Paul F. Olson

A Journal of Miscellany and Disorder

Last weekend, my wife and I ventured downstate for our first visit with the girls since dropping them off at the University of Michigan in late August. It was a good time, and of course went by far too fast. It was reassuring to see them doing so well — mostly adjusted to dorm life, mostly settling into their classes, mostly well on their way into this new stage and this great adventure in their lives.

We had the grand tour, ate some wonderful food and saw a football game that was … well, not a good game, not precisely. In all honesty, Notre Dame looked as if they’d struggle to beat a decent high school football team. But after U of M’s rocky start, a win was a win.

On Tuesday, back home and back at work, I was very envious that the girls had the chance to attend a reading and signing with Gregory Maguire, who ranks right near the top of my personal “favorite writers” list. The author of Wicked, Son of a Witch, Lost, Mirror Mirror, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister and a passel of children’s books, Maguire was visiting Borders’ flagship store in Ann Arbor to promote his newest, What-the-Dickens: The Story of a Rogue Tooth Fairy.

I would have happily let a fairy, rogue or otherwise, take away a few of my own teeth for the chance to attend this event, but I’m so pleased that my daughters now have such great opportunities available to them, just moments away. A signed book is a marvelous keepsake, no doubt, but an evening spent listening to a world-class writer discuss his work is truly a lifetime gift.

Back home safe and sound, after a long day.

We left Chicago bright and early and made it to Milwaukee in plenty of time for the opening of the gates at Miller Park. The game was great, a 6-3 Cubs victory. It was good to see the Cubs get solid pitching from Carlos Zambrano, and to play ball the way it should be played: make contact, get on base; make contact, advance the runners. Also good to be snug under the roof, after our chilly White Sox outing the other day.

It was a toss-up whether there were more Cubs fans or Brewers fans in the park. Certainly, the Chicago fans overpowered the Milwaukee folks during the 7th inning stretch singing of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” with “Root, root, root for the Cubbies” easily drowning out “Root, root, root for the Brewers.”

After the game we meandered our way north, and on the spur of the moment I took the opportunity to show my daughters the place where I lived for the first 11 or so years of my life. It was the first time they’d ever seen the old homestead, and the first time for me in probably 20 years. To put it kindly, the place needs work — new paint and a new roof would be a good start — but it was nice to see it again.

Finally, we hit the freeway and made a beeline north, with a stop for dinner in Green Bay our only other diversion of the trip. It was a bit disheartening to drive the last hour or so in a steady snowfall on slippery roads, but not unexpected for April in this part of the country, especially when most of the east is also shivering and shoveling.

Now it’s back to the grind, wondering how a week could have possibly gone so fast.

Medieval Times is pretty much unchanged in the 12 years since we visited last. It’s still cheesy, hokey, corny, overproduced — and it’s still a tremendous amount of fun. It pulls you in with brute color and spectacle, with clanging swords and thundering hooves, music, fog, drama. It grabs you and hangs on tight, and it doesn’t let go until the lights come up at the end of the night.

And yes, the girls said it held up for them, too. They were not only able to enjoy the show through adult eyes, but appreciate the production as well. After their backstage experiences, which have included working on the local stage crews for several Broadway touring shows (Aida, Miss Saigon), they could see and understand the sheer amount of work it takes to put on a performance like Medieval Times, from the lights, sound and effects to the costumes, sets and props.

And besides, they got to take a photo with their knight.

We had a slight mishap on the way to the Western Suburbs. No, not on the Chicago streets. Driving in Chicago is always interesting, but never as nightmarish as people make it out to be. Our mishap occurred before we even escaped the parking garage — an extremely tight, cramped labyrinth where traffic up and down the ramp shares a space about a lane-and-a-half wide, and where every corner is impossibly narrow and sharp, especially for us, in our oversized Northern Michigan pickup truck. We were entering the last turn, a right-hand maneuver of more than ninety degrees, around the wall and into the skinny lane at the pay booth. There was a car coming up at the same time, so I eased over as far as I could, a little farther, and a little bit farther still, and that was when the truck decided to strike up an intimate relationship with the wall. To quote Stephen Sondheim: Boom. Crunch. We now have an extra-special souvenir: genuine, authentic Chicago parking garage paint embedded in the side of our truck, and as a bonus, some minor body work ahead.

Today, our last day here, will be odds and ends. We tossed the agenda and decided to finish the trip just like we started it, hanging loose and playing everything by ear. Tomorrow, it’s an early start to Milwaukee for the Cubs-Brewers game, and then back to the snowy wilds of the north.

What have we learned? A lot. The biggest lesson, I think, is that Chicago is still the best, whether you’re a resident, a tourist, or a former resident who feels like a tourist. Despite what they say, you can occasionally go home again . . . but try not to do it during spring break, unless you like to wait nearly an hour to get into every restaurant.

I’m not sure if I’ll squeeze in another post from here or not. I’m guessing not. So I’ll leave you for now with one final glimpse of the lovely Chicago skyline, captured yesterday from the steps of the Adler Planetarium. This one’s worth clicking for the full-sized view.

Those darn meteorologists sure know their stuff. They had yesterday’s forecast exactly right.

It was 31 degrees at U.S. Cellular Field, the wind chill was in the teens, and snow flurries swirled throughout the game. In other words, a typical day for spring baseball in Chicago — and we took advantage of every minute of it, from the time the gates opened to the final heartbreaking out some five hours later.

Overlooking the questionable Chicago pitching, the game was an exciting one. It was, to use that favorite term of sportswriters, a “slugfest,” a seesaw battle that the White Sox only lost because of the Indians’ Jason Michaels, whose heroic catch at the warning track prevented Joe Crede’s two-out, two-on, bottom-of-the-ninth drive from knocking in the winning runs. Final score: Cleveland 8, Chicago 7.

Today it’s off to warmer pursuits: the Adler Planetarium this morning and a jaunt to the Western Suburbs to visit Medieval Times tonight. The famous “dinner and tournament” attraction was one of my daughters’ favorite places when they were in kindergarten, and rather surprisingly, it was near the top of their must-do lists for this vacation. Will it hold up for them, now that they’re 18?

The final score was disappointing, but the Sox did fire up the famous old Comiskey Park exploding scoreboard with a couple of homeruns.

We weren’t the only baseball fools who braved yesterday’s weather. The official attendance at the game was 26,337, though the end of every inning brought many departures. I’d estimate that fewer than 10,000 fans were left by the end.

Today was reserved for visiting a classic, the Museum of Science and Industry. Much had changed since I was there last close to 20 years ago, but some exhibits were the same. Actually, a few hadn’t been updated much since I’d visited as a kid, nearly 20 years before that. Some cool old stuff, some cool new stuff, an unsettling number of interactive exhibits out of order or down for maintenance, and an amazing Body Worlds 2 exhibition.

Oh, and they had a nifty display of vintage robot toys from the fifties and sixties, a few I even remember owning myself. When we were done there, we used a plastic injection-molding thingy to make our very own super cool family of “Space Robots.” Perfect little green souvenirs, which have now lined up on the hotel desk to send their greetings to you.

Other than trying to get over the strange, alternate-universey feeling of being a tourist in a place you used to live, our vacation in Chicago is turning out to be everything I’d hoped it would be.

As long as I’m accepting my fate, playing my new role of small-town gawker to the hilt, I thought I’d post a couple of pretty pictures now, before our weather takes a turn for the worse, as it’s supposed to do tomorrow (though nothing like the 5-8 inches of snow they’re supposed to get back home).

Speaking of the forecast here, the outlook for the next few days is so bleak that I fear our chances of seeing the White Sox play the Indians on Wednesday are in serious jeopardy. Fortunately, we’re also going to catch the Cubs playing in Milwaukee on the way home Saturday. You’ve got to love a retractable roof on a ballpark at this time of year!

I’ll try to get some more shots posted later this week. In the meantime, you can click on any of these images for a larger view.

The view from Navy Pier looking west and a little bit north toward the John Hancock Building and the Gold Coast.

Probably my favorite building in Chicago, the magnificent Tribune Tower, beautiful outside and in, with its lobby full of engraved quotes about freedom of the press. The Tribune was the focus of much attention when I took this, as the sale of the newspaper company (and the Chicago Cubs) had just been announced a few hours earlier.

To me, the Chicago River winding through the heart of downtown and the resulting “City of Bridges” is one of the things that always sets this place apart from other cities.

It’s a busy, busy time here.

After just finishing up this week’s newspaper, I now have two work days to write a substantial portion of next week’s edition. Everything that can get done in advance — everything that’s not, you know, news — has to be done by tomorrow afternoon.

Why the scramble? We’re leaving Saturday for vacation. A full week in Chicago. Our first real getaway since a trip to New York City in the summer of 2005.

I should be doing some things at home to get ready. Packing would be a good start. But I’ll have to settle for making mental lists of things to take and save the part where you actually find the items and put them into a suitcase for later — most likely Saturday morning, about an hour before we leave.

See you from the road. I’ll try to post a nice picture or two!