The Story of Us: That one time we went to Chicago – Concordia, Missouri Photographer

It was May of 2015, and it was one of our first vacations together (other than the lake). We were driving to Chicago with a group of our friends to watch the Kansas City Royals. Tickets were purchased, hotel rooms reserved (more like motel I suppose?) and transportation was acquired.

The road trip

We all took off the Friday before the game to drive the 8 hours to Chicago. The road trip was interesting as we traveled from Missouri to Illinois. The weather ranged from ridiculously nice to drowning in a down poor and going 15 under the speed limit. When we arrived, everyone was so excited and taking pictures out the car windows. (So please excuse the cell phone photo.)

Over all, the trip there was a good time, everyone was in a great mood and so excited for a night out and to watch a game at Wrigley the next day.

Hello, Windy City

We decided to get some Chicago-style pizza for dinner, and chose to walk from our hotel. It was about 80 degrees that afternoon/evening and it was about a two-mile walk to dinner. We were all sweaty messes, but that pizza was worth it. It was amazing! I love all pizza, but that slice was heaven.

A couple of the guys were not prepared for how hot the pizza would be, and as one went to pull a slice out a bunch of cheese slide out of the pizza onto another’s hand. Suffice it to say, alcohol made them clumsy and someone suffered some rather unfortunate cheese burns. His hand was red the rest of the weekend.

The rain that delayed the game

Oh, the rain. Saturday was supposed to be game day for us. We had tickets for that afternoons game, and everyone was pumped to see Wrigley. It never stopped raining. We bar-hoped about Wrigleyville for a while, but when it was time to go into the stadium it was raining harder than it had all day. We did make it inside right before they called the game, and we were able to get a few photos. I wish we had been able to watch a game, but we only bought tickets for Saturday.

Moral of the story: If you are traveling 8 hours away for a game, perhaps buy tickets to more than one just to be safe? We can’t control the weather so I don’t know what else we could have done. I would love to go back sometime to actually see the Royals play at Wrigley, and one can hope.

Instead of watching baseball, we watched the Blackhawks game in a bar near Wrigleyville, and the atmosphere was pretty great. We were all having a blast and it was the best possible outcome for what had been a cold and dreary day. Trust falls, dancing, yelling when the Blackhawks scored, a random bachelorette almost getting one of our group kicked out of the bar… It was a one-of-a-kind evening. Justin, Eric and I attempted to walk back to the hotel from Wrigleyville and ended up getting a cab for the last two miles. It had been a long exhausting day, but it was full of laughter.

Homecoming

Getting everyone up and ready to go the next morning was somewhat challenging. And putting a large amount of hung over people in a car together was definitely amusing. The trip home seemed to take for-ev-er compared to our trip to Chicago. It was a quick, weekend trip and I would love to go back when we can stay longer. (Side note: My grandpa says that every time we leave their house, “Come back when you can stay longer!” and I love that.) It would be nice to do some touristy things, like the Navy Pier and see Cloud Gate (the bean) as well. We didn’t have time for those things when we were there.

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