[87911jon]

Until last week, my visits to Chicago were all business related. This time our trip was to celebrate my step son's 21st birthday. Drew goes to school in Pittsburgh, but is interning at Radio Flyer for the summer. All in all a fabulous trip. Beautiful city, great food and plenty to see. We stayed in an area called Oak Park (near Dominican University where Drew boards). A lovely area. We rented a mini van to get around (all sides of town), and took the El to a few places (Beth's very healthy 84 year old mom was with us as well as my daughter). On traffic: overall drivers were pretty consistently rude. Baltimore certainly has it's moments, but not like this. I was amazed at how many times we were cut off or not let in or had someone force their way through. Also, very few blinkers in use. The other thing I noticed was motorcyclists and bicyclists seem to favor wearing no helmet. Amazingly stupid. P-cars spotted: 1-944, 1-951, 3- '84-'89 911, bunches of Boxsters and a handful of 996/7s. Like I said, a great city. What I had to adjust was my preconceived notion of mid-westerners. I'm so use to thinking of mid-westerners overall as low key and polite, and expected that to transfer to their driving habits. Wrong assumption. With that said, I'm looking forward to my next visit.