we land in chicago and then go to get the car and cannot believe it: there's a $500 charge for dropping the car in a different city to what we picked it up from. and we'd specifically booked through them because there weren't a charge when we booked it. anyway, the next job were to find an hotel so we drove into chicago and i tell you what: the boys had never seen owt like it - well, not with their own bare eyes anyway.
we eventually find usselves a holiday inn and get ourselves a couple of rooms. that were the last time we forked out for two rooms i tell you. so we're unpacked have a bit of a lie down quick shower and that and then we're off to see what saturday night in chicago is all about. the last thing i say before we leave is "don't forget your passports because over here you get id'd everywhere you go" and then like a nobhead i forgot to take me own.
after about an hour of wandering about we come to realise that chicago is absolutely massive and there aren't any pubs or owt in the middle of the business district. eventually we ask a security guard what to do and she says "go to rush st" and then we hail a taxi and she goes and tells the driver where to take us. We get to rush st and there's loads of pubs and loads of people because college has just started or summat and it's labor day on the monday so everythings rammed. within ten minutes we were back in a taxi heading back to the hotel so i can get me passport and then back across town and into Shenannigans.
and we get in and get some beer and the place is rammed - they got a couple of stages with poles on them and birds dancing on them and that and i'm starting to get concerned about the visibility of me own pole if you know what i'm saying. spent a couple of hours talking to a delightful couple of ladies, liz and kim i think they were called, and then they went home because their mate was too pissed. we had a couple more beers and then some really filthy lasses took to the stage dancing really dirtily snogging each other and generally getting each others tits out. i tell you what: chicago is definitely my kinda town.
oh yeah, we've no idea who the nobhead in the background of the above photograph is, so if you're reading this: you're a nobhead. got back to the hotel at around five o'clock well hammered and get us heads down. ben needs a piss and walks out into the hall by accident locking himself out. hammering on the door doesn't do any good at all cause we're totally fast so he's forced to relieve himself in a bin, right, and then he has to go and find a member of staff and explain why he's wandering around the hallway in just his pants with all piss on the front of them and this is how he explains it:
i'm telling you. anyway, he manages to get it sorted and nobody said anything about the bin full of piss so if anyone from the holiday inn is reading this: it were ben.
we set off the next day determined to prove to usselves that chicago is more than a load of tall buildings and dirty birds so we head off into town and i'm like "it's easy: we just head across to state st and then up there to the pier" except like nobheads we go south instead of north and after about an hour of walking we decide that we've got totally the wrong way but the sun's baking us alive and we're dead thirsty so we pop into the White Hen Pantry for to get some drink down us. i get meself the biggest most massivest root beer what I ever seen - it were like a bucket wi' a straw coming out i tell you.
eventually we get somewhere where there's shops and people and most importantly pubs. got something to eat at the Jimmy John's and then sat in the baking sun enjoying a nice cold beer. oh man, it were magic. so then, thoroughly refreshed, we head off to navy pier 'cause it sounds like a laugh, but we just couldn't get to it. we could see it, but we couldn't get to it - like we walked down the side of a golf course and couldn't get to it, through a car pound and nowt and so eventually we have to walk all the way back and go across the river.
navy pier is wicked. the first thing we did was get some fresh lemonade which is such a nice thing to have on a hot day. then we went along the pier and i see minature golf so i shout "come on lads, let's do some minature golf" and everyone's looking at me like i'm a nutter: "we're in america" but i say "so what - get yourselves a couple of putters." never again will i play crazy golf with them two. it all started when i putted me ball into colin's and it rapidly descended from there into incredibly juvenile behaviour, so after that i were ready for a kool-aid and then we got the water taxi back into town.
we get off the water taxi near sear tower and seeing as how it's super big we thought we'd go right up to the top. after going through a security check we realised that at least one hundred million people had also had the same idea - the queue was absolutely massive, and it were one of them that went left to right then forward a bit then right to left and then forward a bit, which weren't too bad because it meant there were a load of fit birds next to us every five or so minutes heh heh. anyway, during our queuing the visibility dropped from 5-15 to 0-5. nice one queue.
once we get to the end of the queue we have to sit through an information film and i've got ben next to me going "this is boring moan moan etc" until they start going on about a pork farm where they used "everything but the squeal" and that was it - we were sat there trying not to laugh (like when you're at school or in a meeting or getting a bollocking off the police) and we just couldn't stop all the way through it. we come out of the room with tears all down us faces. "everything but the squeal" yeah? maybe you had to be there.
facts? facts? all right, here's some facts. sears tower is the biggest building in the world - the highest occupied floor is four miles above the earth and the antenna on top of it goes up another mile and a half but that's just the tip of the iceberg as most of the building is under ground deep within the earth's crust itself. at the top on a clear day you can see all fifty-one states. the elevators what go to the top make the four mile journey in less than a second and the whole building took eight minutes to build by using over one million billion ants. it will take over two thousand years to clean all eight billion windows. if you start now that is.
after we got back to the hotel and freshened up we headed back out into town and went into a pub that looked exactly like biblos. except emptier. we headed off back to the hotel at half two because we weren't used to the timezone and we wanted to make a bit of an early start the next day.
yeah, 'cause we were always going to make an early start weren't we? set off around noon and drove round south chicago for a while - it had been hammering it down all morning and the roads were all a mess, but eventually we managed to get onto interstate 55 heading south towards st louis.
so we're zooming down the interstate and colin's sat in the back looking at the map and says "here lads, there's loads of lincoln stuff on the map" so we say "where?" and colin says "springfield".
lincoln and the simpsons might of come from here, but on labor day afternoon the town is completely deserted. eventually i spot a sports bar so we find somewhere to park and go in for a drink and a game of pool. we're not even asked for id and the balls are already set up on the table so we have a quick game over a beer and then decide we're going to visit the lincoln memorial to pay us respects to the great man himself.
after driving round and round the one way system for an hour we eventually get to the cemetary and colin remarks that we've picked the perfect way to spend a monday afternoon, but we ignore him and drive on the the memorial.
unfortunately we'd got there a bit to late to go inside the memorial so we had a wander around it and looked at it and stuff and then drove to the vietnam and korean war memorials. ben managed to find a distant relative (yeah, right) on one of the memorials. after hanging round the cemetary all afternoon we decided we should make a move and head on to st louis.
that's my bag of pork skins on the dashboard in case anyone were wondering. mmm. after finally finding the interstate again we came off at litchfield and picked up yes you've guessed it route 66 itself. this was us first time on it this trip and we were all very excited indeed. unfortunately route 66 doesn't exist in it's entirity anymore and it's a bit difficult to follow especially in the dark so we end up losing the route a couple of times and then we lost it completely somewhere out by the chain of rocks bridge this time badly nearly killing all of us in the process.
eventually we make it into granite city and manage to pick up the road again, and a short time later we cross the bridge over the state border and into missouri.