[Photo ©2013 William Bosch, Chicago, Illinois, USA]

An odd outlook.

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Promptly after writing the post, I completely forgot.

My bad.

So, here we are.  4 months have passed and you still wake up in the middle of the night wondering whatever became of that followup post…  OK  That’s probably a bit hopeful on my part.  But still – true to my word, I shall visually enthrall you with more optically-dazzling imagery.

FIRST – the hotel.  For those of you that spoke with either myself or my lady friend, you know that Ashly and I had been planning this trip for something like 5 months.  However, when I say “this trip” I mean a trip.  Somewhere.  Anywhere.

In the end, we actually planned out 5 different trips… in about 3 weeks.  We considered Maine, Kentucky, Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, a perimeter-tour of the lower peninsula, and Chicago.  Chicago won out simply because of the mind-boggling selection of educational day-trip destinations.

We like our learnin’.

That little back story may not seem relevant, but oh how wrong you are.  See, 5 days before we left for Chicago, we hadn’t even begun considering going there.  We were still in the planning stages of a Michigan road trip.  I don’t really remember how we ended up switching to Chicago, but it happened and we found ourselves with slightly over 72 hours of time to organize an itinerary, buy tickets to stuff we wanted to see, and find a hotel whose room fee didn’t require a bank loan, gold bars, an arm and/or a leg, or a first-born child.

In the end we ended up staying damn-near 45 minutes outside of the city.  Were it not for the downtown parking situation (which were completely unaware of) it wouldn’t have been an issue.  In fact, all things considered, it was one of the better snap decisions we’ve made.

We found ourselves at an Extended Stay out past Downer’s Grove.  At first glance it looks like a normal over-niter for business travelers.  We found out that (as the name suggests) it’s designed for people to stay for over a week or 2.  But enough rambling, here’s what makes it so awesome.

• Long-term stay means people need more elaborate forms of equipment to use.  Example:  A FULL KITCHEN.  Now, this might not seem like much to you, but I cook.  A LOT.  It was awesome.
• No explanation needed: It was one of the cleanest hotels I’ve ever stayed in.  Period.
• Lastly and most importantly: In order to keep the charges down on a room rental that may go past 3 weeks, the hotel got rid of one of the staple functions of most chains.  There is absolutely no maid service.  While at first you may think that seems cheap, remember that I am a visual artist in a digital age.  I take a LOT of really EXPENSIVE gear with me everywhere I go.  I don’t need to drag my lights and laptop with me every step of the way.  The fact that no one (trustworthy or otherwise) would NOT be coming into to move things around took my nervousness level from my standard 362% to effectively zero.

And also ’cause the per night price gets cheaper the longer you’re there, our week’s stay cost us something like $50 a night.

Conclusion: Extended Stay: Do it.

Oh and hey – MORE CHICAGO PICTURES!!

- Jon

I hadn’t noticed prior to shooting the Sears on this day that the base of the building kind of builds up the same way the sections of the tower do. I thought it was a pretty cool compliment to the overall structure, and I wonder how detailed the architects must have been to incorporate the geometry of the building completely from the tip top of its 110 stories all the way to the street below. It’s crazy that this was the tallest building in the world as recently as 15 years ago, and even after losing its title as top of the top it was only a few hundred feet shy of the newest world’s tallest until 2010. Now the Burj Khalifa in Dubai is nearly double its height!

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Here, for instance, I love how the Sears (Willis) Tower tends to look as though it’s leaning out to look down the alley. The stretching away from the street-level subject matter to the top of the tower leaves this feeling of motion. This is the sort of craning I get whenever I’m peering up at this or another massive tower.

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Chicago was chilly and rainy, but that didn’t dampen our excitement a bit! It only gave me a chance to use my newly acquired transparent umbrella – Flip refused to stand under this.

The Bean was quite impressive. Quite big and very silvery. There were loads of people surrounding it, taking their pictures in the reflection of the great mirrored vegetable …tourists, folks for the Houston Texan game…good ol’ Southern folk, roudy and ready for a win.

The Willis Tower was the main event. The line was terribly long…one hour and 45 minutes long, but worth the wait….between listening to the different languages of people in the curving line with us and answering trivia questions on the walls, the wait was bearable. The view at the top was beautiful. They had semi-new glass observation boxes or rooms that actually stuck out from the building, giving you a glass floor to look at the city below from a new angle. This was the most thrilling part.

Another bit of a walk on Madison Ave……a loo break in the Crate and Barrel there….a trip to Garrett’s popcorn shop, and a look around a mesmerizing Hershey store….some more trying out of my new umbrella…it was time for dinner.

At 5:30 on a weekend night in Chicago you would think there would be countless places open to eat. There were not. We search high and low with our only successes being a McDonald’s and an Arby’s on the main road. We were distraught. After a bit we finally stumbled across a small pub. Knowing that our train would be leaving before we could find another open restaurant, we took the opportunity and were VERY pleased with the meal that we got there. We cannot remember the name, but it warmed our wet and cold bodies, even though it wasn’t deep dish.

The train ride home was uneventful, peaceful and good. We snuggled the whole way home.

About a month later we went back to Chicago area (Rockford, Illinois) by car for a trip to one of our favourite stores: IKEA! We found all sorts of goodies including Swedish meatballs and cream sauce and played in the pre-set rooms just like in 300 Days of Summer…except – even though we were doomed by a chum – we are still together.

WE FINALLY HAD OUR DEEP DISH PIZZA on this second trip. Delicious.

Moral of the story: We highly recommend day trips to Chicago (or nearby).

I’m not entirely sure why we chose to road trip to Chicago in the middle of January, but I remember there being this sense of necessity to get out of Colorado, even if it meant battling blizzards in a tiny Ford Focus for 22 hours. Never having the opportunity to travel much when I was a kid, I’ve always been a bit over-eager to escape the drudgery of day-to-day reality and take off to just about anywhere anytime. Even Chicago in January. No matter how we chose the destination, we plotted our route, booked some cheap hotels, packed our bags, and left a few just days after our initial decision. Being that my car was prone to breaking down on a regular basis (I recently had to sell it to a salvage yard for 200 bones, but that’s another story) we decided to take Adam’s pint size Focus–which happened to be a stick. Lucky me seeing as how I never got around to learning to drive stick growing up. I got a pretty ridiculous fly-by-the-seat-of-my pants tutorial. I found it exhilarating. I think Adam would disagree. We took off somewhere between 1-3am (we were planning on leaving around 5, but were too giddy to wait the extra few hours) and drove east into blackness while blaring some throw back mix tapes I found under the driver’s seat.

The entire trip was slow going due to the drive being a complete white-out through most of Nebraska and Iowa. By the time we finally rolled into the outskirts of Chicago we were both exhausted and tense, Adam especially as I tried to shove warm, soft string cheese into his mouth while he drove. I was just trying to cheer him up–he loves cheese usually. Our hotel was skeezy and stuffy and the front desk girl was a complete dick to us. But we were two 20 year olds who temporarily ran away from our real lives to explore territory foreign to us. It was bliss. For the next few days we wandered around the city aimlessly, very few goals in mind. We walked and walked and talked to strangers and each other. Every day ended with us exhausted, pounding back bottles of wine in our hotel that we pre-packed due to our underage-ness. And goddamn, it was fucking cold in that city. The heating in our room was unreliable at best, so we fell asleep with our knitted hats on, with Anderson Cooper quietly delivering news in the background, while I drunkenly tried to scratch Adam’s back and then I would laugh and think, “Hey, this is my life.”

I wish I could give some exciting play-by-play of all the activities we did, all the tourist traps we visited, but it wasn’t really those things that mattered. It was just the simple act of being young and immature and exploring something new with somebody that I loved. Yeah, the Sears/Willis Tower is crazy fucking tall and yeah I’ll probably never laugh as much or as loud as I did the night we went to The Second City and yeah Chicago is gorgeous and iconic and yeah everybody we met there was hilariously overly tense and seemingly self-loathing, but despite all that, what I remember most about that trip, the trip I took to godforsakingly cold Chicago in January of 2011, is just existing outside of my bubble, my comfort zone. And it felt awesome.

Amusingly I saw a billboard in Chicago for a father’s rights group.  Although my family and I didn’t really do much in Chicago except sight see I still got to see the Sears Tower.  We drove around and saw a bunch of old school style neighborhoods, including houses that looked like they were ripped from an 80′s sitcom.  Oddly enough, Washington was a helluva lot colder than Illinois.  No snow there despite it being winter.

To make a long story short, I saw my brother for the first time in 9 or so months and Chicago is dirty as hell with some of the most stereotypical black people I have ever seen.  I shit you not I saw a black man at the Chicago airport dressed in a gold pimp outfit complete with cane.

That said, due to my family’s reluctance to do anything other than hang out with my little bro (nobody wanted to go see a movie, do a crap load of sight seeing, go to a zoo, party, etc.) it was the flight home that was truly interesting. Well, and awkward.

See, I didn’t sit next to my family or my bro’s girlfriend on the flight back.  So, alongside some poor random dude who was in for an awkward ass ride home, there was this tall, beautiful black babe who decided to sit next to me.  She casually started conversation with me.  And then she pulled out some girl game and started escalating.

We talked for a considerable amount of time.  I learned many things including:

a) hot chicks like Walking Dead too

b) Twilight isn’t just a white people problem

I also learned that her boyfriend is apparently funding her flight from Albany New York all the way to Seattle with the money he made working on a Deadliest Catch style boat.  She decided to reward his loyalty by getting me a drink on the airplane and touching me inappropriately.  By inappropriately I mean she first touched my knee a couple times, then worked her hand up to Daddy’s long leg.  Did I forget to mention my parents and my bro’s girlfriend were sitting right behind us?  Or that poor man who was sitting next to us, and for some odd reason decided to roll up into a little ball in the corner (can’t imagine why)?  Oh, and there was this middle-aged fake blonde across the aisle watching us intensely?

Seriously, I have no idea what I did to get her to that level of lust.  Apparently I am a lot smoother than I thought.  I’d be lying if I said under other circumstances I would have let her have her way with me.  Boyfriend be damned.  But the concept of her talking about how great her boyfriend was while rubbing me, on a crowded airplane, with my family present… well, that was just a wee bit awkward.

Thankfully, when I didn’t react (visibly) she eventually kept her hands to herself and continued to talk to me.  Eventually we landed and she started talking to someone on her phone and her mood went from lusty babe to angry bitch in a nano-second… I have no idea what to make of that, although this really wouldn’t be the first time I attracted super hot, super crazy chick.

I decided against getting her number despite the fact I am fairly certain just showing up on my part would have gotten me laid.  When the erection went down, the idea of screwing some poor guy over via his girlfriend just didn’t seem honorable (yeah I know, she’ll just find someone else to fuck the poor guy over with).

The worst part?  My mother is my dental hygienist.  A week later I am in her office getting my teeth cleaned by her and she brings up the black chick (whose name escapes me… somehow… I think it was Amy but don’t quote me on that).  The conversation goes along like this:

Mom: “So, that black girl sitting next to you… she was very pretty.”

Me:  ”Yup.”  (Thinking to myself: You aren’t funny God.  I know you like to think you are, but you are not.)

Mom: “She really seemed to like you a lot.”

Me:  ”She had a boyfriend.”

Mom:  ”Really?  What were you two doing?  She seemed to really like talking to you.”

Me: “Nothing.”

And that was the end of that conversation (thank God).  I will give the Almighty this, all the weird crap He has put me through has made me develop a helluva poker face.

Moral of this story: Get a different flight than your family and unintentionally game the women on board.

Photo of the Day – Skyline from a Duck’s point of view

This is from the first photowalk we did in Chicago from maybe April 2012? I could check the metadata but my brain is sort of fried. We got a group together again this weekend but I haven’t had a chance to process anything yet because I’ve been preoccupied with the new website. I was up late last night and planning another late session tonight. Hoping I can get something going by the weekend – if not I’ll keep tinkering and postpone the ‘go live’ date until the end of February when I get my work/life balance back a bit.

We took field trips to Chicago’s Art Institute to apply what we learned in class, but better still, we studied Chicago – how it fit together and where it was going. We considered why. Not just with Chicago, that is, but more generally “why” in art and architecture. What for? Purpose. He taught us Carl Sandberg’s Chicago, for which I still remember the words:

Hog Butcher for the World,
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation’s Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders

We were to recite these lines underneath Alexander Calder’s Flamingo as a class and then disperse through the city on a scavenger hunt for a single day during my junior year. I couldn’t go, and I don’t remember why. It was of great disappointment. I’m a Chicago addict, and I know quite a bit about it. I was enthused to take on my classmates and dominate the challenge, but in the end I never got a chance to recite those words.

Tonight I walked past Calder’s Flamingo for the first time in a long time and shot under it – capturing those Big Shoulders of the Sears ‘Willis’ Tower and the shorter ones like it behind the looping metal frame. The Flamingo stands 53 feet tall and weighs almost one ton for each one of those feet. My photo came out stormy, husky and brawling, I think. I’m still on that scavenger hunt every day. Thanks, Mr. Wright.

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The Chicago Skyline — restored

By Jeffrey Bishop

Let me not bury the lead:

I DROPPED MY SON’S PINEWOOD DERBY CAR!

Today.  On the cold, hard concrete floor of the garage.  My 10-year-old’s vision of the Chicago skyline, wrought from Sculpey and paint and glue with a to-scale level of skill and craftsmanship and hard work as that of the architects and engineers and steel workers who erected the full-sized Windy City skyline.  Broken — the beautiful thing shattered like glass.

When it happened, I wept like a child — like I knew my child would weep when he found out.

My folly was thinking it needed just one more layer of clear coat varnish.  My folly was holding it gingerly between my fingers and not firmly grabbing it by its wooden base.  My folly was my hubris in thinking I knew best what his car needed.  And that my age and experience relative to his were enough to prevent harm from coming to his craft.  I was wrong.

What could I do?  I grabbed up all the pieces I could find — I found all of them.  Some had just popped off the base, but some — like the giant Sears Tower (my son’s first experience with America’s tallest skyscraper was NOT in the Willis Tower, thank you) – snapped in three places.  Its twin antennae – as much a part of the building’s signature as it’s boxy-tubes shape — had snapped off as well.

I mixed up some two-part epoxy and started putting the rolling Humpty Dumpty back together again.

When I finished, I felt like I’d done a good job restoring his fantastic job.  We would have to make new antennae, but the main of the Chicago skyline was restored.  I did my best.  But …

Would he notice?  It didn’t matter — I knew that I would tell him.  How could we team up together to design and build the car in a values-based program like Cub Scouts and have me try to sneak something like that past him?

Would he be shattered, as his car had been shattered?  Yes, I knew he would be.  And when he came home from school and I told him, he was.

But by God‘s good grace, kids are resilient and kids are forgiving.  My son calmed himself and listened to my apologies, listened to my pledge to help him repair it, and listened to my assurances that we could make it look as good as it had when he’d put the finishing touches on it only the night before.

He forgave me.  And he taught me about forgiveness.

Tonight, the car gets checked in.  Tomorrow, it will glide downhill at up to 350 (scale) miles per hour.  It might win.  It might lose.  And it might fall off the track and shatter.  But having experienced the tragic and having recovered from it together, I know for my son and me that whatever happens tomorrow, everything will be o.k.

UPDATE Jan. 30, 2013:  My son raced the car, and clocked speeds at more than 216 miles per hour, against winning cars that sped downhill at almost 230 m.p.h.!  He stayed on the track, and while a couple antennae broke again (the car’s Achilles’ heel) in the racing, it didn’t shatter on race day as it did for me.

While others’ bested his cityscape for speed, he just learned at last night’s pack meeting that he won Best Design honors — and he’s elated!  He’s also entered the design in a national Dremel-Lowes pinewood derby design competition first featured in a previous pinewood derby-themed blog posting.  If you want to cast your vote for his car, visit the site and click on the View Entries tab; scroll down until you see his Chicago Skyline car, then select “10″ (how else would you vote?!) and then click the “Save Feedback Vote” button at the bottom of the page.

Thanks much for all of your support!

THE END

Copyright 2013

John Hancock Observatory

Our wait to get onto the elevator, up to the John Hancock Observatory, was about 20 minutes on a Sunday afternoon.  As we got off the elevator at the top, we were handed an iPod and headphones.  On it there were little audio files accessed by typing in a number. As you move around the observation floor, there are numbers placed onto the window. When you get to one, just type in the number and you’ll listen to a brief description of what can be seen, along with a few additional pictures on the iPod. There is even a section of the observation floor where you are able to walk outside and feel the wind that whips against the building.

Willis Tower SkyDeck

Getting to Willis Tower was pretty easy, the closest ‘L’ stop is only two blocks away, at the Quincy station.  While there, our wait to get on the elevator was a little faster then at the John Hancock building due to our visit being on a Wednesday morning.  Although once we got to the top it was crawling with people.  The main attraction has to be the four glass cubes that are sticking out the side of the observation deck.  This allows you to walk out into them and see straight to the ground. Even though there are four cubes, there had to have been 10 people trying to get in each so it was hard to get a picture. It would have been nice if there was some type of system to give each person a chance alone in the cube for pictures and to view the city.

All in all, both observation decks offered amazing views of Lake Michigan and many famous spots around the city. I enjoyed the views of the beach, Navy Pier and the Willis Tower, from the John Hancock Tower. While from the Willis Tower, one can see the Chicago River, Millennium Park and downtown Chicago from the middle of it all!

What city has your favorite observation deck? What building is it in?

Wow, it is cool to be on the observation deck of the Tallest Building in America! I am reporting from the Willis Tower in Chicago, Illinois. Not so long ago it used to be called Sears Tower. Then in 2009 Sears did not want to own the tower anymore. Everyone was in shock when they announced that it will be closed till they found another owner, i was too! Until a couple weeks later everyone cheered when Willis inc bought the Sears Tower.  Soon it opened and changed it’s name to Willis Tower. During that time Marshall Fields was also ending ownership. It’s new owner is now Macy’s Inc.! It used to be the tallest building in the world. Soon the Taipei 101 became the tallest building in the world. Then the Burj Dubai took it’s place. Now the Willis Tower is the 3rd tallest building in the world. But is still the tallest building in America.

This is The Cat Tour Guide reporting out.

P.S. Meet the Blog-DOG on youtube, her channel name is LaddieADog, and don’t forget to meet her friend Your Cat Tour Guide also on youtube at BaylieACat! Also you can see a video of me at all of the buildings coming soon! The next blog will be with the Blog-DOG!

We started out in a location which, whilst being decidedly ground-floor, provided a stratospherically fine breakfast indeed. Anne Sathers is a Swedish-American cafe Which our hosts tell us is a “must” for all their guests. Well we didn’t want to be left out of course

The breakfast we chose (on recommendation) was a cinnamon roll, fried French-toast-style in a cinnamon batter, cut in half, filled with mascarpone, then topped with granola and fresh fruit. To say it was awesome, delicious, spectacular, sensational and glorious would be to wear out some dull old cliches … so I won’t say that!

After a brief break in the apartment to recover from carb overload, we set out for a very long walk across the city. It’s been the finest day yet here, weather-wise, so we wanted to make the most of it. I’d imagine we walked 4 or 5 miles.

Our first stop at the end of the walk was the top floor of a shopping centre. This is irrelevant, but since the title mentions high places, I didn’t want to miss it out.

Then we found ourselves, by the means of some strange supernatural turn of events, drawn into the Ghirardelli shop, where Phil consumed an outstandingly excellent salted caramel hot chocolate, and I indulged in the finest milkshake I have ever drunk … real chocolate bars blended with strawberry and milk. Oh my, it was supreme!

Another small root-march and we arrived at Sears Tower (now called Willis Tower, which isn’t nearly so cool so no-one calls it that). I decided that $18 was far too much to spend on taking a blind person up a tower to see a view, so I took the cheaper (and infinitely more enjoyable) option of drinking tea in Starbucks while Phil ascended to the heights. His may have been literal heights, but mine were heights in all but physical altitude! The tea was fine, the wireless was free and the Starbucks music was surprisingly good … especially the remixed version of a Mumford & Sons song, complete with accompanying latino rhythm and husky-voiced ladies woven in around the boys’ familiar folk-pirate sound.

Our evening meal was something of a punt … but wooow what a punt! We ended up in a cafe-diner which looked like doing a great version of the burger I so craved. And the joys of eating in the US kicked in bigtime when I asked the waitress if I could swap the complimentary soup for a complimentary salad, and she said “yes” without hesitation or complaint. In the UK, waiting staff get very particular about the fact that you pretty much have to have things exactly as the menu describes them, or the chef will blow a gasket and fire them on the spot. Here, nothing could be simpler: “yes of course we can upgrade you a salad!”. And it was great salad at that.

I will simply leave you to imagine the rest: beefburger with mushrooms, peppers and onions; coleslaw; huge fries; ranch dressing … it was a pinnacle of a dinner!

So now it’s the familiar weary, food-digesting phase which will see me tucked up in bed before long. I must say I do love the early nights and wide-awake early starts you get with jetlag in this direction. I’ve rarely felt so simultaneously rested yet productive!

Chicago is such an amazing, Beautiful City. <3

The trump

all the way to

the John Hancock

The clouds were amazing

simply in awe.

with Lake Michigan/Lake Shore Drive

One Boat.

more of Lake Shore Drive

Walking Along the River, near the NBC tower.

Zebra Mom and Baby. Lincoln Park Zoo

Picture of a Picture. Navy Pier.

Michigan Ave.

Sunny, Yet Simpson Cloudy kinda day.

Love this.

Hands.

Spider. Halloween.

Looking South.

just a Shoe Car. No Big deal..

Lake Michigan.

Building

From Plane. Chicago.

Hearts. Leaf’s. Fence.

Candle Wax. Drip. Drop.

Chicago River. Sunrays.

Dearborn & Adams. Chicago.

Street.Brick.Pavement.

at the Lincoln Park Zoo

Tree.

Leaf Heart. <3

Weird Bug.

Lyric Opera House

Ping Tom Memorial Park

Roots.

Ice

Painted over wall paper.

Reflection on Trump.

Trees

Mural.Tree.Building

If you’d like to purchase any please let me know!

We stayed at the McCormick Place Convention Center.

When we visited it was a day or two after Steve Jobs passed away. Outside of the apple store were crowds of people leaving letters, apples, post-its, and lighting candles in his memory. 

After a morning full of walking our next stop was pretty SWEET…..you guessed it, HERSHEY’S!

Pace yourself….

 

My personal FAVE!

Navy Pier was Next during German/ Oktober Fest!

My husband Mingling

A message every language should agree on!

The famous Ferris Wheel

At the top of the Ferris Wheel…..This explains the windy city name…..Not where you want to be rocking

Sears Tower

I tried to tell him they don’t need cleaned

Making friends at Leggo Land

WE EARNED DINNER with all of that walking!

Everyone knows Chicago pizza as the Deep Dish and every person you ask who has been will recommend a different pizza place as their favorite, you have to start somewhere so we chose Giordano’s

WARNING you will be waiting…..most likely outside with crowds of others, I think the longer  the wait means the better the taste

waiting…..waiting….waiting

SO WORTH IT….

Another Chicago favorite….Garretts popcorn which I hear also typically has a LONG wait!

To Do’s for our next trip to Chi town:

• We plan to take the train just to experience something new!
• Eat a Chicago Dog at Superdawg! www.superdawg.com
• See a game at Wrigley Field!
• Go to Shedd Aquarium
• Get a Philly Cheesesteak at Monti’s www.ilovemontis.com

Then I took this fun photo of my little guy on the second floor. He’s so little!

We ended the day in Lead, South Dakota, a tiny island of civilisation in the Black Hills National Forest, which also contains Custer State Park and Mount Rushmore. The next morning we woke up to snowfall at the crack of dawn, this was a bit of a shock, having been in glorious 30 degree sunshine in California only four days prior. After a quick run around in the snow we drove out to Mount Rushmore, and although the snow very quickly melted, the thick fog clung on, reducing visibility of the monument to nearly zero! We waited in the attached museum until the clouds briefly lifted before dashing out to get one good photo in the freezing rain.

Custer Park, at the bottom of the Black Hills National Forest is home to herds of bison (viewable from the warmth of the car), so we swung through to have a quick peek. The bison were still going strong, but there was absolutely no sign of human life anywhere, we got the distinct feeling that most outdoor pursuits north of Oklahoma close as soon as the last warmth of summer fades.

After Custer Park we drove out on to the Badlands, but the weather was still awful, there was sleet, still snow on the ground, absolutely freezing, not ideal for outside activities! So we decided to drive through the Badlands National Park trying to get some good views, with not much luck…

I really wish we’d been able to see the Badlands in glorious sunshine as they’re supposed to be really amazing, almost otherworldly. Once we’d seen everything South Dakota had to offer, there was nothing else for it but to just drive straight to Chicago, we spent the next day driving from Sioux Falls down and across Iowa to DeKalb, Illinois, a small town on the far outskirts of Chicago.

Chicago was the city I was most excited to visit on our trip and it didn’t disappoint at all. I’d built up such high hopes for how great it was going to be, that I was sure that it could never live up to them, but it did, and more! We only had time enough to spend one day in the city, but we packed in as much as possible into that day. We started off at the Shedd Aquarium down on the lakefront, nestled between the home field of the Chicago Bears and the city’s planetarium. If you choose to pay for all the extended exhibitions then it can end up pretty pricey, so we stuck with the most basic ticket and were pretty pleased with our $8 worth! Be warned though that the queue to get in can get quite long and static.

After the aquarium we walked further into downtown along the lakefront, once we hit the start of Navy Pier, which juts out into Lake Michigan filled with fairground attractions, we turned inland and headed for The Willis Tower (previously known as the Sears Tower). The building was the world’s tallest for twenty-five years and still holds the title for the United States; the viewing deck on the 103rd floor of the tower opened at the same time as the building, and in 2009 three enclosed glass balconies were added allowing visitors to step four feet out over Chicago with sheer views straight down 1,353 feet to the street.

The Skydeck was amazing, albeit very crowded, we tried to get up before the sun set so we could see the city in daylight and then dark, which was apparently a popular idea. On a clear day you can supposedly see to four different states and the queues to get out onto the glass balconies are long, but again very worth it.

Next up we walked through the theatre district before strolling down to Magnificent Mile –  the largest shopping district of Chicago that is also home to some of the city’s most famous buildings such as the Tribune Tower and the The Wrigley Building. It’s a gorgeous area filled with high end restaurants, a great mix of shops and a fantastic juxtaposition of 1920s architecture and modern skyscrapers.

Finally we ended the night with a trip to Millennium Park and the affectionately termed ‘Bean’ sculpture. The work by artist Anish Kapoor is actually titled Cloud Gate, but was nicknamed ‘The Bean’ by Chicago residents. It draws huge numbers of visitors for its unique photo-taking opportunities: the reflective curved surfaces distort the city’s skyline and human reflections.

Chicago is a bit like a cleaner, less crowded New York City and I completely fell in love with it. I wish we’d had more time to see other parts and maybe take in a Bears, Bulls, Cubs or White Sox game as sports in Chicago are supposedly pretty awesome! A return trip is definitely on the cards.

Our final stage of the trip was now upon us and we had two days to get back to the Upper East Side of Manhattan and beat Hurricane Sandy there too…

Mom and I headed up for a quick weekend, December 4 – 7, and really enjoyed ourselves.  The weather was perfect, it certainly could have been snowing and so very cold… luckily, it wasn’t.

We arrived on Tuesday evening, and took a walk along Lake Michigan, the sunset was amazing.  We walked until we hit Soldier Field and then decided to return to the hotel.  They had huge toy soldiers at the front entrance, beautiful chandeliers, and a massive Christmas tree inside.  The elevator lobby hosted a full size gingerbread house, and a cute little snowman at the house’s front door!

The view from the hotel room was of Lake Michigan, and the Navy Pier, http://www.navypier.com, it was just gorgeous.  To see the Ferris Wheel, both up close and afar, in the dark, was just beautiful.

On Wednesday, we decided to take a bus tour of the city, and get our bearings.  We had a variety of bus drivers, each a little bit better than the best.  Very interesting to learn about the town from the locals, and to hear the history.  We found a local joint, Portillos, http://www.portillos.com, for lunch, and it had great burgers… fun little joint that was full of local, somewhat tacky, art.  We headed up to the Sears Tower, which is always a highlight in Chicago, and had some fun with the pictures.

On Thursday, we headed back out to finish the bus tour, Chicago Trolley, http://www.coachusa.com/chicagotrolley/chicagos-best-tour/tour-map.asp.  While waiting for the bus, we found a cool little shop that sells Russian matryoshka dolls, right in the hotel!  There were so many neat things to see..

Christmas dinner, 50% more meat.

I have eaten our school lunch for 12 years now, I weigh 130 pounds and have 6% body fat. This is the same school lunch as the people who weigh 600 pounds and have 90% body fat have eaten, it is clearly not the school lunch making the big difference here. Instead of cutting down on the amount of food in school lunches, we should be promoting healthy lifestyle practices.

Everyday from 9:00-9:40, students at CHS do nothing but sit in a useless class that they get nothing out of except 40 minutes of social time. Instead of having 40 wasted minutes in the morning, we could replace this 40 minutes of the school day with activity. Students could go to the gym everyday during this time and be required to take part in some kind of physical activity. If not everyday, this could at least happen two to three times a week.

I understand wanting have healthier lunches that include all food groups and a healthy option of foods but, being underfed is just as unhealthy as being over healthy. The small portions that they serve us in the cafeteria now aren’t big enough to fill me up, not nearly enough for someone at an average weight of 160 pounds. Lunches can still contain fruits and vegetables, even whole grains, as long as they are larger portions.

If none of these solutions will work, more drastic action can be taken. One plan to require activity is to move our school into a large tower. In this tower the cafeteria would be located on the top floor, well above the classes,with no elevator access. We could also require that all people who weigh over 200 pounds to have their desks replaced with treadmills. Although these solutions would be fun, I would prefer that we switch lunches back and require just a little more activity.

I’ll start with exercise. No, on second thought, I’ll start with what I was most hoping for: A white Christmas! There wasn’t a speck of snow on the ground when I landed in Michigan on the 23rd, but it started snowing in the late afternoon on Christmas Eve, and by Christmas morning, there was a nice white blanket covering everything in sight.

It snowed more the next couple days, and I loved being back in winter weather, if only for a little while!

Moving on to exercise! In total, I was away from Los Angeles for 9 days, and I worked out during 8 of them. The first thing I did the day after I landed in Michigan was go to the local gym, which I joined for one week. A one-week membership costs $25 (I’ve done it before, on previous visits), but since they were going to be closed on Christmas Day, they sold it to me for $20. My sister Laura, who was also in town for Christmas, did the same thing, and we had a good Christmas Eve Day workout. I ended up going back to that gym to do a mix of cardio and weights 3 more times (it was great having Laura as a gym buddy!), so I got my money’s worth.

On Christmas Day, the gym wasn’t an option, so I did a new workout DVD that I brought with me: Jillian Michael’s Killer Abs.

The DVD has three 30-minute workouts on it, and I did the easiest one, but it definitely wasn’t easy. There were lots of fun and not-so-fun moves that I’ve never done before, and I felt it in my core, my abs, and in my legs, too. I’m haven’t watched much of “The Biggest Loser,” so this was a big introduction for me to Jillian, and I thought she was a good teacher, imparted good information, and I liked that she had folks onstage that were modifying the moves in both beginner and advanced ways.

A few days after Christmas, Laura and I drove to her home in Chicago, where I stayed through New Years Day. The morning after we arrived, I went with Laura to her gym, where we took a spin class. I’ve taken this spin class before when I’ve visited Laura, and it’s a fun and brutal workout. James, the instructor, always has great music, and I love that he says what’s coming up, so we know what to expect (“We’re going to do a slow climb for 5 minutes, and then start a series of sprints”).

After those six days of workouts, I was due for a rest day. Then, the day after, Laura and I did one of Laura’s pilates DVDs:

This was my first-ever attempt at pilates. And while Lynne Robinson, the lady on the DVD, was full of useful information and adept at describing the positions, I don’t think pilates is for me. Hopefully this won’t break the heart of my dear friend Natalie, who is a pilates instructor! I know there are benefits and it’s fantastic that so many people love pilates and do it regularly, but I prefer something a little more energetic. After we finished a routine (roughly 50 minutes, it seemed), Laura turned to me and said, “I bet you feel like that wasn’t a workout at all.” I couldn’t disagree with her, but I did feel sore in my midsection later in the day, so it did more good than I initially thought.

On January 1st, the day I left Chicago, I started my morning with good ol’ “Sweatin’ to the Oldies 5.” I haven’t done this Richard Simmons DVD in months, but I know it like the back of my hand, and it’s a good workout for me, especially after I modify some of the moves to be a bit more difficult.

There you have it: 8 workouts in 9 days!

Let’s move on to food, shall we? Like a lot of families, we have our Christmas traditions, and we kept many of them alive this year. It was the smallest Christmas I’ve ever had – just my parents, Laura, and me – so we pared back on how many Christmas cookies we baked (2 or 3 batches instead of 6-8, at least). I probably ate 2 Christmas cookies a day, but I tried to wait until after dinner. I made super healthy choices for breakfast and lunch (salads, egg whites, lots of fruit, wraps made with lean meat, mustard, and veggies) so I could allow for a few indulgences later on.

For Christmas dinner, we stuck to our family’s tradition of having tenderloin, but we skipped another tradition, a casserole made of potatoes, cheese, sour cream, cream-based soup, butter, and more cheese. I took the lead on all the Christmas dinner sides, and whipped up roasted rosemary fingerling potatoes and a roasted veggie medley of broccoli, yellow squash, and brussel sprouts. I didn’t use a drop of oil in any of it – just sprayed them all with a little Pam so the various herbs and seasonings would stick. I also sauteed some mushrooms to go on the beef (to which I did add about 2 pats of butter). The end result:

The beef (about 4-5 ounces of it) is at 4 o’clock in the picture, under a little horseradish sauce (from a jar) and a few of the mushrooms. Everything was delicious! I got seconds of the veggies and potatoes.

My mom must be on some sort of pyromania kick, because both the Christmas Eve and Christmas Day desserts she planned involved lighting things on fire. She made creme brulee on Christmas Eve (although I got the pleasure of using her kitchen torch to caramelize the tops), and on Christmas Day, I helped her assemble a baked Alaska, which is a pound cake, ice cream, and meringue concoction that gets doused in brandy and set aflame just before serving. I enjoyed a serving of each dessert (although I didn’t photograph them), but didn’t go nuts.

When Laura and I got to Chicago, one of the first things we did was go grocery shopping. Laura took me to this awesome fruit and vegetable market called Stanley’s, which is a beautiful store: piles of produce everywhere, and really great prices, too!

We stocked up on fruits and veggies to last us the next few days, with more for Laura to eat into the coming week:

Top row: carrots, shallots, strawberries, spinach, plum tomatoes, a zucchini, a tomato and a grapefruit.  Bottom row: mini yellow bell peppers, 2 apples, cucumber, seckel pears, green grapes, clementines, and mixed greens.

I was so envious, because the clementines were cost 10 cents apiece, and you could pick out as many, or as few, as you want. I only ever see clementines in 5-pound bags, which is a lot of clementines for one person! I don’t understand why clementines aren’t sold loose here, like they are at Stanley’s.

The only time I did really go nutso with food was on New Year’s Eve. I decided, a long time ago, that I would drink on New Year’s Eve, which is an indulgence I rarely give myself. I can count on one hand the number of occasions in the past few years where I’ve consumed alcohol, mainly because I prefer to eat my calories, instead of drink them. But I drank on New Year’s Eve – about 4 drinks over the course of the evening – and by the time Laura and I (and a couple friends) got to the house party where we were actually going to ring in the new year, I was definitely buzzed and seemed to only have eyes for the cookies, nuts, candy, and other snacks that were laid out. I ate waaaaaay too much, and regretted it in the morning. It was a good reminder that alcohol lowers my self-control.

But one night of uncontrolled binging isn’t the end of the world, and I was back on track the very next day.

A few more pictures before I wrap this up. One of the highlights of the Chicago portion of my travels was definitely going, for the first time, to the top of the Willis Tower (formerly the Sears Tower). A few years ago, they installed plexiglass boxes on the 103rd story observation deck that extend outside of the building, so you can stand and only have glass between you and the sidewalk about 1400 feet below. See?

I’ve written about the Willis Tower on this blog before. Last March, when I was in training for my Burj Khalifa stair climb, I was able to add the Willis Tower to my Skyscraper Collection after a record-smashing workout, so it was fun to be at the top of a building I’ve hypothetically climbed in the past. It’s a long way up to the top of the Willis Tower!

I know there’s a stair climb event every year in the Willis Tower, so who knows? Maybe at some point in the future I’ll be in that Skydeck again, after racing up the stairwell!

Final picture: Laura and in one of the plexiglass cubes:

And there you have it folks, the secrets to how I didn’t gain weight over my holiday travels. I hope you’re all starting off the new year by staying active and eating well. I’ve hit the gym the past three days in a row, with a couple more trips planned for this week.

Keep it up, David!