right...

sssoooooo... we got stuck in chicago... but we (the royal "we") came in late enough in the afternoon that the only hotel with a room available was all the way out in arlington heights. why were we stuck in chicago? ah, the snow and freezing rain, of course. here's the amazing view from our amazing room at the amazing holiday inn express here in amazing arlington heights, chicago:



hungry and unsatisfied with the choice between Denny's or Yanni's, we decided to walk around in the freezing rain, in search of an alternate.



we decided this would be known heretofore as "ADVENTURE DAY!!!" 0.2 miles and far too many minutes of freezing rain in our face later, we decided ADVENTURE DAY was over and bailed into the the nearest establishment, the birch river grill. brilliant choice, they have SIERRA ON TAP. better still, they serve a TRUE PINT. thank God for the pint!



while there, we chatted with a fine gentleman that thought California was pretty nice but had a lot of (social) stuff he couldn't stomach (we got him drinking sierra nevertheless), griped about flight cancellations with a bunch of new yorkers and watched some young brits order budweiser, laugh at the size of the bottle and grimace at the taste but we weren't near enough to get them drinking sierra... several pints, a couple phone calls and some fantastic meatloaf later, we deemed it time to depart. imagine our surprise when, upon stepping out of doors, we discovered it had snowed, like, two or three inches!

our tracks through the fresh precipitation:


in the end, we were saved from one of the business traveler's worst nightmares (being stuck in BFE for a night for no good reason) by pints of sierra and friendly bar-goers... by the way, when did they start putting advertising on hotel key cards?