"We have a code 21 at the Ferris Wheel" Chicago Day 2

This is day two of our trip. Day one is linked below.

After such a busy day one, we slept in (Holt woke up at 7:30 rather than his normal 6:30) on Saturday Morning, took our time getting ready (in case you were wondering Jonathan wore his “uniform”), ate breakfast and explored our little neighborhood some. Our hotel was directly across the street from Grant Park and the statue of Grant on his horse. I may have spent an inappropriate amount of time explaining to Holt that, like Lenin and Stalin, sometimes people build monuments to bad men and then elaborating why he was bad ( I don’t think Holt really appreciated my gravity). The Buckingham fountain was the only thing on the Friday itinerary we had to skip because of the rain, so we decided to walk to the fountain and then make our way to the library and then hop on the subway out to Wrigley. Our stroll was great and we saw a lot of South Michigan Ave, when we got to Buckingham Fountain Holt asked, “Dad, can I go chase those pigeons?” “Sure” and then Holt was off. Poor, poor, pigeons. When we left there was nary a bird to be seen, I guess Holt decided he would just take care of them all. We walked around the fountain and watched some of the boats on Lake Michigan. Holt wanted to take some pictures so we had a little photo shoot. Then, we made our way toward the loop.

On our morning stroll

He's still improving

Those poor birds

Buckingham Fountain was crooked, a la leaning tower of Pisa

Holt trying to touch the top of Sears (Willis) Tower

My boys. It won't be long before Holt is too big for this.

About 2 blocks into our walk from the Buckingham Fountain, Holt has to go to the potty and starts dancing like a drunk frat boy. He says he can’t make it to the Hotel within eyeshot - how a person can go from no urge to tinkle to kidney failure in a span of a minute I cannot understand - so Jonathan and Holt make a mad dash to the nearby bushes, and I am just praying that no one walks by and asks what that man is doing in the bushes with that little boy. I suppose I should count our blessings that this was our only real tee-tee crisis of the day, considering how much we were out doing. We left the seen of the crime ( I am sure we violated, at the very least ,some public ordinance - although now that I think of it, I wish the urge had hit him during my lecture on Grant’s war crimes), and made our way to the loop where we were going to peek in the library (don’t judge me) and then hop on the subway to Wrigleyville.

What is that man doing to that little boy?

He was much relieved

We were pleasantly surprised to find, sandwiched between the library and our subway station, a giant eyeball sculpture. I have since learned that it is a recent addition to Chicago’s cityscape and that it was still a novelty when stumbled upon it. Holt thought it was pretty neat, until his attention was diverted by more pigeons (who knows maybe they were the same ones he chased from the fountain who thought they had found sanctuary under the giant watchful eye. Poor, poor, pigeons).

The Loop

Holt was pretty excited about getting to ride the El on Friday and was equally pumped about going underground to ride the train. He did very well sticking close to us and getting on and off all the public transportation.

The subway headed to Wrigley

The subway headed to Cellular Field

The closer we got to Wrigley, the more crowded the train car got, and the more excited Jonathan got. We got off the train at the Addison stop and followed the exit signs, we stopped in the alley at the first of 1,000 t-shirt stands and Holt got a foam finger for the game (this was apparently a neccesity) and then as we emerged from the side-street and Wrigley Field came into view the smile on Jonathan’s face went from it’s normal big to consuming his face. Any attempt I made to speak to him was useless, as for a few minutes he was struck deaf and dumb. According to him, the clouds parted and rays of sun shined down on the stands and he couldn’t hear me over the heavenly chorus of angels singing. This would happen many times over the course of the next two and a half hours. I think I may have even seen a tear or two of joy. In all seriousness, Jonathan was truly happy and it made my day to see him and Holt enjoying each other and the experience and everything about being at Wrigley.

In front of the Harry Caray Statue

Those are two happy boys

The game was fast moving, and a really good one. We saw multiple home runs, some pretty great defense in the outfield and it was close until the very last pitch, and to top it off, the Cubs won. I had joked with Jonathan before we left that if they lose, at least we will have had an authentic Cubs experience, he didn’t appreciate my humor then, and a win was definitely much better. We got to go down to the field before the game (although our tickets weren’t that far away from third base) and were just feet from the players during warmups. About halfway through the game, Holt and I took an inning to explore the stadium (we decided to lt Jonathan take it all in) and the visitors desk gave Holt a coloring book and stickers and we both got certificates and stickers to commemorate our first cubs game. Holt was pretty good about not begging or even asking for things so I took him into one of the memorabilia stores in the concourse and let him pick out a $10 present. He picked out a Cubs truck, which turned out to be priceless, as it entertained Holt for most of the rest of the game and Jonathan and I were able to watch the game sans whining. Holt would stop every now and then to eat or sing along with the crowd or cheer.

Holt loved the jazz band serenade

Holt's first major league hotdog (This was the first of many, I lost count at 3)

Holt with his truck and visitors sticker

Every time Jonathan tried to take a bite, Holt would cut him off

I think the most special moment for me was watching Jonathan holding Holt and the two of them singing “Take me out to the ball game.” At the end of the game Holt, Jonathan and I danced and sang “Go, Cubs, Go.” In fact Holt sang the chorus pretty much the entire rest of our trip and still breaks into it at times.

Go, Cubs, go
Go, Cubs, go
Hey, Chicago, what do you say
The Cubs are gonna win today


After the game, we explored Wrigleyville about an hour before hopping on the L back to our Hotel to freshen up before our speedboat tour. And I had to fend off a very drunk scantily clad woman to get a picture with the bear.

Waveland Ave.

We dropped off the truck and foam finger, the guys went for a brief swim (big juicy mama abstained from the COLD swimsuit) and then the boys put on some fresh clothes and we hopped on a bus to Navy Pier to take our cruise on the Seadog. I had booked tickets for the architectural cruise, but because of heavy rains and some flooding, the river was too high for the boat to sail up the river so we took a harbor tour. Before we left Cleveland, I let Holt watch the video on the Seadog website of the speedboat tour. Holt was so excited after he saw that video that he would ask about 10 time daily when we were going to go on the Seadog. When we got on the boat he said, “Read, Set, Fun!” and grinned ear to ear. We all had a nice time on our speedboat ride and then went to Harry Caray’s Tavern on Navy Pier for dinner. The weather, aside from the brief monsoon on Friday night during dinner, was perfect and the temperature was so cool down on the pier.

It sure is a pretty city.

There is Charlie the dragon of Navy Pier. Holt was very kind to point out to the other kids, as he learned from his book, that the ones on the outside don't go up and down.

Holt got to ride on the carousel and one of those rides that lifts you in the air and bounces you then lets you drop down and then we all got in line for the Ferris Wheel. Now, the line for the Ferris Wheel, as you can imagine given it’s tourist appeal, was pretty long, but it was moving very quickly. The rides at Navy Pier operate like any amusement park, you buy tickets at the ticket booth and then give your ticket to the ride attendant, so it makes perfect sense to let someone in your party stand in line for the ride while someone else goes to one of the ticket booths. Well, we are 5 to 6 people away from the ticket attendant when a man and his child politely say excuse me and go past us and rejoin their wife/mother who is waiting beside the ticket attendant. This is fine by us, and it’s clear that the mother, holding their place in line, had been waiting like everyone else and just reached the ticket check where she waited for her spouse and kid to return. Obvious and completely unoffensive to everyone that is but the testy woman in front of us. She and her husband (poor guy) and her child were directly in front of us and immediately she began arguing and raising her voice to the security guard standing at the ticket gate. Now, this security guard is about Jonathan’s height and a heavier build and looks to be in pretty good shape. He is dressed in tight black cargo shorts and a yellow security polo shirt, with a walkie-talkie clipped to his shoulder and a badge of some sort clipped to his belt and it was clear he takes his job very seriously. He tries to calmly explain that the group he let step in stood in line just like everyone and when they reached that point they waited patiently for their tickets. It all sounded very reasonable to us and the people around us. She continued to badger him and he was midway through the explanation a second time when this 30 something woman stands on her tiptoes and screams “RUDE” right in security guard’s face. What follows almost made me wet my pants. Our friendly, I take my job a smidge too seriously, security guard tightens his jaw, tilts his head toward the walkie-talkie shoulder, pushes the intercom button and says, “We have a code 21 at the Ferris Wheel, I’m going to need backup. Ma’am would you and your party step to the side.” I had to bury my face in Jonathan’s shoulder I was laughing so hard, for fear the Barny Fife of Navy Pier would see me and cite me for a code 16 (thank goodness he wasn’t patrolling Buckingham Fountain when Holt had his emergency). Later, as we looped back around one of the women in line behind me reached over the rope barricade to give him a reassuring pat to let him know that the rest of the patrons supported him. He didn’t smile when I jokingly said, “easy, that’s a code 17 improper touching.” The whole exchange would be Saturday Night Live gold. Jonathan and I enjoy reenacting this exchange and citing each other for violations around the house. “That’s a code 14, improper use of a bathroom sink,” he’ll say when I allow my clothes to take residence in my sink. Holt couldn’t figure out why we were laughing so hard, but he knew that lady acted ugly. I said, “see, everyone looks silly when they throw tantrums.”


The wait for the Ferris Wheel was well worth it, for the view alone, but the ride was made even better with Holt entertaining us. We got up as high as we could go and Holt looked through the plexiglass and down at bumper boat water below and quite seriously said, “Daddy, do you want me to do a cannon ball into that water?” Jonathan and I simultaneously shouted “No!” and made Holt get away from the Ferris Wheel doors. There is a large circus tent next to the Wheel on the other side that I imagine, to a four year old, looked like a soft place to land. So, Holt follows his cannon ball question up with, “Wouldn’t it be fun to jump on that tent down there?” At this point I made Jonathan go sit beside Holt and hold him until we reached the safety of the ground. Had he not been so serious about his questions the ride down may have been a little less tense.



After our ride on the Ferris Wheel we started making our way back to the bus stop. On our way we passed two women in full burqas, we noticed there was a high middle eastern and Indian population in Chicago, but these were the first fully covered women we saw. Holt takes one look at the women, then says a very gutteral, “Yelch, you see those women dad? They have leprosy.” (At least we know he is paying attention when we read our picture book bible). We quickened our pace and tried to explain to Holt that “those ladies” did not in fact have leprosy, but were merely oppressed.

On the way back to the hotel we shared the bus with a lovely family from the suburbs of Chicago and one of the girls had an armful of balloon animals. We struck up a conversation with them. They asked where we were from, to which Holt replied, “The Chicago hotel.” Then the girl with all the balloons offered Holt her balloon penguin (it was really intended to be a toucan, but Holt says I know my penguins and that's a penguin so we let the matter rest. We got back to the hotel too late to swim, so I reassured Holt that if we had time in the morning we would swim. Holt wanted to sleep with both the “penguin” and his cubs truck, but I nixed the penguin (the sound of balloons rubbing together does not make for a restful sleep). So Jonathan, Holt and his cubs truck, and I all drifted off to a very deep sleep, preparing for one more day.