THE PEOPLE MUST HAVE THEIR DAN MILLER

Wednesday morning started off bright and early. Everyone kind of ended up getting up at about 6:35. We had set an alarm for 7, in the hopes of getting an earlier start on the day than the day before. We went and ate breakfast and when we returned to our room we realized we had forgoten to turn the alarm off, just like I used to do to Cliff when I’d go to Cleveland, all those years ago…

We took a different way to the park and ride, and even accounting for the fact that we got a bit lost, it did not appear to be faster than the original way. We got off the Blue line at a different stop, and took the #65 to Navy Pier. We had to wait at the bus stop for probably 10-15 minutes before the bus came (foreshadowing!), but we still made it to the Children’s Museum at about 10:05, just after it opened. There was no line to get tickets, though I do wish these places would make up their collective mind about whether we (as members of a reciprocal museum) should go to the regular ticket line or the line for museum members. Yesterday at the Museum of Science and Industry we had to wait in the regular line (it’s the same at COSI) But today, they told us to go to the members line. It didn’t really matter since there wasn’t really a line at either place.

We toured the museum for awhile, and then went out and ate lunch in the food court and walked around for awhile on the pier. While we were planning this vacation, we had talked about doing the Amazing Funhouse maze, but we decided to axe it. Same thing as the Cardboard Box syndrome I blogged about in my last post. It would probably be fun, yes, but would it be $30 fun for 15 minutes? Just seemed like we could find better things to spend our money on.

After lunch, we went back to the museum and wandered around some more. It was a much better experience than yesterday’s trip to MSI. The winning exhibit by far was called Big Backyard. It’s a little hard to explain, but there were white sheets (kind of like what you would pull down to use an overhead projector), and then projectors of some sort shooting things on to the sheet. Somehow it could tell when someone was standing in front of the projector, and it interacted with the shadow that you projected on the sheet. There were two different kinds. The first one projected butterflies and other insects, and if you stood still, a butterfly would “perch” on your shadow. You can kind of see an example of this at the link I posted above. The other one was more fun – it “dripped” beads down from the top of the sheet, and you could “catch” them by cupping your hands or other parts of your body (or props that they had there). I’m pretty sure Amy could have stayed there doing that for the entire day. Luckily we didn’t find this till the end or I doubt we would have gotten them to go anywhere else… A close 2nd as far as exhibit coolness, at least for the kids, was a working traffic light / crosswalk symbol that just alternated green/yellow/red and walk/don’t walk continuously, so, you know, cardboard box.

The #65 bus that we took to the museum was taking forever to show up as we waited in front of the museum, so we took a #124 “Navy Pier” bus that got us back to the blue line. Oh, one other thing I want to mention is that to Amy and Scott, the hotel == Chicago. Whenever we’re downtown or at the museum or on the train or wherever, they always talk about “going to Chicago” which means the hotel. “Let’s go to Chicago and go swimming!” “Time to go to Chicago and eat dinner!”, etc. No amount of telling them that we’re already in Chicago will convince them. It’s quite funny.

Well that last post was getting a bit long, so I thought I’d write a separate one for last night. The night went much better. We stuck Joel in his crib in one of those bathrooms, and that seemed to work out pretty well. That allowed us to sleep on the bed, which was much better than the smelly fold-out couch.

We also decided that not all of us would go to see the Cubs on Thursday. There were a couple of reasons for that:

• We hadn’t gotten tickets yet and there was limited availability. When I looked a few days before we left there was nothing available, but last night I was able to find a few.
• Even though I (somewhat deservedly) get ribbed for being a cheapskate, I don’t mind spending money when it’s going to return good entertainment value. For instance I think spending the money on this hotel was a good idea. But realistically, Amy, Joel and Carolyn (mostly because of Amy and Joel) were not really going to be able to enjoy the game, so spending $25 each for them didn’t seem to be a good idea.
• A corollary to #2 is a little something I like to call “Cardboard Box syndrome”. You know, you give a kid a toy and they’re more interested in the box it came in. And while I do believe that as parents you need to make your kids enjoy new experiences, since a lot of times they don’t really KNOW what they want or would enjoy, I don’t believe it’s necessary to always buy your kids tons of stuff for them to enjoy themselves. In fact, if you asked Amy or Scott their favorite thing about this vacation, they would probably say that it was swimming in the pool
• Speaking of Joel, we weren’t sure quite what to do with him. He doesn’t need a seat being an infant, but if we don’t get him a seat, then we have nowhere to put his car seat. Which makes it quite hard to get him to sleep, which might make the whole outing a bit of madness.

So, in the end, we got 2 seats in Section 219. Hopefully it will be fun.

First of all, I wrote a nice long post detailing yesterday but lo, Blogger ate it. I will try to recreate it, but can’t promise to do it justice. Just think of how funny I am, and I’m sure that you’ll be able to imagine that my other post was 40 times as funny

Anyway, we got a bit of a late start to the day. As I mentioned before, it was a bit of a rough night. I was laying in the bed and I could see the light through the curtains. I sat there in half-conscious mode for awhile, trying to determine what time it was. There were no clocks of any sort within viewable distance, though, since I wasn’t wearing my glasses, viewable distance is about 6 inches.

After eating breakfast (pancakes and eggs), we came back to the room to get ready. In the interests of time, Carolyn sacrificed a shower to be “smelly” Carolyn, but it was still 9:15 before we set on our way. Our multi-modal trip to the museum went as follows:

1. 35 minute drive to the park and ride. Actually it was a kiss and ride. Parked there, and paid the $3 in quarters to the little machine, and went inside the terminal. There was another tourist group from ‘Sconsin buying their CTA visitor passes, so we had to wait for awhile till it was our turn. Their website lists 1, 2, 3, and 5 day passes, but this kiosk only had 1, 2, 3, and 7 day options. Since we are going to be here 4 days, I was already annoyed to have to buy a 5 day pass, but since that was not an option, I bought 2 7-day passes for $20 each. It did not occur to me until we were already on the train that I should have bought a 1-day and a 3-day for $17 each.
2. As it turns out, we just missed the train, but another one came by in 7 minutes or so. The train ride was fairly uneventful, as train rides go. I thought it was pretty cool, and Scott enjoyed looking at the passing trains.
3. We got a bit lost making our way from the train platform up to the street level, but eventually walked the 1-2 blocks to our bus stop. We had to catch either the 2, 6, 10 bus (or the 28 but that didn’t stop where we were). We didn’t have to wait long, but while we were waiting, an apparently homeless guy approached me, but instead of asking for any money or anything, just asked where we were going. When I told him we were catching this bus right here, he just left. It was somewhat weird. Right after he left, the #6 bus pulled up, but right behind it was the #10, which, given that its Route name is “Museum of Science and Industry” took us right to the front door of the museum (the #6 would have let us out a block away)

Brief rant on public transportation. The trip ended up taking us 2 hours. And I think that this was a fairly normal trip. We could have driven about 20 minutes to take a METRA train which would have also taken us into downtown, but I suspect that would have taken just as long, and we still would have had to take a bus after the train ride. Plus METRA isn’t covered by our visitor pass, so it would have cost $5 for each of us (one-way). And I am now coming to the realization that public transportation is just not viable except in certain rare cases. I voted for the light rail in Cincinnati (though it went down to heinous defeat), but I don’t think it would really work. People are just not going to be willing to spend 2 hours commuting. I certainly wouldn’t. Though maybe that’s just a Cincinnati perspective. When we got back to the hotel, I was talking to the lady at the front desk. I told her about our trip and how it lasted 2 hours. She asked if that was just from when we got on the train and I said that it was from when we left the hotel. She said, “Well, that’s not bad then”, so I joked that in 2 hours I could drive from Cincinnati to Columbus! She laughed and said that in Chicago you could drive 2 hours and just be in traffic.

Anyway, the museum. When we got there, there was a massive line to buy tickets. All in all it took another 45 minutes to buy tickets, and then we ate lunch, and by the time we got into the museum, it was 12:30 p.m. And as for the museum, it wasn’t that great, which was very disappointing. This was the one thing that I most wanted to do (besides Wrigley). I remember going with my parents, and it was a lot of fun. So I don’t know if it was just because now I’m an adult, or if the exhibits are not as good, or if it was having to deal with 3 kids, but it just wasn’t that good. It was okay, but nothing spectacular. Hopefully, the Children’s Museum will be better….