The Saturday from Hell

Ok – are you ready for the Chicago trip from hell story?

1) The train ran 40 minutes late, there and back and it was so packed, that some people actually had to stand the entire trip.

2) On the way there, about half way through the ride, a woman got on and sat right across the aisle from us with 4 kids and her youngest, around 2, I would guess, screamed off and on for the rest of the trip, about 40 minutes. And when I say “scream”, I mean shrill at the top of her lungs scream and she couldn’t make her stop.

3) We get there and the Red Line train that takes us to the part of Chicago we had planned to visit is CLOSED for the day. This same train also takes all of the people heading to the Cubs game to Wrigley field so the remaining trains were too packed to get on and we had no idea how else to get there.

4) We walked 15-20 blocks in the direction we needed to go before we finally gave up and decided to hail a cab. That process took us about 20-30 minutes because so many other people, in the same boat as us, were doing the same thing.

5) We get to our first destination, a authentic Chicago pizza place (because by then, it is nearing 4pm and we haven’t eaten anything since 10am), go inside #1, they only take cash and we didn’t bring a whole lot with us and #2,it is insanely packed so we leave.

6) As we are walking down the street, Brian realizes he left our printout of street directions and the addresses of ALL of the places we wanted to visit in the cab.

Yup – so we were essentially lost in a Chicago neighborhood we had never been in nor knew were anything was. We had 3 places we could remember right on Clark Street, which is where we were – we visited all 3 of them and that was nice and then we found a bike shop that was pretty cool. But other than that, we had NO idea where anything else was. The park, the zoo, the nature museum, any of the other places we wanted to go. So, we admitted defeat, decided to hail a cab, have it take us to Michigan Ave and just take the earlier train home. Of course, on the cab ride to Michigan, we saw ALL of the places we had hoped to visit but by then, they were closed or closing . . .and looked like SO much fun!

I was so tired and hungry when I got home, I felt like I could sleep for a million years. Remember, we ate around 4-5pm so when we got on the train at 7pm, we weren’t that hungry yet but then we didn’t pull into South Bend 10pm and didn’t get home until around 10:45!! We grabbed some snacks to take for the ride but that certainly didn’t cut it.

It will be a LONG time before we take a trip somewhere new. We were both so wore out from Saturday, besides stop by my aunt’s for a BBQ for a bit on Sunday, we sat our asses on the couch and vegged. Neither of us worked out that day, nothing. I am still tired today but finally figured out my extreme fatigue stems from just starting today – FINALLY.

And now on to another work week. . .