Chris's Chicanery in Chicagoland

And so, safely ensconced back at home in the OTHER Windy City, we wrap up our trip to the Chicago area with this little travelogue.

Amazingly, I actually was able to navigate Chicago's incredibly complex freeway system and make my way to Joliet, almost an hour's drive southwest.

That's where I checked into this fancy-schmanzy hotel.

Those 3.5 people who were involved in the tedious comments section of my previous post will know that I described a separate room that featured a fireplace and an extremely large soaking tub with jets in it.

This is it.

I suspect that, for whatever reason, they put me in the honeymoon suite. Unfortunately, I had no honey with me in that room to be sweet with. If I had, however, the bed pictured below would have sufficed.

The room, which I stayed in for five days, was great. The hotel was clean. This was all in stark contrast to my next stop -- Gary, Ind. -- but I'll get to that in a bit.

As I joked in the comments section of the last post, what a coincidence, but I stumbled across one of my many business interests, which was right across the street from my hotel.

You can see these pictures are over-exposed. Go suck an egg.

Thankfully, there was a McDonald's very close by. There was a steady stream of baseball players and yours truly making regular stops there. I discovered their premier line of salads and munched on them often.

Below is a shot of my rental vehicle, which had Texas licence plates. I felt like George W. Bush's buddy for a week.

And to follow up on another matter discussed in the previous post's comments section, where I had noted that a praying mantis had appeared at my work station in the press box, and no one believed me...

Well it loved me so much, it flew all the way to my hotel to be with me.

I call her Priscilla.

After my stay in Joliet, our baseball team opened its playoff series in Gary, Ind., on Tuesday.

We drove directly from Joliet to the ballpark and my team lost Game 1 of the best-of-five series. Priscilla stayed in Joliet.

Below is a picture of the team bus. It's parked out in what is obviously the totally empty parking lot of the casino/hotel complex where we stayed. The parking lot was overrun by grass and weeds.

And this was our hotel...

Ha! Fooled you! I have no idea what that building is -- I suspect a steel mill -- but it was on that site. No, our hotel is below.

And here's the casino, which I didn't visit once...

My hotel room in this dump wasn't nearly as nice as the one in Joliet...

Hell, even I could do a better job wallpapering than these guys...

Our team won the second game in Gary and then the bus drove the 16 hours back to Winnipeg.

I stayed overnight in Gary again and then drove through a torrential rainstorm (remnants of Gustav) back to O'Hare.

And wouldn't you know it, while I was there yet more catastrophe occurred when a plane overshot the runway and flew right into Terminal 1. Amazingly, no one was injured. (Below)

So I had a beer at the Goose Island beer stop and waited for my plane, which was an hour late.