Back!, Part 2

[Read previous post first.]

And so the three of us went looking for a train that would take us in to the Chicago Loop. Just missing the Blue Line train gave us the chance to take the Pink Line, a new one even for the Chicago veteran with us. It seems to function fine, if you ever want to try it. We spent at least an hour walking through town, along the Chicago River, under the John Hancock building, up the nifty fountain in the Water Tower Place, past the Hershey's and Ghirardelli shops, and lingering over the exotic cars to get our fill of Lamberguinis, Ferraris and Bentleys. Now, I didn't learn to pick out anything besides a Lamberguini, but I did learn the names!

At this point in the story, it's important to understand that there were three parties: Zach and his family, the three of us, and the two others (the cement fetchers). Each party had at least one cellphone and all were aware of the plan to meet at Lou Malnotti's for pizza. Zach and his family arrived first and went ahead and ordered the pizza, since it could take up to an hour. Our threesome understood that we were to meet the twosome at Moody. They still were not showing up after several calls. Finally we discovered that they had parked some blocks away, much closer to the pizza place than to Moody, and it was up to us to meet them. Not that this hurt us any -- it just goes to prove that as far as cellphone technology has come, it has not yet removed the human factor.

(Sidenote: I plan on not acquiring a cellphone for as long as possible.)

After all that good visiting, accompanied by deep-dish pizza and a little dessert pizza to top it off, the five of us squished ourselves into a VW Bug that Loren had borrowed from someone and went back home. We considered renting a movie, but just couldn't work up the energy. We ended up sitting around Loren's apartment, occasionally talking about wedding pranks or other fun topics, before finally falling into bad.

Friday morning it was back up on our feet - not quite so early - to meet for breakfast, this time down in Zach's end of town, at the Valois. We didn't run into any of their previous notorieties, like Barack Obama or Jesse Jackson, but it was still good, quick, inexpensive food.

Having saved a church the day before, we headed back to the Apartment Rescue Mission to switch from OCD to OCC (from Operation Concrete Destruction to Operation Cement Creation).
An cement-experienced man from church drove out to join us that morning, and after plenty of planning and prep, everyone switched into full gear. Two operated the cement mixer, one directed the wheelbarrow up and down the narrow plank path, Clif shoveled and smoothed the cement, and I helped everywhere and took pictures (everyone seems to want pictures these days.) The cement mixing team soon called me up to train me in the water spraying department. Later I got sidetracked with helping pull the 2x4 floater and patch holes. I landed this particular job by proving I could execute it while balancing on the far edge of the form, a couple inches from the wall. Loren kept busy buying more cement. We polished off the first 40 60-lb bags before he got back, but fortunately he had been forced to buy stone instead of gravel. Stone went a lot farther.

And so the first quarter of the basement was successfully laid. We cleaned up, packed up, and took the scenic Lakeshore route out of town. One of our number kept us entertained with stories of how he had been kicked out of college for going to Wendy's and many other exciting stories of student life at his conservative Christian school.


Oh my goodness, look at the hour. It's 10:00 p.m. High time all little girls were in bed!