Chicago

Well Lin and I just got back from Chicago on Wednesday night, sort of the fancy part of our honeymoon. Wayne and Darlene put us up at The Sofitel at Water Tower, Google it if you have a minute. We checked out some amazing food, crazy people, and a monstrous city (it's like the third largest in the US). We saw the Art Institute which was VERY cool for me since it houses many of the paintings I studied in college art courses. We also hit up the Field Museum, amazing to say the least. I finally got to see the lions from the movie The Ghost & The Darkness. They're featured in the African Mammals section, they killed over 140 railroad workers trying to push the iron horse through Africa. They're big and kinda scary looking, way cool.

We party down this weekend at our reception here in Wisconsin, then next week, we gear up for destination #1. We're not sure if it's going to be Southern Illinois or The Red, weather dependant, and apparently it's a booger to try and navigate a river crossing to check out the So Ill stuff. We've been trying to "train" here in the gym, what a struggle! I'm sure you can imagine what it must be like trying to climb on plastic, with 80% humidity outside, 68 degrees, and not a lot of air flow. Good training. We certainly don't feel like we're getting much stronger but it's better than not climbing for a month. In Chicago, a man in a wheel chair rolled by us and said "keep smiling, you got a Charlies Angel right there, yeah, keep smiling"... Sweet...