A Weekend in Lincoln Park

It was another non-stop weekend for me.  What can I say?  I like to be busy.  My roommate and I had been planning to go see our friends play baseball for a month now (apparently actually making a serious plan to go has been an issue for us).  We finally did on Friday night.  We got there easily enough- but had a few problems once we got out of the car.  First of all, our perception of summer league baseball is completely different than what we ended up experiencing.  We both are used to slowpitch summer leagues- filled with a semi-organized game and half drunk men in shorts playfully  giving each other crap the entire time.  Not official uniforms and serious players.  But whatever, not that I mind or anything.  The main problem was that there were two fields.  And Justin never mentioned that or anything else, such as the name of their team.  Both useful pieces of information.  So we tried as hard as we could to figure out what field/team they were on.  Then we thought maybe there were other fields in the park that we didn’t know where they were.  So we wandered around for awhile.  A long while.  Until Justin came over to get us.  He said he watched us look lost until he finally started to feel bad and thought he’d help out.  Thanks Justin.  We ended up getting to see a little over half an inning.  Great game.

Saturday morning came way too early because we had hung out until late the night before.  Not a big deal- this one just involved walking.  We caught the metra and ended up in Lincoln Park by 9:30 or so.  It was a gorgeous day for it and there was a pretty big turnout.  I’m pretty fond of my “Sue’s Crew” t-shirt we got for doing it.  But sad I couldn’t join in on the little afterparty at Barleycorn they had.  Damn Run for the Zoo…. (just kidding)

I spent a couple hours back in the ‘burbs running errands until I realized I was going to be late getting to my cousin’s on Saturday night.  Stupid Ikea- gets me every time!  I actually almost died there this visit- I thought I was safe in my pedestrian crosswalk.  Until a guy who didn’t read the sign “Watch for Pedestrians” didn’t plan on stopping.  I literally put my hand on the car when he screeched to a halt in front of me.  I was terrified.  I can’t even imagine what the headline would have been.  ”Local Girl Gets Flattened by Illiterate Idiot in Ikea Crosswalk”.  Problem with that is alot of people from my town have probably never heard of Ikea (not really a concept that has made it’s way to Mid-Missouri).  They won’t even know what I was doing there! 

Anways, I made it to Niki’s…  I was staying at her house again because the Run for the Zoo was at 8:00 the next day.  Yeah, I was up for an 8:00 race on a Sunday.  Yeah, I am pretty much crazy.  When I got to her house, we didn’t sit around long.  Everyone was hungry (mostly my fault because I was later getting there than originally planned).  Being the metromix.com whore that I am, we found a place to try that seemed reasonably priced called La Scarola in the Warehouse District.  On the way, I talked about how “one of these days” I want to find an authentic Italian-family owned restaurant that was more like a random hole-in-the-wall.  Turns out that is EXACTLY what we found.  There was a pretty big crowd around the door (not that surprising at 7:30 on a Saturday night), so I was afraid we wouldn’t be able to get in.  But we went in and asked for a table anyways.  The host told us there would be a wait until about 9:00.  I smiled and said thanks and turned to Niki to see where else we could go that is nearby.  We started to walk out when the host stopped us and said to give him a minute.  He came back and said he’d have a table ready for us in 10 minutes.  Score…

The host was awesome.  So cheery and talkative and came by often to see if everything was ok.  And they literally made a table for us.  Like, it didn’t exist, and then it did.  I feel like this might get done often- because it was crowded in there.  And tables, such as ours, where in random places.  Andy almost got an elbow in the face because so many people were constantly walking by.  Very cool little eatery- one of those places where there are hundreds of pictures on the wall of the owners or hosts with people of interest.  Niki almost started drooling once she found out Matt Damon had found his way there.  She even picked out the spot he probably stood at when the picture was taken.  Hilarious. 

Sunday morning was rushed.  Finding a cab at 7:30 in the morning is more difficult than you would think.  And so when we got there, we had to rush through the crowd of both 5 and 10k runners to drop our stuff off.  We didn’t even have time to properly stretch because we realized once we got to the area where the start line was that people were already going through.  The race had started!  And we were in the last group of 20 or so that crossed the line and started running.  So the whole thing was us fighting a crowd of people, trying to set a decent pace.  We waved at my roommate and her friend as we passed.  I wasn’t sure if we’d see them at all, but we actually did!  And the part of the race through the zoo was fun- even though I was concentrating more on working our way through the crowd than looking around at all the exhibits we were going by.  I really wanted to beat our last time…  which we did!  I was also very happy that it didn’t rain on us.  The 10k runners who started at 8:30 were not so lucky.  Sucks for them… 

All done!

We hung out a little after the race- but the rain was keeping us from spending too much time looking at exhibits.  And to keep us from thinking about how much some of the race sucked, we had talked about all the things we might order at breakfast.  So it was definitely time to eat.  I had heard from various people that The Bongo Room was a place to try, so we got there.  Luckily there were a couple spots open at the bar.  Our food took a while to come to us, but it gave us a chance to catch up.  Over about three or four cups of coffee.  I talk pretty fast the way it is, but I think Niki’s head would have started spinning if I had any more caffeine without food in my system.

It looked like the specialty of this place was their dessert-like breakfast.  It kept everything I had to keep from ordering Chocolate and Carmel covered pancakes.  I knew the crazy amount of sugar right after a race that early in the morning would not be good for me.  Niki ordered what she thought was just french toast.  We saw someone carrying food our way and she was like, “what asshole orders that strawberry shortcake thing for breakfast?”.  The guy sat it directly in front of her.  She was going to eat the hashbrowns I got with my omelette, but she could barely get through half of her plate.  I think there was toast somewhere under all that heavy cream.  Not sure…

I had played with the idea of bringing up a 10k to Niki.  I figured I’d wait until later after the race on Sunday.  After we were well rested and in that “we can conquer the world” mode.  But she actually brought it up before I could.  So that’s now in the plans…  But we looked at the race schedule online and there wasn’t much to choose from.  So I think we may do another one or two 5k’s and save the 10k for next year.  The Elvis is Alive run in August sparked my interest.  More because we could probably people watch the entire race than anything else.  Should be interesting…