Night 3 - Chicago

Chicago is enormous, but it has a different feel than any place we've been to. The streets are mostly clear, and every couple of minute the el-train rolls by, making it impossible to hear anything. It is still cold here this time of year, and very windy, as one would expect, so we dressed in our warmest clothes and headed out on the town.


This may be the worst picture ever taken.

We asked Alex to take us to some of the night spots in the area, and we started at The Exchequer, a bar Alex goes to with his Comrades after ISO meetings. We started catching up, had some great fries and better beer. Then we stopped by the Apple store to play with the iPads. Enough pussy-footing around. It was time to try the deep dish pizza.

Alex took us to his favorite place in Chicago, Gino's East, which has a storied past you can learn all about on your own time. The walls, chairs, and booths are covered in graffiti of past diners (and for all the doubters, Slobbering Sam was in fact there) which created an enjoyable casual ambiance.

If you've been reading thus far you may have noticed a great deal of our posts are about driving and eating. Then eating, Then driving. So by this point, after so many big meals, we are stuffed, and not much activity we are feeling like lumps. Bring on the deep dish. We each order a small, which turns out to be about as big as a 10 lb barbell weight and twice as dense. It was fantastic, but we had to cool down lest we explode. We each made it half way through before giving up and heading out, giving our leftovers to a couple of homeless kids who, most likely, could not finish and gave their leftovers away too.



We planned next to take the elevated train to the part of town Alex lives in, and see his local hangouts. But with no cash, and all the ATM vestibules locked for the night, we couldn't buy tickets for the dang train. So, in the interest of spending time with Billet, we went to a nearby British bar, the Castle and Elephant to shoot yet more shit. Alas, there never was a castle, and the elephant was in the shop, but the local Chicago beer was excellent, and the conversation turned to politics, as it usually does with the three of us.

The staff at the bar looked restless, so we continued talking for a bit outside the bar, before we realized that we were losing sensation in our extremities, so we wisely continued or conversation in the hotel room until about 1:30 am. When you're as close as the three of us have been, catching up takes a long time. Wishing there was more time, we sent Alex on home, as we would have 10 hours of driving the next day, 5 in the morning to St. Louis, 5 in the evening to Topeka.