So I finally get to Chicago and Dave and Chad met me at the airport. We were pretty hungry so we tried looking around for a place to eat, but we couldn’t find anything. We went with the original plan of going downtown to find something to eat. We tried to go to the House of Blues but everyone kept going on about a “show.” It wasn’t exactly what I expected. I was picturing like a little restaurant with maybe a blues guy or two up on stage providing a little music. Not so. It was more like a concert that served food rather than a restaurant that had music. It was waaay too loud to talk and we didn’t want to buy tickets for the show so we left. We eventually decided to eat at Harry Caray’s (can’t get that anywhere but Chicago!) but I have to tell you I wasn’t all that impressed. It was pretty expensive, but I didn’t think the food was anything to write home about. After that we went back to Dave and Chad’s apartment and Chad went to sleep but me and Dave stayed up for awhile and talked. The next day Chad didn’t want to take any time off of work so we had to wait until 4 to leave for Windsor, which was kind of crummy because it was a 5 hour drive and it would have been nice to get more of a jump on it. Everyone was going to get there at about the same time, but it turned out everyone else could leave early, so we were the last ones to get there. Dave and I just hung out all day and we went to eat at the Crack-whore Barrel, just for old time’s sake! Dave was really great, the entire weekend that I was with him; he totally paid for everything for me. I felt pretty bad all weekend, but he was like, “Nope, it’s your bachelor party.” Unfortunately, everybody else didn’t feel like that, but even still I had to pay for almost nothing all weekend. Dave even gave me a check to cover some of the flight. So Dave had to go to a conference for work in Detroit the next week so he had to pack a lot of clothes and book some hotel rooms and stuff. It was kind of funny because we had all day to do nothing but he waited until like 30 min before Chad got home. Then we got on the road. The drive was pretty uneventful with Chad sleeping for some of it and me and Dave just talking for most of it. We stopped to go to the bathroom at this exit and the only thing there was this porn shop called “The Velvet Touch” and a skanky gas station. The gas station was so nasty we considered going over to the Velvet Touch to use the bathroom…yeah it was that skanky!

Okay, so let me try to re-write the post that the internet ate. I left work and drove to the airport on Thursday. I got there a little bit later than I meant to, but I wasn’t too worried about it. Usually I get to the airport 2 or 3 hours early and then I end up waiting at my gate for an hour and 59 minutes because I whiz through everything. So I go through the ticketing lickety-split and I go up to stand in line for security. The line was pretty long, about as long as I’ve seen it. I was like “Aw, man” but I wasn’t worried about it because I had about an hour until my flight left. However, when I went to stand in line, the people were like “Oh no, the line starts back there.” I turn and look down the hallway and the line extends off into the distance. It was CRAZY. When I got to the end of the line, I’d say that there were about 2,000 people in front of me! They even had those signs like at an amusement park that said, “30 minutes until security”, “40 minutes until security”, etc. I’d say I probably had at least an hour wait. So at this point, I’m getting worried, so I’m calling Dave every couple of seconds to give him updates. Luckily for me, they had a person walking up and down the line calling out boarding times, so if your boarding time came up you could cut to the front of the line so you wouldn’t miss your flight. Shortly after I got in line the line extended all the way to the lobby of the Hotel that was in the airport. Anyway, after about 30 min. of being in line my boarding time came up, so I was able to skip up to the front of the line. It still took another 15 minutes or so once I got to the front of the line, so by the time I got through security my plane had been boarding for about 10 minutes. Of course I had to take my belt and shoes off to get through security so I’m trying to hurry down the hall while my pants (pre-weightloss) are falling around my knees and I’m trying to not trip on my shoestrings while threading my belt through my pants. So I finally get to my gate and nobody’s boarding. After I get my pants back on and my shoes tied, I asked the lady next to me what was going on. She said, “Haven’t you heard? The airport in Chicago is closed because of a storm.”::sigh:: This of course prompted many more calls to Dave. Finally they put us on the plane, but this was only because they needed the gate for another plane. We had to sit on the runway for an hour before we could take off, then we had another 2 hour flight to Chicago. Of course I was in a middle seat this whole time. Not too comfortable!

My friend Dave had me move my flight to Chicago 1 day earlier and said he’d come up with the money to pay for it…so looks like I’ll be bachelor partying 1 day earlier!!