rather, half an hour into the wait for our table to sit down and order the pizza. What was taking so long? We found out when a stream of midgets(read children) passed through the door and was seated, filling the place to capacity. Bastard circus freaks had 'reservations'.

After our hour of penance for stupidity and failure to think ahead, we were finally seated. 45 minutes later we had our pizza in hand. It was as amazing as I recalled. Won't bother describing the experience here, go get some your own damn selves and stop your half-assed vicarious living through me.

Chicago's south side has a bad reputation for being rough and tumble and out and out dangerous. No doubt some of it is, especially to the obvious outsider (that'd be our dumb selves). Equally no doubt the south side has it's nice parts as well. At least according to the wikipedia article on the subject. Really South Chicago is like any other city. But it does have a reputation. We wandered straight into the northern edge.

-Origami airplanes? How well do they fly?-

The buildings and houses in places were fantastically beautiful, architecturally speaking.. Then a block or two later they were run down and depressed. It is like the city is rotting alive, with the dying and dead flesh right next to the healthy skin and muscle. Leperous.

Our first and most amusing taste of humanity came when we were stopped at a red light waiting for it to change. When suddenly someone pulled up behind and began to honk their horn and wave. We assumed it was an angry FIB(Fucking Illinois Bastard – which is apparently what folks in Wisconsin call people with Illinois plates) driver who didn't appreciate our stupid touristy ass blocking their road. That is the problem with being a tourist. You're forever in the purgatory of wandering the earth without knowing exactly where you are and how to get where you're going. Which tends to piss off the locals to no end.

This is what we thought we had on our tail. To the point that our Chauffeur Dutch tried to get the hell out of the way. Only to be tailed by a mysterious citizen who continued to honk and wave at us. It was like the urban legend about the traveler on the road being chased down by a car with ultra-high beams. No such luck here. It turned out that Dutch had a low tire, and concerned a citizen took it upon themselves to help a car load of confused tourists out. Most people, everywhere, would just look the other way and go on with their own lives.

Dutch decided to pull over at the nearest gas station and fill up the tire with one of the pumps. Usually they run $.75 for three minutes of time. More than enough. We pooled our cash, change was running short, and found a local BP. When we pulled up, there was a gentleman manning the air pump. He said it would be $.50 cents. As he was working his buddy came and hit us up for whatever he could, stuck his head in the car and wouldn't take no for an answer. With that kind of drive, if he had the education to match, he would have been a tiger in the business world.

Maybe he was, and panhandling on the weekends was just a hobby,

Here is the most depressing aspect of visiting Chicago. The homeless. They're difficult at times to pick out from the panhandlers who are just looking to make some quick cash off of the caring(or gullible). Whatever. A little spare change once in a while is nothing, and it might get into the hands of people who can use it. We're pack animals, social creatures, helping out a needy member of the pack is just the way it works.

But we ended up paying less than we had expected to for the air. So all in all it was a win situation. Later on it occurred to me to give them the final two slices of pizza that we took home with us. It had only been about a half an hour since we had left Giordano's, so the remaining pie was still warm. Afterthoughts are useless, unless you act on them then next time the situation repeats itself.

With our tire ready to go, and Lakeshore in sight, we were ready to head back to Southbend to rest and watch bad movies until the wee hours. And so we went.

Chicago day-trip number one, success mixed thoroughly with fail. Funny how a car full of college educated adults end up dumber than a sack of hammers at those basic life skills. The humiliation aside, it was a blast and we look forward to our next excursion into the west.

-Yep, waiting for the Never O'clock to come and end it all so I don't have to go face the humiliation of being a tard. -