::Underground

A few of my local friends are serious musicians. Serious enough about it that a couple of years ago, they moved away to Chicago to start up a band and (for at least one of them) to go to school for music.

They apparently hooked up with a drummer who has a degree in drumming. I didn’t know there *WERE* such things. But anyway, I digress.

I did their website, and in return they got us on the guest list for their first big show. So, K and I decided to make the road trip. Adventure! Excitement!

We ended up splurging on an overnight room, since otherwise we would have been driving home at something like 2am our time. Which never used to be a problem, but now that I’m on this dayshift I have to sleep like a normal person.

Anyhow, a kind and lovely diarist from this site provided us with some directions on how to use this mysterious and arcane invention called: mass transit.

Yeah, we don’t really have that where I come from. After my experience in Chicago, I wish that we did. I’d sell my car in a heartbeat.

We parked the car at the hotel, offloaded our few bags, and loafed around for a bit before hiking out to dinner. From dinner, it was only a couple of blocks to the subway station, where I had my very first Underground Subway Adventure.

Imagine, if you will, my eyes lighting up, and me chirping, “This is SO COOL!!!!” Because that’s pretty much what I did the whole time. I’m sure that if you ride the train every day, it’s fairly banal for you. But that first time you’re standing on the platform, and you hear that distant howl, and the air starts to move, and suddenly with a clattering rush – there it is – and not 15 seconds later you’re hurtling through darkness, jouncing around… well, it’s kind of neat. I just felt so darned… urbane!

Not to mention it was way cheaper and easier than trying to negotiate my car to Wicker Park, find a place to park, then rinse and repeat trying to get back to the hotel.

And it meant I got to drink as much as I cared to at the show. Har har har.

(So, anyway thanks again for the directions, if you read me.)

My Underground Subway Adventure kicked ass. My friends’ band (whose music you can hear by following that link up above) was also really fun. The other bands that played that night? Well, not so much. But it was definitely a good way to get away from our normal lives and go have an adventure. I wish we could do that more often.