Experiences

This July 4th weekend, kids ruled Chicago. I surrende r it to the little five-year old guy at the dolphin amphitheater at Shedd aquarium, who casually turned, encountered this unbearably cool thing called a prosthetic leg belonging to the cheerful man sitting behind him, and proceeded to spend the next five minutes in wide-eyed, fascinated wonder. His dad looked uncomfortable and embarrassed, but not my little champ. He was trying to decide whether the man possessing a half-metal, half-plastic leg was a super hero. I genuflect before the three-year old girl at the Navy Pier bus terminus who stood her ground against the press of humanity trying to get into the CTA # 66 after July 4th fireworks. There were at least a million people on Navy Pier that day and at least 25% of them lined up to get into the popular # 66. It was an elbow-to-elbow, cheek-by-jowl, survival-of-the-fittest run to the bus. “Hey! Excuse me!” my Joan of Arc protested from somewhere in the region below our collec...

Did you hear about ero-tourism? It isn’t as bad as it sounds. Its etymological root is a combination of the Greek god of love, Eros and tourism – the idea is to discover love while traveling. It’s a new fad in experimental tourism, advocated by Joel Henry. It’s all about two people going to a destination separately and using their love/knowledge of the other as a GPS to find each other. I discovered this concept in an in-flight magazine and was thoroughly excited by it (oops, pun unintended!). And last weekend, I synthesized the concept and pushed it to a new level. My travel plan went something like this: Destination: Chicago Knowledge of city: Almost none Bio-compass: Non-existent Ability to read maps: Laughable Travel companion: A new friend Plan: Explore Budget: Shoestring Well, it was a thrilling experience, to say the least. We randomly got down from the CTA train somewhere in downtown and ran into a Halloween Day parade, complete with several bands, hundre...