Chicago roadtrip

One of my friends from Vanderbilt is spending some time at the University of Chicago building some laser experiment at Fermilab. She invited me and another friend (Trey Mack) to come and visit her in Chicago a while back and we started making plans to go up there some time in November.

So I just got back from a roadtrip to Chicago and let me just say that it was awesome. I'll break it down by day below:

Friday 4 November 2011


We left Nashville at about 11am on Friday morning. The roadtrip wasn't the most scenic, but for me that had never done that kind of thing in The States it was fun just seeing the differences in the states we crossed. We took the I65 North Interstate and that took us almost all the way to Chicago, a full 8 hours later. We passed Louisville (Kentucky) and Indianapolis (Indiana) on the way up to Chicago.

Indianapolis

Between Indianapolis and Chicago there is a few miles that is just covered with Wind Turbines to generate electricity. As far as the eye can see it's just wind turbines. Literally hundreds of them.

When we finally reached Chicago it was already dark and I didn't really get to see the city skyline all that well, it was a little cloudy and foggy.

We met Brittany close to the University and went straight to a university play called "The Physicist".

Not a bad play, but not the best. I've seen better productions from high school students. Some parts were really well acted, some parts were poorly acted. But a fun event none the less.

After this we just went back to Brittany's apartment. We met her roommates and just hung out, drank some beer and ate some pizza. We formulated the plan for the next day and went to sleep.

Saturday 5 November 2011

Downtown Chicago

The plan was to leave at around 9am to go explore the city, but Trey and Brittany slept a little later than expected.  I went exploring for a little while Brittany took her morning run and got my first view of downtown Chicago. We eventually left the apartment at 11am. (I was really annoyed at that point as I wanted to get as much Chicago time as possible). Took the bus to downtown and  got off at the beginning of Millenium Park. We walked through the entire park and took lots of awesome photos of the strange artwork. We reached the top of the park where the "Cloud Gate" is located. It's just a giant shiny bean with a fancy name. But really cool to take photos of. When walking underneath the bean the internal reflections are really awesome.

The Giant Bean (aka Cloud Gate)

We decided to get some "breakfast" as it was close to 1pm already (breakfast is the first meal of the day people). So we headed to a place called the "Bongo Room" that serves breakfast until 2pm (the place is only open from 8am to 2pm). Got there at about 2:04pm :( Closed. So we went slightly further down the road to a place called Eleven City Diner. I had some Belgian Waffles at 3pm for breakfast. Freaking Amazing.

Eleven City Diner Belgian Waffles

The rest of the afternoon (or early evening I should say) we spent walking up and down the city and just staring up at the buildings.

Amazing city skyscrapers

We decided to get some food at around 7pm and Trey suggested we go to Portillo's Hot Dogs. Really good hot dogs and the fries were even better.

For evening entertainment we went to a Blues Club called Kingston Mines. We were very lucky to see some really good blues. One stage we had Joanna Connor, and on the other we had Magic Slim & the Teardrops. WOW, just wow. There is nothing more to say. Magic Slim was amazing. The video I linked to above doesn't do him justice.

We finally left the bar at about 1am and headed back home. Sleep was in order after a really full day (just BTW, the traveling around Chicago on the elevated rapid transit system is really cool. Much better than an underground in my opinion. When traveling around the city you get to see everything.)

Sunday 6 November 2011

Cityscape Chicago

I got up really early, not wanting to waste another morning waiting around for Trey and Brittany. I left the apartment at about 8am and headed into downtown to do some exploring on my own. I walked many miles up and down the city streets looking at all the buildings. Chicago is a really big city. You feel really small when you walk in the streets between buildings. I just took some random walk and was surprised to see how many other people were doing the same thing as me :) Tourists.

I eventually met up with Trey, Brittany and Kartik (one of Brittany's friends) for "breakfast" at the Eleven City Diner. The food was so good the day before we decided to eat there again. We wanted to go to Bongo Room, but the wait for a table was like 2 hours. Who stands outside a restaurant for 2 hours for food? Not us.

Osaka Garden

After "breakfast" we made our way to Lake Michigan. It looks more like an ocean than a lake. It's impossible to see the other end of the lake and there are even waves. Not very big waves, but waves none the less. I took off my shoes and dipped my toes into Lake Michigan (the water was "bust a nut" cold). We wanted to go to the Museum of Science and Industry, but we got there late once again and only had an hour left before closing time and we weren't going to spend $24 each to walk around for only an hour. It worked out for the best though as getting to see the city is better than spending all your time indoors looking at some old stuff. On the way back to Brittany's place we took a tour through the Osaka Garden (Japanese Zen Garden). It was really peaceful and it was amazing how calm and quiet it is in this garden.

Obama eats peaches

For dinner, me, Brittany and Kartik, headed north of downtown to DMK Burger Bar. Simply amazing once again. Of all the things that I will remember about Chicago, the food is top of the list. Every place we went to had amazing food. And best of all is that it wasn't that much more than your average fast food place. None of these places are fast food joints, by the way. And to end the evening we headed back to Kingston Mines just to chill out and listen to some amazing blues. It happened to be open mic night and we got to see some really good blues players. Nobody in the same league as Magic Slim though, but a high school boy with his harmonica got pretty damn close. Just as we were about to leave again, Magic Slim (who happens to own Kingston Mines) played us out. We got to stand a few feet away from the legend himself and listen to the best music of the entire weekend. I snapped a picture of a poster in some fruit market's window. It made me chuckle.

Back at Brit's place at around 1:30am and straight to bed. Another long and successful day.

Monday 7 November 2011

I got up slightly later than I would have liked. We eventually left  the apartment at about 11am and I walked with Brittany to her lab on University of Chicago campus. She showed me around for a while before I headed back to meet Trey at Starbucks. We got back on the road and headed back to Nashville. Another 8 or so hours later and I was back, sleeping in "my own bed" and not a couch.

All in all, it was a great trip. Too short to really get a feeling for the city, but I loved it.

Boston is still my favourite US city at the moment, but maybe if I spent more time in Chicago I might be persuaded.

Have a good one y'all

Pumpkin Carving

I just got back from one of Josh's friends house. We were having a "Fall Festival" and did everything that you're supposed to do during fall. We drank so many different kinds of pumpkin beer, watched some college football, drank some peach infused vodka, carved some pumpkins and generally had a really good time.
I really love Boston, everything just makes we want to stay here.

Boston University Talk

So I did my KELT talk at BU on Wednesday and it went really well. Not many grad students in the audience, but having a lot of factulty there was good. Everyone seemed to be really engaged and afterwards the organizer said that I did  a really good job.

This was sent from my phone

Presentations

So the KELT team has gone for the shotgun approach to making KELT visible to the Boston astronomers. Today Josh had a talk at MIT, Rob did a talk at CfA and tomorrow I'll be giving a talk at Boston University.

Most of today was spent making the slides for my presentation tomorrow. I also went with Rob to CfA today.

I'll let you know how the presentation goes tomorrow.