Chicago Trip

Patricia and I had a chance to look around Chicago a bit after I was done with my work at BP's office outside Chicago in Warrenville. There are a lot of architecturally significant buildings there, along with all the associated symbology. For example, the most prominent building in Chicago (Sears Tower) is located in Zip Code 60606. Next door at the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) I was disappointed that they no longer allow visitors post 9-11. The driver we had into Chicago was a former member of the Army Air Calvary who actually flew into Iran in the special ops attempt to rescue the hostages held in 1979-1980. He said that he was caught between a Special Forces commander who had 32 of the hostages found and ready to go, and a colonel who said to leave them behind unless they had every last one. No pressure. He was also fully aware that Saddam attacked Kuwait in Gulf War One because Kuwait was directionally drilling under the border into Iraqi oil fields and stealing oil. Needless to say he was pretty disillusioned by the whole set up of military action through mass media manipulation that continues to this day in Iraq. Left picture is me on the BP bridge over millenium park and on the right is of me in front of the former BP-Amoco building that looks like a smaller version of the WTC. We took a boat tour up the Chicago River which was interesting. The highlight was the comedy show we took in at Second City. I didn't realize that Second City is like a rite of passage for comedians - almost everyone of note has been there, from Alan Alda to Mike Myers, John Candy, Stephen Cobert and on and on. It was really funny and I realized that the lady I chatted with out front before the show (while I waited to find out the accessible entrance) was one of the six performers. She played dumb with me while she had a pre-performance smoke and we discussed all the former performers names on the "wall of fame."