Walking With Turtles

Rest and Relaxation

Now that I am home. I am taking a much needed break. I hope by the end of the weekend I will have all the pics and links done. If I’m feeling overly ambitious, maybe even the full recap.

I hope you enjoyed the trip with me and wish it could have gone more smoothly both for me and for telling you all about the goings on.

You no longer need to worry about avenging my death….for now.

Into Chicago

Finishing listening to the end of the Jon Hamm Nerdist podcast as we pull into Chicago.

All my bags are repacked and we’re coming into the city. Mom texted and said they were outside waiting for me to arrive.

It was a good trip despite the bumps and I’m glad it ended on drinking wine and good conversation with a couple of really nice guys.

I need to go back and add the photos I took and links. I’m disappointed that I didn’t have a signal for long enough bursts to post in real time.

Free Wine and Lunch

I ate lunch with three gentlemen and we were the last ones able to get food. There was the accountant from Dublin whom I ate breakfast with, the retired Electrical Engineer whom is one room over and a PhD Computer Science student who was coming back from a job interview. We all ended up with ham and cheese sandwiches and salad. I got a Diet Pepsi and the three of them had a Riesling and a Red Wine of some kind (I am wine illiterate).

This sparked a long conversation about wine and beer. Preferences and why some are better than others. There was a bit of a debated between the retiree and the PhD about Belgian beers. It was fun and lively conversation and we sat there until the car was almost empty.

At that point the staff was cleaning up and found another bottle of each wine, which they gave us for free. I was now required to try. I tried the red one first which was very wood flavored. It wasn’t bad. Not bitter like most red wines taste to me. I then tried the Riesling that was nice and sweet. It was marked on the bottle as being in the middle of sweet and um…not sweet. Like I said. Wine illiterate. I ended up having two glasses of that in addition to the glass of red.

They kicked us out to keep cleaning and we moved to the cafe/snack area and continued our conversation. It moved from wine and beer to more political with a hint of religion. We stayed down there until they kicked us out to clean. We moved upstairs to the observation deck. Now conversation moved on to relationships and was getting a bit heated between the PhD and the retiree. Retiree was trying to say that some people can’t help themselves when it comes to infidelity. I got the feeling he was speaking from experience.

They announced Milwaukee was the next stop and that is where retiree was getting off. The Dubliner left to go smoke. I ended up talking to the PhD a bit. Wrapped up the previous conversation and then moved on to Roller Derby as his girlfriend skates for a local team and he was considering announcing for them instead of taking pictures.

We talked until we were about half an hour outside of Chicago and then headed back to pack up the last of my stuff.

Enjoying the Scenery

More and more snow going by as I listen to Jon Hamm on the Nerdist podcast. He is surprisingly funny.

I briefly watched as a tow truck lowered down a cable to a truck that has gone straight down a hill and was balanced on its nose. I hope no one was hurt. I saw a few more cars spun out on the road as we past.

St. Paul was pretty nice. I definitely wouldn’t mind going back there some time.

Breakfast of Champions

I just finished enjoying a lovely breakfast with two nice gentlemen. A tax man from Dublin who is visiting the States on holiday (their tax season ends at the end of February) and a geologist from Michigan who is returning from North Dakota from a work trip.

We had a nice chat and I enjoyed pancakes again with sausage and apple juice.

The wait staff seems a bit twitchy. I tried to be helpful and help pass a juice down and she almost bit by head off saying  I was throwing her balance off by doing that. They just seem very flustered.

Good Morning!

Apparently, my hair was not completely dry when I went to bed last night and now I look like Doc Brown from Back to the Future.

I slept pretty well, but my back is knots. I’m going to go use the shower area to get dressed because trying to change in the room with the bed down is problematic at best.

I hope to tame this hair down a bit so I don’t scare anyone at breakfast.

Good Night!

Post shower, I listened to another Nerdist podcast and then got ready for bed.

The first night I couldn’t manage to get the sheet and blanket off the bed and just used my coat. However, tonight I managed to untangle it enough. I’m sleeping on the lower level because I risked my life enough trying the shower. I don’t want to tempt fate. I have no clue what time it actually is since we are passing through time zones. Doesn’t matter. I am tired and off to bed!

The Shower Experience

Do you remember a thing I think was called a Pogo Ball? It was a ball with a plastic rim around it so it kind of looks like Saturn. You would then stand on the plastic rim and balance yourself on the ball. Imagine doing that in the shower.

Once you get your balance (and heavens for the handles), then it is actually an AWESOME shower. The shower hear is really high so I could stand under it (I’m 5’7”) and still have another head above me. The water got hot. I actually had to turn it down. The pressure was even good.

One downfall (no pun intended) is there are there are no anti-slip anything on the floor nor any mats.

Everything else was good and I didn’t injury myself until I came back into the room and caught my thigh on the corner of the table and now have a nice bruise.

I did break one rule. The shower is about 5 feet from my room and I didn’t put my shoes back on and just made a break for it barefoot. I think this is why I got the above mentioned bruise.