Chicago recap

I am in Ft. Collins now, with a couple friends. Alexa picked me up from the Denver train station, and we spent the night at Jeff's house on the way to Laramie, Wyoming, where she will drop me off. Spent last night getting drunk and playing ping pong with Jeff. Was a good time. I don't have to tell you who won.

I had a great time in Chicago. My old friend Lucinda let me stay in her apartment for the whole week, down in Hyde Park near the University of Chicago. Appartenly its a sketchy neighborhood, but I never really noticed. There were lots of police cars I guess. Obama's house is a few blocks away, as is Louis Farrakhan's. Lucinda says there are always two nation of islam police cars out front of Farrakhan's house, and there sure were every time I passed the place.

My favorite thing about Chicago is that it is totally flat. You can ride your bike everywhere. I borrowed a bike and rode it all over the city: along the lakefront trail, all the way up to Wrigley Field, and all around the town in a big Critical Mass ride.

I had no idea that chicago was a beach town. I think they import sand for their beaches, and I know they import the palm trees. The beaches are really nice, except for the overbearing lifeguards. You can only swim out maybe 60 feet into the lake, or they start yelling at you. And even that far out, the lake is only 4 feet deep, which makes swimming kinda ridiculous. Ben would like swimming there, though. What does it mean when a lifeguard puts both hands up in the air? Oh, and the water is pleasantly tepid this time of year.

I feel like a proper American now that I've seen a baseball game at Wrigley Field. It is a gorgeous park. There is no Jumbo-tron, which makes it a way better experience in my opinion. No dot races, no "which hat is hiding the ball" game, you just watch baseball. The crowd knew when to cheer, and knew when to do the wave (never, obviously). The one thing they didn't know about was when to stop drinking. I almost got into a fight with a guy that looked like a hybrid of Jean Claude VanDamme and Chuck Norris. I thought he called me a really nasty name, but it
turns out he was just making fun of my socks. So I decided to let it slide. And I didn't want to get killed. Oh, also this is what I got when I asked for a vegetarian sandwich at a pub in Wrigleyville:

If you can't identify all the ingredients IN the sandwich, here is the list: bread, sauerkraut, american cheese, tomatoes, french fries. I didn't really enjoy the food in Chicago, but I think I went to the wrong places.

On the last Friday of every month, thousands of bicyclists descend on downtown Chicago for a ride called Critical Mass. They have these rides all over the country, and they are really popular in the Bay Area. I'd never done it before, but I decided to join Lucinda and her friends for the ride. It was a lot of fun, I'm going to start going on the rides back in Berkeley. They are police-authorized, and go all over the town for probably 10 miles or so. It is supposed to raise awareness of bicycling as an alternative to driving. It does so by fucking up traffic real bad.
People caught trying to cross a street where the ride goes have to wait for probably 20 minutes while all the bikes file past at a modest speed. It is mind boggling how many people participate.

Chicago was really fun. Lucinda is quite active, so she made me get off my ass for the first time on my vacation and exercise, which I enjoyed. I am looking forward to going back.

Also, Lucinda has one of the best cats ever - Turtle is her name. If you could only use one word to describe this cat, it would be fluffy. If you could use two words, they would be fluffy and docile. If you could use three words, the third word would not be turtle-like.

The train ride from Chicago to Denver was relatively uneventful. More idyllic American countryside, but mostly just flat, with one big river.

OK I'm off to Laramie to hang out with Chicory and Cliff. I think I am the first friend to visit them in Wyoming since they moved from Berkeley. I better get a damn good prize.