It's 106 miles to Chicago...

Melch and I were sick of good weather, so we went to Chicago.  They have good weather in Chicago too, and bad, and ugly, and all in the span of a single week.

They also have a "bean" that looks like this:

And they have Amy, Melch's cousin:

Amy and Melch hadn't seen each other in a decade or two, so it was nice to catch up.  We were actually in town for a work conference, but there were plenty of evenings to hang out and learn about the city.

Amy is an architect and Chicago has a bunch of cool buildings, so it was pretty cool going on long walks with her pointing out interesting facts about what we were seeing.

There was a river, too:

And a zoo:

And whatever the heck this building is (it's in a park by the zoo):

And, perhaps more famously, a lake:

And more famous still, the friendly confines of Wrigley Field - home of the Chicago Cubs:

We made our way up to the John Hancock building for some cocktails with a killer view of the skyline:

And visited the Goose Island brewery:

I had a chance to get my butt kicked by River North Crossfit:

We were staying downtown, right by the Wrigley Building:

It was playoff season, so we were able to watch the Blackhawks (NHL) and Bulls (NBA) in their home towns.  Amy was a big fan of the Blackhawks and had no shortage of suggestions for places where we could see them play.  This was an awesome brewpub a block or two from the Wrigley Building:

It was a good trip.  The conference was good, it was nice to meet and hang out with Amy, and the city was pretty neat.  Cities are filled with people, with all of the good and bad that people bring.  Architecture, art, music, night life and folks with similar interests, whatever your interests might be.  But also: crime, traffic, dirtiness and, for the most part, a lack of natural beauty.

They also compress distance, a lot.  Chicago has functional public transit, but in all honesty, if you want to get somewhere that's more than 2-3 miles from where you are now, there's really no option that gets you there in less than an hour.  I wanted to take a scenic flight, but it was going to take me damn near two hours, each way, to get to the nearest airport.  I was working remote and just didn't have time for a 5-6 hour investment for a 70-minute flight.

I think it's cool in some ways to be able to live in a place with no car.  It prevents a bunch of hassles and it's better for the environment.  It might even be cheaper in many cases.  But it really shrinks your world.

If you have to live in a shrunken world though, you could pick worse shrunken worlds than Chicago.  There's tons to do, it's pretty clean for a city its size and the crime rate is high but apparently pretty concentrated in certain areas.  So long as you shrink your world away from them too you should be able to have a pretty good time.