Friday, September 18th - Stuck In Chicago for 7 Hours

As I’m writing this, I am sitting alone in Gino’s East Pizzeria in Chicago waiting for my world famous deep dish pizza to arrive. I’m sure I look pretty pathetic typing on my computer at a restaurant, alone, waiting for my food to arrive, but I couldn’t think of anything else better to do since I have already soaked up all of the information in my bus and train map (which wasn’t comprised of much.)

I waited to pack until the night before which I thought wasn’t going to be a bad idea, but it turned out so. I was up until 3:30 trying to get stuff organized, cleaned, and moved around. All that rushing I guarantee that I left something home but can wait to find out exactly what that is when I get to Manchester. The car is in the garage, battery out and ready for storage! Room is clean and will probably not be clean when I come back. Overall I think I did a good job for being half awake last night.

The plane left for Chicago at 9 so I had to wake up at 6, which turned into 6:30 because I learned I can’t operate on 2 and half hours of sleep. I arrived in Chicago without a problem. Well other then the fact that the plane had a landing that could be compared to that of a head on car crash at 40 mph. It was nice.

I’ve only been in Chicago for a few hours but have already fallen in love with it. I got to Chicago at around 10 and was on the train within an hour to head to downtown. The train was cheap and somewhat fast, took about 45 min to get downtown. One of the first people I ran into was a security guard who was definitely not having a good day and looked hung over. I got off on the Washington exit which happened to be at the courthouse. I had to use the restroom there and you have to go through security to get to the restroom since it’s in a court. Well a bushel of students went before me and he let them all through while the metal detector was going off as he continued to wave and yell them through. No Minnesota nice here.

I got off the train and wandered around till I found Millennium Park. I saw the big bean, the spitting water fountains, pretty gardens, and other “artsy” stuff; don’t get me wrong, it was all gorgeous, just…weird. After this pizzeria I’m hoping to find a Wells Fargo so I can print off some type of statement showing I have money in my account so when I apply for the Visa in Manchester they won’t turn me down and send me back. After that I hope to have enough time to go to Sears Tower and go to the observatory deck then off to the airport. The plane leaves for Manchester at 5 and should get there around midnight central time, 7:20 Manchester time. I’m going to try and sleep on the plane so jet lag doesn’t start to take affect early on the trip.

Pizza should be here soon so I should probably stop looking like a loner in this place and stop typing. I’ll let you know how the pizza was in the next entry!

Also, I have no camera today and for awhile. As most of you know my camera is busted so I sent it to Olympus to get it fixed. It was supposed to arrive at my house yesterday, Thursday 17th, but it came a few hours after I left today. I’ve resorted to taking subpar pictures on my phone where I will post when I get some internets.