My 2 Grand Adventure

Windy Wednesday

I spend most of the morning on the train. We are running about 3-hours behind, which only counts as about 2 as I've crossed across in to the Central Time Zone and the clocks go back an hour. I mostly doze and watch the countryside go past.

Chicago is a big industrial city and the center of the transport network for the whole US. Approaching the city we travel through an hours worth of factories and railway junctions.

When we arrive at Union Station, I catch a cab to the hostel. WOW! The place is huge! Apparently it's only a couple of years old. It has 6 floors, loads of function rooms and my 6-person dorm has it's own on-suite shower and toilet. It's almost like a hotel.

By now the whole election is over. It was close (Bush 51% - Kerry 48%), but Kerry concedes and the local have George W for another 4-years. I spend the next couple of hours chatting to the other guys in my dorm about travel, sport and politics. After a whole day on a train, exploring Chicago can wait until tomorrow.

For tea I go to a restaurant a couple of blocks way called Millers Bar and have a half order of BBQ ribs, a couple of Goose Island ales and a tiramasu for afters. When I get back to the hostel I sign up for an outing to a Blues club uptown.

About 8 of us ride the subway up to the B.L.U.E.S Bar with our volunteer guide. The bar is a spit and sawdust type of place, it's small and a little run down but it's celebrating it's 25th anniversary next week and has a real venue feel to it. The four-piece band starts playing after about an hour. Very electric blues; two lead guitars, a bass guitar and drums. Apparently, it's the drummers birthday. After an hour or so, the singer appears an take over the lead of the band.

It's about this time that our guide abandons us, apparently she has work tomorrow. This is when things go a little crazy. Because it's the drummers birthday, loads of his musician friends have turned up. So over the next couple of house they keep rotating player and singers, so in all about 20 different people play or sing. Oh, and we all get birthday cake. At about 1.30am, there's only me and a woman called Karen from Congleton left, so we call it a night and head back to the hostel.

posted by Mark Slattery @ 5:49 pm