A Week In The Life..
So Sid (my Indian colleague) has been in town for about a week, which is perfect timing as I have not had time to miss Lorraine as much as I feared I would, being so busy. Although on Sunday, I had a pretty quiet day and it really hit me. Simple stuff like watching the telly, sitting by the pool, etc..I kept noticing the space, I can't wait for her to get back..although it is two more whole weeks.
However with Sid here, there is lots to tell. We started the week out at a local watering hole called Champps, a sports bar, where I really tanned Steve's hide at Golden Tee, finishing one round at 12 under (although my second attempt was less successful, losing by 4 shots at 8 over)
Tuesday saw me on the golf course proper, at Cranes Landing, our local Marriott. Playing badly as usual. Although my driver seemed to have found the ability to hit straight again, my short game was on vacation!
On Wednesday, we had planned to take Sid to a Cubs game (fortunately not Thursday, given the rain they had for that match). The night started badly, getting stuck in traffic on the Interstate down to Skokie to get the Swift for two hours blew our plans of getting to Murphy's early for a few beers and we ended up missing the first pitch. The next fatal flaw in the plan came when we found out that despite several hundred Cubs fans using the line for a match almost every night last week, the last Swift is 10:02pm, It was a beautiful night, the sights were "quite good" as Todd would say. The Cubs, for the most part, played OK and when I left my 100% record was intact, they were up by one. The game stretched out to 11 innings with the Cubs finally succumbing to the Reds!
Sid had a great time at the game, but was relatively unimpressed by Todd raving about the manual scoreboard. Sid says they are pretty common in India!
Thursday was a quiet night round at Sid's hotel, availing ourselves of their free beer and hot wings. Sid had presents for us, a brass ornament model of Ganesha. An elephant's head on the body of a man. He is the God for new beginnings, eg if you buy a new house, have a baby etc..he is the main man. It really is a beautiful thing, and he has pride of place in my living room.
Friday was the first of two major outings for Sid. He was off out into the city with the youngsters to go clubbing. Having arrived at the club, Zentra, I believe, he found out that they would not accept his Indian driver's licence and he had to come all the way back to get his passport. Sid is unable to relay much of the evening to us, but says he had a great time all the way through to 5am! I also went out with some people from work, but in a much tamer fashion, sang some Karaoke and drank a lot of Soco, but was still in bed before midnight; thanks are due to Sabrina's husband Bob who drove me home.
On Saturday morning, we were to pick Sid up at his hotel at 9:15am for his big day out in the city. We had a full schedule planned and with usual military precision, had it mapped out to a low level of detail. We couldn't raise Sid in his room, not realising at this point that he had only been in bed about 4 hours. We had some breakfast (free again) in the hotel. You could quite easily eat every morning and evening for free in the local "suite" style hotels around here.
Sid eventually showed up about 30 minutes later; we had packed the various bikes into the truck and we set off for the city. The Interstate this time was fortunately much quieter. Parking at John Hancock, we set off down town, via Millenium Park, saw the "bean", paddled in the water (or at least I did), ate some lunch at the Celtic Festival in Grant Park (including pipers) and checked out Buckingham Fountain; ending up way down at the Field Museum, stopping many times along the way to admire the views.
Sid was very pleased with his dinosaur museum trip, as apparently they don't have any dinosaur museums, that he is aware of in India. We saw Sue, the most complete T-Rex anywhere in the world, and a new exhibition out of China where they are discovering some new things to prove birds really did evolve from dinosaurs as they thought and that some dinosaurs, including that Veloceraptors and T-Rex would have had feathers at some point in their life..kinda makes them less scary!
From there we went back towards Hancock, stopping for a beer at the Celtic Festival again, to use up our tickets. Wait!..I almost forgot...Leon, one of our number was on his old racing bike, drop handles and all, in such a cute baby blue colour, decided to try an Evil Knievel stunt coming down from the museum. Riding down some grassy banks, I realised that there was about a foot drop at the end before we hit the sidewalk..Leon didn't, until way too late. He did a running dismount, still managed to hold on to the bike, jump the drop and not kill himself or anyone else for that matter, and entertained us all in the process..wish I had a video camera, as that would have won me 10 grand for sure..well done Leon!
As I was saying, we went back to Hancock via the beer stop, and met up with Sally. We were heading up to the Observatory on the 94th floor (in 40 secs), to show Sid the views. Sally decided to go hang out in the Signature Lounge our next planned stop. The views were fantastic as it was such a clear day. However, to get to the Signature Lounge, you have to go all the way back down and back up again to the 96th. By the time we had waited in several elevator queues, gone up and down, and tried to find Sally, she was gone. We decided to blow off the lounge and go straight to dinner in the Cheesecake Factory but the wait was too long and we ended up coming home to Buffalo Grove and going to Giordanos for pizza. Check out the rest of the pictures here.
On Sunday I decided to lay in bed and relax, squeezing in a little golf in the afternoon, where I sucked AGAIN!
All in all, a very busy week and weekend.
However with Sid here, there is lots to tell. We started the week out at a local watering hole called Champps, a sports bar, where I really tanned Steve's hide at Golden Tee, finishing one round at 12 under (although my second attempt was less successful, losing by 4 shots at 8 over)
Tuesday saw me on the golf course proper, at Cranes Landing, our local Marriott. Playing badly as usual. Although my driver seemed to have found the ability to hit straight again, my short game was on vacation!
On Wednesday, we had planned to take Sid to a Cubs game (fortunately not Thursday, given the rain they had for that match). The night started badly, getting stuck in traffic on the Interstate down to Skokie to get the Swift for two hours blew our plans of getting to Murphy's early for a few beers and we ended up missing the first pitch. The next fatal flaw in the plan came when we found out that despite several hundred Cubs fans using the line for a match almost every night last week, the last Swift is 10:02pm, It was a beautiful night, the sights were "quite good" as Todd would say. The Cubs, for the most part, played OK and when I left my 100% record was intact, they were up by one. The game stretched out to 11 innings with the Cubs finally succumbing to the Reds!
Sid had a great time at the game, but was relatively unimpressed by Todd raving about the manual scoreboard. Sid says they are pretty common in India!
Thursday was a quiet night round at Sid's hotel, availing ourselves of their free beer and hot wings. Sid had presents for us, a brass ornament model of Ganesha. An elephant's head on the body of a man. He is the God for new beginnings, eg if you buy a new house, have a baby etc..he is the main man. It really is a beautiful thing, and he has pride of place in my living room.
Friday was the first of two major outings for Sid. He was off out into the city with the youngsters to go clubbing. Having arrived at the club, Zentra, I believe, he found out that they would not accept his Indian driver's licence and he had to come all the way back to get his passport. Sid is unable to relay much of the evening to us, but says he had a great time all the way through to 5am! I also went out with some people from work, but in a much tamer fashion, sang some Karaoke and drank a lot of Soco, but was still in bed before midnight; thanks are due to Sabrina's husband Bob who drove me home.
On Saturday morning, we were to pick Sid up at his hotel at 9:15am for his big day out in the city. We had a full schedule planned and with usual military precision, had it mapped out to a low level of detail. We couldn't raise Sid in his room, not realising at this point that he had only been in bed about 4 hours. We had some breakfast (free again) in the hotel. You could quite easily eat every morning and evening for free in the local "suite" style hotels around here.
Sid eventually showed up about 30 minutes later; we had packed the various bikes into the truck and we set off for the city. The Interstate this time was fortunately much quieter. Parking at John Hancock, we set off down town, via Millenium Park, saw the "bean", paddled in the water (or at least I did), ate some lunch at the Celtic Festival in Grant Park (including pipers) and checked out Buckingham Fountain; ending up way down at the Field Museum, stopping many times along the way to admire the views.
Sid was very pleased with his dinosaur museum trip, as apparently they don't have any dinosaur museums, that he is aware of in India. We saw Sue, the most complete T-Rex anywhere in the world, and a new exhibition out of China where they are discovering some new things to prove birds really did evolve from dinosaurs as they thought and that some dinosaurs, including that Veloceraptors and T-Rex would have had feathers at some point in their life..kinda makes them less scary!From there we went back towards Hancock, stopping for a beer at the Celtic Festival again, to use up our tickets. Wait!..I almost forgot...Leon, one of our number was on his old racing bike, drop handles and all, in such a cute baby blue colour, decided to try an Evil Knievel stunt coming down from the museum. Riding down some grassy banks, I realised that there was about a foot drop at the end before we hit the sidewalk..Leon didn't, until way too late. He did a running dismount, still managed to hold on to the bike, jump the drop and not kill himself or anyone else for that matter, and entertained us all in the process..wish I had a video camera, as that would have won me 10 grand for sure..well done Leon!
As I was saying, we went back to Hancock via the beer stop, and met up with Sally. We were heading up to the Observatory on the 94th floor (in 40 secs), to show Sid the views. Sally decided to go hang out in the Signature Lounge our next planned stop. The views were fantastic as it was such a clear day. However, to get to the Signature Lounge, you have to go all the way back down and back up again to the 96th. By the time we had waited in several elevator queues, gone up and down, and tried to find Sally, she was gone. We decided to blow off the lounge and go straight to dinner in the Cheesecake Factory but the wait was too long and we ended up coming home to Buffalo Grove and going to Giordanos for pizza. Check out the rest of the pictures here.On Sunday I decided to lay in bed and relax, squeezing in a little golf in the afternoon, where I sucked AGAIN!
All in all, a very busy week and weekend.
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