One Night in Chicago
With the tree inside, full bellies aplenty and severe weather warnings on every local station, Robbo, who had just arrived and I decided to make hay while the sun was still shining. In non Aussie terms, this meant we were ready to hit the road for our trip to Chicago.
There were warnings all over about the treacherous conditions ahead so it was with a little trepidation that we even got into the car in the first place. I wonder about the forecasts in this country sometimes. It seems that every impending storm is going to be the worst storm the area has ever seen. From our experience so far, all of the “warnings” have turned out to be regular snowfalls that don’t seem so bad in the end. I don’t know if I’m being naive or not but they just don’t seem to be as bad as the theatre of our evening weather broadcasts make them out to be.
The trip, but for one stop and a whole lot of fog, was smooth sailing the entire way down. We made it in a little over 4 hours so I was stoked to say the least.
I’ve been looking forward to this trip for sometime now. My best mate from High School, Marco, had just flown into Chicago from Perth and I was stinging to meet up with him for the first time in 2 years. Since leaving Perth to move back to Sydney in ’94 Marc and I have only caught up once every year or two so to be here, in the US, about to head to our first football game together was awesome.
Marc, who hadn’t heard much of the NFL in Aussie Rules crazy Western Australia, became a big fan of the game with a little help from yours truly. Whilst he didn’t adopt my fanaticism for the Packers or my penchant for developing plays for our local team, the Curtin Razorbacks, he did enjoy throwing the ball, running routes and spending many an afternoon indulging my need for somebody to talk to.
I’d love to include some pictures of the two of us back in the day when we were all of 16 playing in the local, very amateur Western Australian Gridiron League. I was the starting quarterback and Marc was my number one “go to guy”. I’m not afraid to say that I was the teams Brett Favre and he was, without doubt, the Aussie equivalent to Donald Driver. In fact, i’d go so far as to say that I was the mirror image of Brett when he was a little younger. Remember his first 6 passes in the NFL? Yep, that was me. 2 interceptions, 1 touchdown pass (to the other team) 3 incompletions and a ball thrown to myself. Not bad huh? (And you thought I was big noting didn’t you?)
Seriously though we had a ton of fun playing football. We were waiting for the scouts to pop out from behind a tree and whisk us away to the likes of USC, Notre Dame or Penn State, all of which were very good back in the day. It never did happen. It was cool though.
Anyway we met up at the Hilton in downtown Chicago and very quickly decided that with one night to burn in the big city we should head straight to the United Centre to see the Bulls play. Cast your minds back to ’94 and you’ll remember that some guy called Michael Jordan was taking the entire NBA watching world by storm. Having played so many hours in the school gym we had no choice but to see the raging Bulls in action. Turns out they’re more the whimpering Bulls these days but to see them in the flesh, at the United Centre, with their 6 championship banners hanging from the ceiling was a treat in itself. It didn’t even matter that they were thrashed by the Rockets; we had a great night all the same.
From there, like all good tourists, we headed to the Condo that we were spending the night in (which I will certainly elaborate on shortly) before we hit the Hard Rock Cafe for a late dinner and drink. The Hard Rock needs no elaboration. If you’ve been to one you’ve been to them all but our bar of choice afterwards, Buddy Guys, most definitely needs its own introduction.
Entering Buddy Guys, a blues bar in the heart of downtown, was like stepping back in time. There was a great band playing to a good audience seeing as it was well after 1am by this time. The walls were laden with some of the greatest names in music history, pictures from the good old days were a dime a dozen and guitars, costumes and signatures from past performers seemed to remind us of the way things were.
With the excitement of the night it was nice just to sit back, relax and take in the tunes as they kept on coming. Being a guitar player himself Robbo was especially enjoying the bar. Personally, I think he should have grabbed an axe and got up there for a one time performance but his modesty just didn’t allow it.
Desperate for some sleep before a massive day tomorrow we made it to our Condo. The address of this not so modest apartment, to those of you familiar, is Lake Shore Drive. The location is right across from the freshly refurbished Navy Pier. The view.....well that spoke for itself. You could see the entire city skyline from the left most window of the lounge room, dining room and open plan kitchen.
Casting your eyes from left to right across the floor to ceiling windows had us looking over Lake Michigan, as far north as your eyes would allow, the beauty of the Pier, as mentioned before and as far east as your eyes could see. Even with the water views being eliminated by the dark the views were still spectacular. It made the 3 of us want to go to bed even sooner so the sunlight of the morning could greet us with sights we had never seen before.
