Chicago is so cold that pigeon droppings form stalagmites on the sidewalks under the El trains.
I flew up to Chicago this weekend to see Rob’s new place on Sheridan. Most of the weekend I spent hanging out at Rob’s house teaching Ben to play chess and playing with the iPhone. Ben (who is 5, keep in mind) caught on quickly to the movement of the various pieces, and their relative importance. Soon he was justifying pawn sacrifices so he could in turn capture a knight or a bishop. Prior to this weekend he had been defeating all opponents in checkers, so this was an exciting challenge for him. We probably played two dozen games of chess over the course of the weekend.
We ran into Plainfield for some Giordano’s pizza on Sunday afternoon. Usually my tastes in pizza tend towarda thin crust New York style, but as they say. “When in Rome…”
The pizza took 30 minutes or so to bake, so we ordered some fried calamari and a couple of pints and waited it out. True to form, both Rob and I spent the time playing with our new phones. Rob had just received a new Blackberry Bold for work. I, of course, had my new iPhone.
Soon after that, the pizza arrived. Three inches deep, steaming, with a thick layer of marinara sauce held in by a dam of crispy crust. It was very good, and stuffed with a layer of cheese, sausage, green peppers, and mushrooms.
Monday morning we relocated to downtown Chicago to work from the Millenium Park Intelligentsia Coffee. Intelligentsia is one of my favorite coffee companies. They specialize in organic fair trade, and direct trade coffees, roasted perfectly, and prepared by knowledgeable baristi. The direct trade part of their business is interesting, as Intelligentsia fosters actual relationships with coffee growers and pays them directly for their beans. It may make a cup of coffee, or pound of beans a bit more expensive, but that cost is the true cost of the coffee. Anything less is shorting someone of their part of the equation. Low priced coffee forces many South American coffee farmers to give up growing coffee for more lucrative crops, such as coca leaves (cocaine). Read more about the direct trade here if you are interested.
I had talked with Kristina Winters, a former college housemate, via Facebook the prior week, and we were going to try to catch up while I was in town. Social media is a great tool for staying connected, but it doesn’t replace a face-to-face interaction. Since I hadn’t seen Kristina since Allison and I got married 6 and change years ago, this was the perfect time to reconnect.
After having a couple of very tasty, perfectly short double espressos, my cell phone chirped. Kristina was close by, but had walked past the front door of the shop. Kristina is originally from Cincinnati, lives in a primarily Indo-Pakistani neighborhood in Chicago (where you can get good produce – key for a vegan), plays the steel drums, and has opinions. Nowadays she works for Navteq, a company that provides digital mapping data for clients such as Yahoo, Garmin, Mapquest, and Microsoft.
We talked for an hour or so about goings-on over the last six years, what it was like to be in D.C. for the Barack Obama inauguration, and her vegan lifestyle. She lives in metro Chicago and works an mile from Millennium Park, so she was present for the election night festivities in the park as well as traveling to D.C. along with a million or so other people the week prior. Kristina’s explanation of living as a vegan in a city (and country) where this is not the norm was funny. Especially the part about her wool coat given as a gift from her mother. Knowing Kristina would be apprehensive to accept a wool coat, her mother obtained a letter stating that the sheep were not harmed in the shearing process. We made tentative plans for her to come down to Nashville and visit sometime this year before she had to head back to work.
Intelligentsia proved to be a great place to spend the day as a digital nomad. Free wi-fi, outlets to charge the myriad electronic devices, and obviously great coffee. Around 4pm we left to walk back to the car. $28 dollars in parking garage fees later, Rob was on his way back South to Sheridan, and I was on my way to othe Orange Line to the Midway Airport.
Incidentally, the line I started this post with is true. On the stairs to the El platform on Randolph there were small, green icicles. Except these grew up from the stair treads in conspicuously straight lines directly underneath overhead supports. Yeah, Chicago is cold.
