This past weekend I took a couple days off of work and training to go hang out w/ brother. It turns out what I mostly did was eat. And it was pretty awesome.
I got to Chicago on Friday early afternoon, and we took off on bikes to run some errands and just ride around. We stopped for a Chicago Dog at Jim's Original Hot Dog Stand. It has been there since 1939 or something and claims to be the original (though there is a stand next door to it that makes the same claim). Pretty killer regardless.
After going through downtown, around the UIC campus and back to Evin's old neighborhood, Wicker Park, we headed for dinner at Kuma's Corner. This place serves awesome burgers w/ heavy metal themes (if you look at the menu, I had the High on Fire burger). It was awesome, though they play metal so loud in the place that you have to yell to talk. We were able to sit outside so we were unaffected by it. But it's seriously as loud as a concert; awesome though.
We were out for ~7hours and were riding for probably 5hours. Not exactly training, but saddle time nonetheless.
Saturday I was basically up w/ the sun. So once we got going we walked over to a new park in their neighborhood of Chinatown. The park is an old quarry that sits aside a filled-in landfill that is the park. It was pretty neat. We walked up to the Pilsen neighborhood and got coffee at a good coffee shop that's name escapes me.
Once we got back to his place we had to get going so we could grab lunch and head downtown for him to teach a class. We got deep dish pizza at D'Agostino's Pizza which was awesome too. We got a tomato basil pie and I ate waaay to much of it, but it was so good.
So Evin went to teach his class and I just walked around downtown, the lake shore and Millennium Park. I walked around for close to 3hours, then decided I needed to chill for a while so I ducked into a Barnes and Noble to get off of my feet for a while until he finished w/ class. I had developed a vicious blister and some sore shins from all the walking and luckily we were traveling by car at that point.
We went next to the Roller Derby at the UIC pavilion. We oly had time to watch the first bout (of two) and unknown to us it was Chicago's B-team playing Indianapolis. Indy killed them by over 100points. It was an excellent event.
We went from the derby to pick up a couple of Evin's friends and went north to a Middle Eastern enclave and to a place called Chopal Pakistani Restaurant . It was really good. Evin and his crew are regulars here, even though it's ~30miles form where he lives. The dish of choice is chili chicken and it didn't disappoint. It was damn spicy though, and i payed the next day.
We got up Sunday and rode bikes to a Chicago landmark, The White Palace, for breakfast. I had seen The White Palace on a food network show a while back and wanted to check it out. As expected it was awesome and an awesome way to end my visit. I developed a hella stomach ache around this time though from all the terrible food I'd eaten leading up to my departure. Plus I normally eat mostly vegetables in some form or another, and my fiber intake was way lower than normal. I got things dealt with and headed home.
I made good time and had no hassles getting there or back. It was a nice weekend off of work and just hanging. I intended to kind of physically relax a bit too, but that just didn't really happen. But that's okay I like being active and if I hadn't ridden for several hours and walked for several hours I would probably have had to go shipping for new clothes before coming back because I likely wouldn't have into the ones I brought!
So now it's back at it w/ lots of racing over the next several weeks.
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