10/1/2008 Aka Procrastinator

Ok, so no one is reading this anymore, especially after the big letdown of totally sucking at blogging during my trip...after my trip...pretty much total failure at blogging so far. Well, now I am once again killing time, at an undisclosed daytime location and I figure what the heck. So I am going to blog about my trip.
Chicago (part 1)
So, got to the train station in St. Louis and was soo stoked! There was this brand new building with sliding glass doors and everything. You have to understand that the old train station was pretty much a double wide trailer next to the tracks. So I am all excited and go up to the doors and they don't open. Turns out the new station is not yet open and you have to walk down a gravel road to the double wide with the two station attendants. seriously, can't St. Louis have anything that dosen't look creepy? So, I caught my train to Chicago and took out my phone to give Nancy (my travel buddy) a call to let her know when I was going to get into Chicago and relized that I did not have much battery life left so i went to get my charger and low and behold, I left it at home. But, no worries chargers can be obtained easily enough (or so I thought).
So, train is delayed about an hour, which if you are traveling via train is a minimum window that I would build into my schedual. I got to the station in Chicago and followed Nancy's directions and map and get to her apartment, easy enough. First impresstion, I want public transit and I am freaking tired. So, got to Nancy's about 1130 and to sleep about 3.
Next morning we dink around a bit then catch a but to Cherry Valley to visit my grandma, who had pie waiting for us! No joke, my grandma lives in a Norman Rockwell painting and really had honest to god pie waiting for us, yummmm. We sat around chatting and somewhere along the line we ended up going to Saturday night service with my grandma where all of my relatives were a part of the service. Now I have to admit that I am not the most religous of people, or well I am an existential hethina, but hey this was interesting by church standards. I have seen the movie 'Jeasus Camp' multiple times but it is strange to find your relitives in the thrall of that nonsense. Whatever. I will be nice though and say that while it was not my cup o' tea it was interesting.
That eavning was spent playing cribbage, which is an awesome game, and drinking coffe until way too late:) Next mid morning Nancy and I went canoing on the Kishwalkee River. My parents left our canoe at my grandmas about a year back after some trouble with the totalitarian city of creve coeur. We put in and planned to paddle upstream and come back down. Simple, right? So we get in the boat and there are all of these other people with tubes around just playing in the river and we start paddling and are going nowhere. Standing still and paddling hard and the peanut gallery starts yelling "your going the wrong way", it was totally hilarious. After about five minutes of cracking up we got out and towed the boat up a bit further out of the rapids and got going upstream just fine. The paddleing was brutal and I think I was out of the boat as much as in. We went up for about an hour and a half before crashing out on a sandbar. We ate our snacks and drank our pops then heading back downstream. Barely any paddling involved we were back to where we began in less than a half hour! But it sure was fun.
Went back to my grandmas and barrowed the car to go in search of a phone charger. It turns out that if your phone is older than about 3 years (mine is 5) procuring a charger is a bit more difficult. So we ended up at Target and I got a $20 digital camera (which is where photos came from) and a charger, which did not work, grrrr. By the time we were done going into every store looking for a charger we were totally starved since we held off eating when we got back from canoing. Later my grandma suggested we get ice cream, which we totally agreed on and she drove us around looking for an ice cream place she remembered (sort of). Finally we broke down, asked someone, and ended up at 'Cold Stone'. My grandma got a sunday, which was totally rediculously huge so I got one to so she didn't feel bad and since I love ice cream. Good fun.
Next morning included returning bad charger, buying 'Go phone' and switching out sim card, searching for cheese curds, finding cheese curds, lunch, and back on the bus to Chicago.
In Chicago we took out Nancy's sister's and her boyfriends bikes for a cruze. Sweet night for a ride unforutunatly Nancy's bike fell apart as we rode. we first 'fixed it' with our hair ties, then it completly fell apart which actually made it work better and far less noisy than it was before it was totalled. Good times.
Next day we had planned to go to some museums, hang out in the city, get some snacks but after stashing our gear in a locker in Union Station we went to get some food promptly after which my wallet got ganked! No photo ID, no credit card, no insurance. Sucky. Well, good thing I had printed my tikets earlier so with that and a police report I was good to go for the train. But, heres the thing I thought at first that I had thrown away my wallet at the resturant, cuz I do that kind of thing, but nope after digging through the trash there was no sign of my wallet so I assumed it was stolen and I phoned my bank to cancel my card and some fool had already spent about $500 on my card!!! So I see a cop across the road and tell him that "my wallet was stolen, and someone is making charges on my credit card right now" to which he replied "where did this happen and would you like to file a report" to which I said "yes, and it happened between the 'Potbelly' and the train and then he gets my information and asks "did you see them" and I said no (I had already told him my story) and he then asks "were they black"...yeah really I told him I did not see them and he asks me if they were black. I should have said 'no I think this person I did not see was a cacauson eighty year old on a Rascal' seriously Chicago police suck.
So no wallet and 30 minutes later after switching lockers cuz our ticket was in my wallet we just meiandered around the parks, saw the bean, soaked our feet in the fountains, rode the train, stocked up on candy for the ride, and got on the train. Still fun, but I wish I had seen the art museum. Se la vie. Anyway I am stoping there, more later (promise).