Nick’s grant got interneted:
http://www.oberlin.edu/news-info/08apr/CLFellowship.html
He gets graduated weekend after next (Memorial day). Helen’s son Noah gets his hat from CMU music school next weekend. He is off to grad school in Bolder this fall.
Those how don’t like daring car stories will want to skip the next 5 paragraphs.
Zach found a great 2000 Honda civic. Affordable, nice performance parts, nice body/paint, working airbags, and no screwdrivers required to start it or run the windshield wipers. Unlike his previous $400 car, this one would pass California emissions and safety checks. The only problem was it was in Florida.
Soooo, he hatched a plan. He didn’t have enough vacation to fly down and drive back, so his plan was to have a buddy in Arizona fly down to Florida, verify the car was ok, buy it and drive it Chicago. Zach would drive out after work with another buddy then buddy 1 flies back to Arizona and Z and buddy 2 drive both cars back to Rochester.
A simple plan. Except the car owner will only take cash ($8.5k!), and will not leave the plates on the car for transport. So buddy 1 makes it to Florida with pockets full of cash and a freshly emailed insurance card. No mugging occured and and the car checks out, so he makes a plateless run for the border. That lasts about 5 minutes, then he get major busted. They figured he was a criminal, so had lots of police, handcuffs, and drug dogs.
He finally gets out of there with a $150 fine, but then DMV lady will not give him temp plates, since he is not the owner of the car. Much pleading ensues and he gets temp plates that will be valid only to Chicago. The drive to Chicago works and he mets up with Zach and buddy 2 early Sunday morning. Buddy 1 flies back, mumbling something about not doing that again. Zach drives back carefully to not attract attention to his invalid plates, makes it to Madison, then the car quits.
The quick fixes don’t work, so a call goes out to buddy 3, who knows a buddy 4 with a truck and a car trailer. Those arrive about midnight and he makes it back to Rochester before sunup. A little sleep later, he throws a few tools and parts at the engine and it comes back to life and Zach is happy. Tired, but happy.
Turns out Helen and I were also in Chicago last weekend (Helen had a meeting there). I was going to show Zack the town, but the weather was bad on Sunday, which was good since it took him longer to get home then expected.
But I had a nice sunny day on Monday, so I took the afternoon off (was tele-commuting from the hotel room) and ran/walked the city and lake shore. This was the famous Hilton Chicago we stayed at:
It was the worlds biggest hotel when built in 1927 at 3000 rooms. It has visited all of the last 20 last presidents, filmed 5+ big movies, and the roof is the set of the ER tv show helicopter pad.
Many trees were in bloom:
As were 1 millions tulips:
As was the fun, shiny sculpture in Millenium park:
And the beautiful video fountains:
I ran out to the tip of the Navy Pier, then back along the shore and out to the tip of the planetarium peninsula, where the magic camera caught me in a photo:
I also visited the future home of the 150 floor, 2000 foot Chicago Spire. Will be the worlds 2nd tallest building when finished in 2011: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Spire
You think that was big, check out this skyscraper sized seagull I found:
This happy woman was freshly fed a big steak at the ‘number one in the world steak house’, the Chicago Chop House:
I’m told the steak was delicious, but I’m sure my shrimp were better.
B