Day 44 - 3 for 3

Sorry folks, I'm sure you're looking for another entry from the award winning pens of the Kyle/Casey duo but your stuck with me at the keyboard.  I want to thank Kyle and Casey for taking over the blogging duties for a day and appreciate their perspective and kind words very much.  We were talking today that we are only on Day 3 of their leg and it feels like a WEEK.  They have been tremendous partners providing great insight and keeping the days fun as we tackle this stubborn RV issue.   

Realizing that it will realistically be three more days before we get the RV back, we need to balance continuing east and making progress with getting too far from Coffman Truck Sales because we will have to comeback to return Cheryl's monster truck and get the RV.  So we decided that it made sense to take a day off and enjoy Chicago.  It was a very good decision indeed.  

As Kyle and Casey mentioned, we stayed in Wrigleyville last night and I was moving slow this morning due to a little too much liquid fun at the Laugh Factory.  Being close to the stadium allowed us to use this as a home base so we could leave our bikes in the hotel lobby for security as we drove around Chicago and pick up everything after the game (the hotel staff was terrific).  We had three primary objectives for the day: 1) walk downtown and visit Millennium Park, 2) watch a Cubs game at Wrigley and of course 3) get a hot dog at Redhot Ranch.  We batted 1000 hitting all three out of the park.

The game started at 1:20 pm so we went downtown first.  We did the first of what would turn out to 5 transfers of gear from the bed to the inside of the truck (park mode) and from the inside of the truck to the bed (drive mode).  It's a major pain in the a$$.  Downtown Chicago was amazing.  I was impressed by how clean the city was.  With prefect weather, the sun reflecting off all the skyscrapers, the town was really showing off.  Swing and a hit!

From there, we rendezvoused with Geoff Scoones a good friend of Kyle’s who I also coached for three years in basketball.  He and his wife Rachael live in Chicago and I have not seen Geoff in probably 10 years, so it was great see him.  As noted over and over again on this trip, we are not the best planners.  We assumed that we would get to the game late, so we’d just get tickets cheap on the street. Oh wait, its Sunday, and perfect weather.  Bad plan.  There were no tickets left on-line and slim pickin’s on the street.  Since we needed 5, we were SOL sitting together and now I'm just hoping we can get in.  Fortunately, a bunch of the resellers worked together to get us 5 cheap tickets to get us in the door (these guys were awesome!) then we could take our chances in finding some vacant seats together.  Wandering aimlessly as we walked into the stadium, one of the ushers actually helped us find 5 vacant seats together two rows up in the 200 level down the 3rd baseline.  Freaking incredible.  All the people we encountered at the stadium were super friendly and helpful to us Wrigley newbies.  Swing and a hit!

Redhot Ranch is a very popular “chain” of three stores that have a limited menu of hot dogs and hamburgers and fries (think In-N-Out Burger).   Their dogs are old school and come with EVERYTHING on them.  Burgers were delicious too and we devoured everything, even going in for a second round (hey its a ride day tomorrow)  Swing and a hit!

From there it was back to our hotel near our last finishing point as we are back on the road tomorrow.  Empty the dang truck one more time, do some laundry and hit the sack.  We hope to get an early start tomorrow as it is expected to be 90 in Hamlet.  

It was a very good day today and though the late Harry Caray would have said Cubs win!, Cubs win!, Cubs win! (which they did 5-1) for today at least it was Winklers win!, Winklers win!, Winklers win!  Lets hope that luck carries over with the RV tomorrow.  

Until then…