Midwestern Tour '11

Midwestern Roadtrip 2011 was a complete success! The bar for success was this: 1) Monty came along and was not lost or harmed nor did he perpetrate violence on others (human, canine, the newly born, the unborn, etc); 2) I commenced, wearing the appropriate attire at the appropriate ceremony, and did not trip or have spontaneous diarrhea or fall into an orchestra pit (because that would have been far-fetched and stupid) during The Walk; 3) my parents witnessed said commencement! which was the entire reason for the roadtrip in the first place; 4) there were no public meltdowns and everyone played nice; and 5) we got to see several long lost friends (who are not actually lost, just living in the midwest). It was a pretty decent little road trip!

First revelation of trip: MR-C is for realz pregnant. The facebook photo isn't just some photoshopping wizardry. [E read this over my shoulder and said, "Are there fake facebook pregnancy pictures out there?" She's asking the good questions because as far as I know the answer is no.] Like the awesome trooper she is, Pregger MR-C took us to a fun Chicago gastropub called Revolution Brewery (http://revbrew.com/), stood for an hour secretly starving while we Ernie and I drank ourselves silly, and drove us all home.

There were a number of food highlights at RevBrew but here is a picture of the Bacon Fat Popcorn. Yes, you read that correctly. My cell phone camera makes it look a bit weird, but I assure you it was delicious.

Thank you MR-C and Ernie! We all look forward to Quattro.

Parental stories. There are too many to count. I might need to work through the memories via animated robots. I promise to post results. Until then, here's one anecdote.

The nearest hotel I could find rooms in was in Danville - the Sleep Inn (I'd recommend it). At first glance, this appears to be a picture of nothing:

At second glance, also a picture of nothing. But here's the story. This is a picture of the Big Boy restaurant, located across the parking lot from the Sleep Inn. My parents and I patronized this eating establishment twice. Both times we drove there. That's correct. My father picked us all up in front of the hotel in their minivan and we drove 40m (131 feet) to the Big Boy, a restaurant that my dad declared to be his favorite of all time because you can get 3 eggs, 3 strips of bacon, 3 pieces of toast, PLUS hashbrowns for $3.99. As he asked us many times, "How can you beat that?" You can't, you just can't.