Almost to an end!

Whew whew... So after staying up until 2am CST in Chicago with our friend Justin we headed back to the the hotel where we were staying to get some sleep for the very long day of travel ahead of us. I had intentions of getting up at 4am for the travel from Chicago to Alabama, but after staying out on the town all night neither Zeb nor I were able to move until around 9am.

Breakdown...

Chicago was a lot of fun, once we were able to meet up with Justin and see some of the "nicer" parts of the city. I've been to NYC 2 times before this trip and have been to quite a few of the other big cities in the US, but I must say that Chicago ranks up there with being one of the dirtiest. Don't get me wrong though, it has it's nice parts, but unfortunately we didn't get to see it until later in the evening. Compared to New York, the people walking the streets are generally dressed more professional with an attitude of being important but the architecture is old and not kept up. The first night in Chicago Zeb and I stayed in a Days Inn inside Lincoln Park. This place wasn't bad at all, the room was more than 2x bigger the average hotel room size but the people working at the desk were beyond rude! I personally wanted to say something when we rolled in at 3am, after a long day of riding, when the lady at the front desk smarted off a rude comment to me. But then I thought to myself, now now now they can't help it they aren't from the SOUTH and momma and papa didn't raise them better.

The next morning I decided to sleep, well my body let me do nothing else. Zeb woke me up around 11 and said we had an hour to get out of the room. He had been up since 8 calling hotels across the city looking for another room for the remainder of our time in Chicago, but only finding success at one place. It was set, we were going to the Tokyo Hotel which looks very much like a hostel. After driving through the city and fighting with parking in a parking deck we walked into the Hotel to be disgusted instantly. It was cheap, we knew it would be bad but we had no idea of what we had gotten ourself into. After taking the only elevator up to the 16th floor we walked down the hallway and found room 1611 where we would spend the night. The hallway looked like a scene off of Carrie and had that freaking feeling backing it up to. Our room had all the character anyone would ever want, I will let the pictures do the justice.

We started the day off by going to Uno's pizzeria and having a famous deep dish pizza and a few Micro brews. Next we caught a cab and was on our way to the Navy Pier. I chose to ride in the front seat and it was the worst decision that I made while staying in Chicago. The driver seriously had the worst B.O I had ever smelt in my life which led me to literally keeping my head out the window the entire trip. I'm sure I looked much like my dog with her head out the window when traveling in a car, but it was the next thing to clean air so I didn't care.

The Navy Pier is mostly for shopping with little entertainment. There were 2 IMAX theaters and a couple cruise stations which you could pay for a cruise around the city. We ended up stopping in one of the restaurants to get some advice on what to see in the city, which led us to the Hancock Tower and then back to our room for a nap before going out with Justin.

We met Justin close to 10pm and went to his apartment and then a couple of bars where we mostly just wanted to see the bar life, Justin ended up drinking quite a few more than Zeb and I. I knew there was a long day of travel ahead of us so I drank 2 beer then called it a night.

The drive from Chicago was very very...very... long. I will let Zeb explain that in detail since he stopped in Huntsville to visit his brother and I continued to push another 250miles to Troy to visit the much missed girlfriend.