Two Left Feet

This weekend I accompanied Hannah to her friend Sarah’s wedding in Chicago. For those of you from Joplin, you may remember Sarah Pierik as a former morning show anchor. It did not take long for the theme of the weekend to become evident… “whatever can go wrong, will go wrong”.

On the way to the airport it suddenly crossed my mind that I had not put my black shoes in my suitcase the night before. Although annoyed, there was still plenty of time to stop at a wal-mart and pick out a new pair to get me through the weekend. Once we were at the airport, Hannah went into the restroom and found that the only available stall had last been visited by a notorious “non-flusher”. Suddenly her favorite pair of sunglasses somehow slipped and fell into the bowl.

Once we re-grouped and made our way to the gate we learned that this flight (like any flight to or from O’Hare) had been delayed for one reason or another. No worries, we just sat patiently and eventually made our way to the windy city. Initially we had planned to eat somewhere nice in Chicago for dinner that night, but because of the delay, it was too late. We struggled to find anything open at the airport and eventually settled on a Quizno’s that was open… although they were out of pretty much anything good.

Saturday morning we took the “L” downtown to the aquarium but were once again delayed because there was construction forcing both directions to share a single track. We had a great time at the aquarium, and had some pizza at one of my favorite places in Chicago. We got back on the “L” and headed back to the hotel to get ready for the wedding. About halfway to the hotel, Hannah had the sudden urge to puke…which was luckily a false alarm.

Just as we were getting ready to leave I went to put on my shoes and discovered that the box I purchased from Wal-Mart included two left shoes. With no time, I shoved it on and we headed out the door… without the wedding gift and card. Since the wedding was out in the suburbs we had to rent a car… and although there was only one person in front of us in line – it took about 45 minutes to get our car. There was an entire lot full of cars but they must not have worked because the agents kept getting on the radio saying “we are out of cars!”. It was during this time that a miscommunication came to surface… Hannah commented that she was afraid we were going to miss the wedding. Even though it was taking an abnormally long time, I was still not worried. “No, we still have an hour and 45 minutes to get there!” Suddenly she noted that the wedding started an hour earlier than what I had been planning.

We finally got our car and headed onto the tollway, but quickly ran into severe congestion where cars were lined up to pay the $0.30 toll (seriously). Once in the area of the wedding we realized that Google was unable to locate the wedding site address. We now had to blindly navigate our way through what is probably the biggest mess of suburban sprawl I have ever seen. Million dollar homes connected by a patchwork of dirt roads, rural highways in desperate need of improvements, and very few signs. For the record, NO ONE in Lemont has ever heard of “The Narnia Estate”.

We finally arrived about an hour and 15 minutes late with the help of my sister, but in plenty of time for the reception, which was nice. It got late pretty quickly, so we headed back.

On a side note, I may be wanted in the state of Illinois for failing to pay the full $0.30 toll on our return trip. We used the last of our dimes getting TO the hotel and were nearly flat broke coming home. I saw a sign indicating that missed tolls could be paid online. I actually went to the website to attempt to pay the remaining $0.20 but the system would not accept my payment because I was not able to provide the license plate # for the rental car. Oh well…. their loss.

On the way home our flight was again delayed. Both before boarding and while waiting to depart. I love Chicago!