Day 31: Chicago

It was nice to finally be in Chicago with family. Dave and I woke up late, and we spent the day out with Dave’s sister, Kathleen, and her sons, Edgar and Robert. We began by going to an awesomely ridiculous store called Uncle Fun. While we were there, Robert bought a plastic propeller beanie that he ended up wearing all day long. Unfortunately, I failed to get a picture of it on him. I don’t know what I was thinking.

The five of us decided to go to the beach at Lake Michigan for the day. When we got there, Robert, age 7, recommended that we take the pedal car around the park. Unfortunately for them, the tinies had to wear helmets.


Notice that Edgar is holding Robert's propeller hat in his tiny hands.

Edgar wasn’t very fond of his helmet.


We switched drivers a few times, road around the park, and did a little accidental off-roading on my watch. Whoops.

After our bike ride, we headed to the snack bar where we received two free hotdogs for being in the right place at the right time (which is right behind people who don’t know how to order their hotdogs in Chicago).

After delicious hotdogs, we went to the beach for a while.



The water was pretty cold, but it was honestly warmer than I’d expected. The place was pretty crowded for a Monday. We also discovered that Chicagoans, as a rule, are not able to swim.


You may be able to see on the right side of the above photo that there are a couple of folks in row boats guarding the public from the scary waters of the big ol' lake.

Dave and I walked into the water just above our waists and were told that we had gone too far. The lifeguard told us that if we wanted to stay in that deep, we’d have to move over about 15 yards so that we were within the scope of a lifeguard in a rowboat. What the hell is wrong with these people? This was a total bummer.

I stuck around for about a half hour before going back up to my towel. Edgar (age 1) and I hung out for a while on the blanket waiting for Dave, Kathleen, and Robert to finish up in the lake.




Afterward, we simply headed back to Kathleen’s house for Chicago-style deep dish pizza and a few rounds of Scene-It, the X-Box film trivia game. That’s a perennial favorite when we go to Chicago. It was a nice easy day.