A Chicago Adventure

Last March Gabe and I were in LA with some friends and were talking about going to Chicago this fall on a weekend when the Bears and Cubs are playing so we could go to the games.  It worked out to be the last weekend of September...yes, I am a little late in posting this.  Anywho, I get to the airport first.  Gabe, Adam and Amber are on their way but a few minutes behind me.  Gabe scheduled mine and Amber's flight one hour later than his and Adam's flight since it was cheaper, so we were hoping to get on the flight via standby.  So I walk up to the counter and speak with a very nice lady telling her exactly what I want to do, but not knowing the flight time, the flight number, or my reservation number.  How helpful am I??  She looks my information up from my name.  She tells me my reservation was cancelled because we didn't confirm the ticket!!  According to her notes, we used miles on my flight and paid for Gabe's.  NOT TRUE, it is the exact opposite.  Finally Gabe gets there and calls American on his way to the gate, gets my flight reservation number and off we go.  Gabe to the rescue!  (That's one of the many reasons I married him...he always rescues me because I never know what I am doing.  Plus he travels all the time).  Amber and I are able to get on the guys flight and are sitting in the row in front of them.  Things are starting to work out perfectly.  We get in late Thursday night, so we just decide to go to bed.  By the way, Gabe's dad lives there so he was gracious enough to let us "borrow" his apartment for the weekend.  Friday we get up and go to a yummy breakfast place called Kitshun.  Off to Michigan Avenue to shop.  Parking in Chicago is pretty expensive so we opted to walk and get in our exercise as well as save some money.  We shop and shop and shop.  Took a taxi home since our legs were about to fall off!  Nap for a little bit, and get ready for dinner.  Off we go to dinner.  We head over to Millenium Park and eat at the restaurant there, sit on the patio...perfect evening.  The temperatures in Chicago couldn't have been more perfect!  Loved every second of it.  We had a wonderful evening at Millenium Park, showing A&A the area since it is their first time to Chicago.  Being preggers and shopping all day, I was pretty tired so we called it a night.

Saturday we get up, go to breakfast with Gabe's dad and lovely girlfriend Rochelle, who I had never met before.  They were so kind and generous to let us stay at Harvey's place, borrow his car, and even pay for breakfast.  We kept talking about how much fun we were having and how great the trip had been.  I guess we spoke a little too soon.  After we left breakfast we were heading to the Cubs game.  We decided to take a little bit longer of a route and drive over to Lakeshore Drive.  So pretty!  City on your left and Lake Michigan(??) on your right.  Sandy beaches, volleyball courts, walk/bike trails.  All of a sudden the car comes to a screeching halt.  We just crashed into the car in front of us!  (Gabe was driving his dad's car!!)  You can see the pic!  :)  

The boys were in the front and hurt by the airbags.  Amber and I were in the back with no seatbelts on...whooops.  Actually I think it was for the best so it didn't lock on my belly, because we did fly forward.  We just came out with knee bruises and I had one on my head above my left eye, thinking it was from my sunglasses. After dealing with all of that, we were talking about how to get to the Cubs game, the tow man offers to take us.  How nice!! Except 5 of us were SQUISHED into this bright red-single cab tow truck.  Awesome!  We pull up to the game, streets are PACKED and no one even takes a second glance.  haha.  One of the ladies directing the traffic stops Amber and asked "That's not the wreck from Lakeshore is it?"  Amber laughed and nodded.  The game was a blast, we all got new t-shirts and the Cubs clinched to go to the playoffs.  Great time even with all of our bruises and hurts.  Luckily Chicago has a train we were able to ride home with LOTS of drunks.  Made it interesting.  We stopped for dinner at Gino's Pizza.  

Sunday, we went to breakfast, Amber and I got on the train going one way to the airport and the boys got on the train going the other way off to the Bears game.  We had to go home since we couldn't miss another day of teaching.  And the drama continues... we are on the "wonderful" train and it comes to an end about 5 stops to early.  We have to get off the train, take a bus to 2 stops up and get back on the train to get to the airport.  Good thing we were early.  Same thing, we wanted to fly standby to get home a little earlier, we were both exhausted from an eventful weekend.  This time no such luck, the stanby list had 66 names.  We were somewhere in the 30s.  No luck on the first flight so they were transferring our names to next flight leaving out of gate K1.  We head on over that way.  Waiting and waiting for our names to pop up on the standby list so we can see where we are.  Nothing....  We go up to the lady at the desk and ask her where we are on the list, bc our names aren't on the screen.  She is very rude and not helpful one bit. Basically she told us we were wasting our time trying to get on an earlier flight and should just go sit at the gate where our scheduled flight is supposed to take off (which was K1, the exact place we were standing)!  We decided to go to a different ticketing agent to hopefully get some help.  He couldn't have been nicer.  Glad we talked to him bc he told us there was no way we would get home to Dallas tonight if we would have stayed with our original flight!  So he helped us get on a flight to St. Louis and then to Dallas.  Boy were we glad to be home!