Chicago Not The Musical

When I arrive in Chicago and get picked up at the bus stop by my brother and father, the first order of business is not “have a nice dinner” or “relax at the hotel.” No, my first task is to load as much of my brother’s apartment as possible into our rented van. I spend the next two hours hauling books, clothes, and furniture down a flight and a half of stairs, because who needs elevators? After packing the van, my brother went out for dinner with his friends and I ate McDonald’s oatmeal after parking the van at a garage that cost more than a week’s worth of groceries. Finally, we walked over to the hotel where I settled in on my saggy sofa bed to watch Mexico beat Honduras 3-0 in World Cup qualifying.

The next day, my options are not “visit a museum” or “see a show” but inspect my brother’s new apartment and spend the rest of the day moving all his things into it. Except that wasn’t really an option because there was no “or.” The apartment was nice. It also cost a multiple of my yearly salary. Which wasn’t really a surprise.

Chicago River at night.  And buildings.

The following day is graduation. I again have no options for how to spend the day. I also accidentally delete my pictures from the previous three days before Convocation. And as an added bonus, my computer has been refusing to turn on. But the graduation ceremony is a reasonable length, the sun does not beat down on us like it’s the Sahara at noontime, and the clouds do not weep like they’ve just broken up with the love of their life. The speaker is a chemistry professor who gives a nice speech about learning. The most puzzling aspect is where they found all the bagpipers to lead the processional and recessional.

The University of Chicago has an additional afternoon ceremony where each student is recognized and given their diploma. Before that, they feed all the families lunch. It was an impressive feat, even if my lettuce was wilty. I did get a chocolate chip cookie though. The interesting part of the diploma ceremony is that the students are split up by the dorm they lived in during freshman year. Some of them haven’t seen each other in three years, but they graduate together. Cornell does the smaller ceremonies by major, which would seem to make more sense to me, but I’m not a graduation ceremony planner.

Afternoon graduation.  Note the absence of heat-induced mirages or small lakes of rainwater.

Anyway, we sat through the diploma ceremony. It was hot. Several students had their names severely mispronounced and one girl had the wrong major announced. After that, we wandered around campus for awhile then went out for dinner. Peking duck. (The night before was ramen and I had tempura udon; the night after was dim sum. So my brother knows his food places. I would later feed my parents handmade sandwiches crafted from only the finest grocery store ingredients.)

Sunday was our last day in Chicago; we visited my brother’s church and walked around a bit. At the end of the weekend, I did get to see a bit of Chicago, finally set foot on my brother’s campus, and eat some good food. So it was a worthwhile trip, even if I didn’t get to see any of the museums or spend much time in the parks (one of them had a climbing wall).

Finally, please note that this has been a post about Chicago without a picture of the bean (Cloud Gate – made of 168 steel plates and weighing 110 short tons, in case anyone else was wondering¹). That’s because I accidentally deleted my pictures of the bean.

¹Also under the category of things people might be wondering: because Cloud Gate is hollow, it weighs 99.5% less than a solid 10 m x 13 m x 20 m rectangular prism (dimensions found online) or 99.2% less than a cylinder with a diameter of 10 meters and a length of 20 meters (a rectangular prism overestimates the volume occupied by the bean). This assumes a stainless steel density of 8000 kg/m³.