Day 5 – Friday, August 7

And finally, all good things come to an end, but without a few more adventures before leaving town.

In the morning I got up and had breakfast and then started packing everything up and loading it into my car. I checked out of the hotel and started driving to my destination for the day – the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry (MSI). I had visited MSI the last time I was in Chicago, but there were some displays I didn’t fully see plus new displays that have been added. Plus it is about science – so of course I’d go again!

I got to the museum and found the meter parking my friend told me about to save some money on parking, then walked to the museum.  Again, well worth it to get your tickets online ahead of time so you can skip long lines!  Some of the highlights of the visit include:

• The temporary display on robotics. It was well done with information about how robots help us in everyday life, the wide variety of robots, etc.  All of the displays showcased actual robots in use today.  They had some that played soccer, a demo of how self-driving cars work, a Roomba, drones, and others used in military and industrial applications. Many hands on displays (as is the whole museum) to help children (of all ages) learn about robots and how to program them.
• The behind the scenes “WOW!” tour. I did this tour the last time I visited as well, but it was so interesting I decided to go on it again. Again it was fascinating, but this time it was modified slightly as we had people with limited mobility on the tour and we actually had a group this time, as compared to last time when I was on the only one on the tour.
• Of course I had to include an Omnimax movie – this was about space exploration – the history and the future.  Very educational and interesting. Learned some things I didn’t know both about the past and especially about the current plans for future manned space exploration.
• One of the main tours I did that I didn’t get to last time was the tour of the German submarine U-505 that was captured during WWII. Anyone at the museum can walk around the outside and look at many displays, but as an add-on you can tour the inside of the sub. Very fascinating and moving to see it and hear the story of the capture.
• Another new exhibit was on Numbers in Nature – about how mathematical patterns and numbers are everywhere in nature. Again, very interesting to be reminded about how numbers and math are not a man-made construct, but exist in many living things. There was also a fun mirror maze to go through.
• In between all of these set-time activities, I tried to see as much of the rest of the museum as I could, there is a lot of museum and to really see everything you need more than 1 day.  Most of the rest of the museum I had seen on my last visit, so didn’t mind too much.

It was then time to leave MSI because 1) I needed to start the trip home and 2) it was closing.  I did stop at the gift shop, but they didn’t have any of the magnets I wanted – the Robots ones were only available at the gift shop by that exhibit and not at the main one – wasn’t too happy about that.

Before I headed out of town, I wanted to make it a complete Chicago trip, so I headed to the nearest Portillo’s for a quick dinner before I headed back home. The trip home was uneventful and easy driving. Got home a bit latter than I would have liked, but the extra time at MSI and a good dinner before I left town were worth it.

So that concludes my adventures in Chicago…. until next time!

Day 3 – Thursday, August 6

Today was the day for the other main reason I went to Chicago. The first was the Fermilab DZero/Tevatron tour. When I was here 2 years ago I wanted to do this experience, but they were all sold out so I couldn’t, but today was the day!

As is a typical morning, I got up, had breakfast, headed to the CTA station, parked, and caught the Blue Line to downtown Chicago and then a bus to Shedd Aquarium. I had purchased my ticket ahead of time with my special experience which also includes access to all the exhibits and a aquatic show. Hint – if you ever go to any of the museums or Shedd, buy your tickets online ahead of time – you skip very long lines!

I got checked in and got my armband (their version of a ticket that shows the staff what areas you can go in) and my ticket for the aquatic show. I started looking at some of the exhibits – including going to the penguins as one of the first stops – I just love penguins! Also, those areas are right by the aquatic show where I’d be going to shortly, so it made sense to stay in the area. Then I headed up to the aquatic show entitled “One World”. This was the same show as they had two years ago, but still really neat and makes me cry a little – what can I say – I’m an emotional dude! After looking at a few more exhibits, it was time to head for my Extraordinary Experience (their name for their special experiences you can do).  Last time I did the behind the scenes tour, and this year it was time for my Penguin Encounter!!! Yes, I did say I love penguins, and now I’d have a chance to learn more about them and get up close and personal with one!

We headed to the encounter area and put on some rubber boots. Penguins like to poop and they just poop when and wherever they want! We then watched a short video about some activities they do with penguins to keep them entertained and mentally stimulated while in captivity, since they don’t have the normal things in the wild to keep them busy. Then it was time for our trainer and penguin to come and join us.  There was a total of 9 of us for the experience – there is a limit of 10. The other 8 were two families with 2 adults and 2 kids each, and then me! I was lucky enough to get a seat closest to where the trainer did most of the talking and showing of the penguin.

Jason, our trainer, brought in Izzy for us to see. He talked about penguins, how they train and care for them, about their feathers, how they straighten their feathers if they get messed up, and other items.  Some interesting tidbits are that to straighten their feathers, they just take a big breath of air and they all just lay down nice and neat – how I wish I could fix my hair like that! Also, there are no external physical features of a penguin to determine their gender, so they tell one of two ways. Either a blood/DNA test or wait and see if it lays eggs. Jason also showed some of the tricks that Izzy has learned.

Then as Jason talked more, he took Izzy to each person so we could feel her feathers and wings. You can tell the feathers are waterproof as they are very sleek and almost slippery. Their wings feel leather like and you can tell they are strong – which makes sense if you ever see them “fly” through the water. The main reason penguins are flightless birds are they have no real predators in the wild, so they don’t need to fly away from anything. Also, at one point Izzy walked over to me and started sort of pecking at my leg, it took me a little while to figure it out, then realized that she thought my “feathers” on my leg were all messed up and she was trying to groom them! Then at the end, we each got a chance for posed pictures (my picture is above) with Izzy (whose ID number is 409 (4th generation, 9th hatch)) and Jason (whose number I didn’t get, maybe next time!). Then it was time to say goodbye to Izzy and Jason, change back into our regular shoes, and go on with our day.

The rest of the day at Shedd I just spent looking around at the other exhibits including their special one on Amphibians and a new display on the Great Lakes. Last time I was here the special exhibit was on jellyfish and the Great Lakes displays were under construction. One of the neat things in the amphibians exhibit was seeing a tadpole complete with tale, but also the start of the legs. I guess I never really thought about that for awhile they’d have both and it was really neat to see.

I did go see the penguins a few more times and tried to spot Izzy (they have colored bands on their wings to ID them) but it is hard to see the bands through the glass and at a distance, and if they are moving around it is hard to keep track of them.  I did get to see my “birthday buddy” penguin. It hatched on June 9 – my birthday! The only way I could tell which one it was, is because it still was fluffy and hadn’t completely grown in its waterproof feathers yet. Baby penguins grow up really fast, so in a few months, the new one will look about the same as the others, except for the ID band. Also, if you notice I keep calling my buddy “it” because “it” doesn’t have a name yet, which is because they don’t know the gender yet. As I mentioned, they need to do a blood test to determine the gender, and it is too early to subject it to a blood draw just to know the gender, so they’ll wait awhile and then do it. I am wondering how much of a donation it would take to name the penguin!

Somewhere in the day I did have a late lunch/early dinner at the on site cafeteria. Also, I didn’t do the stingray touch – that doesn’t really interest me, and when I was there two years ago I forced myself to do it, and wasn’t anything special, so I skipped that. After saying goodbye to the penguins, I headed out and caught a bus to my next adventure of the day!

Next it was time to head to the “Chase Bank auditorium in downtown Chicago” to attend a recording of “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me” – the NPR News Quiz! If you don’t know the show, they have 3 guests (typically comedians or at least people with a comedic view of the news) and they talk about the week’s news and have listeners call in for games, and it is extremely funny. To me, a trip to Chicago isn’t complete without attending a recording. This was different than my past trips to Wait, Wait because they now have assigned seats, so you don’t have to wait in many lines, since your ticket has your seat already assigned.

A few other highlights of the taping was that they had technical problems with the phones and audio for the listeners to call in. It seems like they just redid a lot of the auditorium, including nice new comfy seats, and it wasn’t quite working. They finally got it working and the show recorded just fine. Also, we needed to record some filler bits for a “rerun” show that they air when they want a week off, but since they take bits and pieces from a variety of shows, they need to record parts to tie them together. Typically they record the show straight through from start to finish without any major stops and then just rerecord a few pieces at the end where people stumbled over their words. However, this time the big news story of the week was happening right at the same we were recording the show – the Republican debate! So when they got to the part of the show where they were talking about it (during a listener call in game) they just skipped over commenting on it and continued with the show. Then at the end, the panelists and host got information about the debate from a staff member who watched it, and they recorded the material to fill in the empty spot. They also said not to tell anyone, so you just didn’t read that!

After the show is done, they offer a little bit of time for people to ask questions. After a few questions, a staff member told Peter (the host) to check his email (on his tablet), so he did. He said that it was someone’s birthday today, so we all sang happy birthday to her. Then the guy she was with asked Peter if he could ask one more quick question, Peter said yes, and then the guy said that the question wasn’t really for Peter. He then proceeded to get down on a knee and propose to his girlfriend (the one who had the birthday).  She said yes! Peter did then ask him if he was prepared to hear a “no” answer (he wasn’t) and then asked her if she wished she could have said “No”, (She was happy saying “yes”).

Then it was time to leave the auditorium and I headed out to get Peter’s autograph on the book that I bought (written by Peter). Then headed out to hop on the Blue Line, head back to the CTA station, my car, and my hotel. And that is day 4 of my adventures with one more day to go!  You can see more pictures from my day on Facebook.

Day 3 – Wednesday, August 5

Time to continue my adventures with Wednesday. Today was an unusual day for me, prior to getting to Chicago I didn’t have anything fully planned out to do, you know – maybe be a bit spontaneous! For those of you who know me well, you are aware that this isn’t like me at all, but I wanted to leave some open time so I could adjust plans depending on if I could meet up with a few friends I haven’t seen in awhile that are in the area. And that is how the day started.

My friend Jamie and I met at Riverwalk Theatre doing a few shows together – Animal Crackers and Dreamgirls. Shortly after that she moved to the Chicago area and I haven’t seen her since. We’ve kept in touch on Facebook, but hadn’t seen each other in person for probably about 10 years!

Today was back to using the CTA to get around Chicago – I love the system and it is simple to use and saves headaches trying to drive and find and pay for parking! I headed to the Lincoln Square area to meet up with Jamie for lunch. I got there a little early so walked around and we decided to meet by this fountain in Lincoln Square. They also had a Lombard Lamp that I decided to take a picture of while I was waiting. Soon she and her adorable son arrived and after waiting for her son to run around a bit and throw a coin into the fountain and make a wish, we headed off to lunch.

Jamie knew of a Mexican restaurant nearby and so that is where we had lunch. So we went for a nice lunch at Garcia’s Restaurant. Just chatting, catching up a bit, listening to her son tell many stories, and getting a few tips for things to do in Chicago and a better parking idea for MSI (coming on Friday). Always nice to have lunch with a friend with no real timelines to rush off to. Although, they did have somewhere to get to for the afternoon, but had plenty of time. After we finished lunch, it was off to catch the CTA for both of us. We had a quick goodbye as the bus they were taking was there and it doesn’t run that often, so they wanted to catch it when they could. I caught an ‘L’ and headed downtown Chicago for the next adventures of my day.

My next stop was the Museum of Broadcast Communications. Although when I got off the ‘L’ I ended up in the Merchandise Mart, so since I wasn’t on a tight schedule, I wandered around there for awhile, before heading outside, getting my bearings, and going to the museum. Finding my way around Chicago is a bit tricky at times when not all the street corners have signs and with all the tall buildings, GPS doesn’t always get a good fix on my position, so I get turned around sometimes.

On entering the museum I got good news and bad news. The good news was that on that day they were offering free entry, the bad news is that only one of the floors was open for the day. I think they might have been setting up for a special event on the other floor. So I just took my time looking around the museum. They had lots of signs about the history of the different types of TV shows – drama, variety, music, talk shows, etc. The special exhibit currently was about advertising TV icons. It was neat to be able to read about the history and see how these advertising icons have changed over the years. They also had some videos of old TV ads. The other major display area on this floor was about the history of Chicago children’s shows and the various performers (both real and puppet variety) that were in the shows. They had some set pieces from different shows like Meet the Press and some props and scripts from a variety of shows. I just looked around nice and slow since I had time to kill and wasn’t in a rush.

After I got done with the museum I decided just to walk around a bit and look around. I was right near Michigan Ave. so decided to walk along the Magnificent Mile. I’m not overly interested in shopping and most of the stores I saw were what you’d find in a regular mall, so didn’t go in any stores. I did find these two nice flower gardens along the road where they also had bird houses hanging. I thought that was a nice touch in a busy city. Speaking of nice things to look at – it was right around 5 when I was walking around, so I’m guessing they do this around rush hour to just have a presence visible and ready, not sure the exact reason, but there were 3-4 police officers every few blocks just standing around. And some of them were quite nice to look at.

My next stop for the day was to Eataly, a place that Jamie recommended. It is a 2 story large store/restaurant place, all devoted to Italian items and food. The store has many items from kitchen gadgets to chocolate and wine, fresh produce and dairy, pasta and beer. They have several eating stations (sort of like a food court) where they had gelato, a Nutella bar, wine, pasta, and pizza. I had dinner here with some good pasta, sitting right by where they make the pizzas in a wood burning oven. It was nice to have dinner and a show! I bought a bottle of wine and some chocolates and then had some gelato for dessert. Since it was two floors, they had an escalator and a very helpful sign about what to be careful of wearing on the escalator.

I still had some time before my scheduled evening activity (which I had only booked that morning – about as spontaneous as I get!) so I just walked around some more. I was right by the Chicago river, so walked along the river paths they have. Very nice area, but in order to cross the river you need to get back up to street level to cross, and they don’t have stairs at every road, so I ended up walking a lot more than I had planned, but still was a nice way to see a bit more of the city and get some exercise in!

My last activity for the day was to go on a boat tour. The main boat tours that Wendella Boats offers are architectural tours, but this was a combination tour. We did get most of the architectural part of the tour, including the history of many of the buildings, the history of the Chicago river, how they reversed the flow of the river, lawsuits that came after they reversed the flow, and how a loophole in the wording of some laws allowed some buildings to be built on the lake side of Lake Shore Drive. Hint – land isn’t the same as ground that was built from landfill! The picture to the left is a rarity – a selfie – I don’t often take them, but decided to take one to prove that I really was in Chicago! After we got out into Lake Michigan and toured up and down the coast a bit looking at more buildings and hearing more history, I decided to head down to the lower level of the boat to have a glass of wine. But first, backing up a little.

While waiting in line to get on the boat I started talking to the people in line next to me, and the guy was mentioning how he keeps trying to get free things by complaining about things not being perfect or what not – but he is never successful. So when I go down to get my wine, I see you can buy souvenir wine glasses as well, so I decide to get one. The lady working couldn’t find any and decided they must not have any on board, so she gave me my glass of wine for free. I had to tell the guy who was in line next to me about my free glass of wine that I got without even trying! Also, during the break from the narration on the tour, I went to talk to the tour guide. During the narration he shared the story of how they had to use tanker cars on a train to bring salt water from Florida up to the aquarium when they building it. I wanted to see if he knew how they now get salt water for the aquarium. I knew this from my visit to Shedd two years ago, so wondered if he knew as well. He didn’t, so I got to teach the tour guide something!

The other part of the tour that I went for was to watch the Navy Pier fireworks from Lake Michigan. This was a special treat to be able to watch a nice fireworks show with the lights of Chicago in the background. After the fireworks were done, we heading back through the lock at the mouth of the Chicago River, had a bit more information about the architect of Chicago, and then disembarked. You can see all the pictures from my boat tour on Facebook. I then hopped on the Blue Line to head back to my car and hotel, and that was day 3.

Introduction

While the actual traveling for these adventures started on Monday, August 3, the adventures really started back on May 12, and really even before that. For awhile I’ve known that Fermilab offers special tours of their Tevatron tunnel and the DZero experiment, however they are only offered once a month and limited to 18 people. When I first found the tours they were all filled, and only offered through July.  However, when I woke up the morning of May 12, I saw a  post on Facebook from my cousin, Brian, that they had added more tours and he got “tickets” for himself and his dad for the August tour. I immediately jumped on to Fermilab’s website and luckily got myself registered as well. Since I was going to be there for the tour, I decided to make a vacation and adventure out of the trip, so sit back, relax, and enjoy the tales of my latest adventures in Chicagoland.

Day 1 – Monday, August 3

I left home around noon on Monday to travel to the same hotel I stayed at a couple years ago when I went for my 35th birthday weekend. The traveling was uneventful with only minor traffic issues – mainly due to construction.  I got checked into the hotel and got settled.  I knew that if I went to a typical restaurant for dinner, I’d get flack for it, since I guess when you go on vacation you are supposed to try new things! So I searched for restaurants near me, especially Italian ones.  I found one that seemed interesting, so I went to try out Cibo Racconto. It is considered a fast casual restaurant and was pretty good. Not a great Italian restaurant, but for fast casual Italian, it was good. Plus, they had gelato for dessert! I headed back to the hotel and decided that although I had a few options I could do that evening, that I’d just relax at the hotel, so that is what I did.

Day 2 – Tuesday, August 4

Today was the main reason for my trip to Chicago. After I woke up and had a quick small breakfast, I headed over to Brian’s place to meet up with him and his dad to start the day’s adventures. I got there, and visited for a bit before his dad showed up. Then the 3 of us went for breakfast while visiting and planning the day’s adventures (besides the tour). Our first stop after lunch was to go to an American Science & Surplus store. They buy surplus items and sell them, items ranging from science kits, all kinds of electronic and mechanical parts, toys, and tons of other random items. The signs they have for the items are very interesting to read as well, like some of them were for “plastic shapes” and some trays described as a “puke color”. I didn’t buy anything, but it was really neat looking around. Then it was off to Fermilab!

Before the tour we stopped at the Lederman Science Center, which is a interactive science area, designed mainly for kids, but adults can learn a lot as well. They also have a small gift shop (well more a gift counter) there as well where I bought a magnet and a t-shirt. While we were there, we talked to the person working and mentioned we were there for the tour. She asked if we’d be willing to drive ourselves to the actual tour location since the normal vans they use weren’t available, so they didn’t have enough space in the vehicles they were going to use. Brian quickly said yes, because how often do you get to drive your personal vehicle into restricted areas on government property!

We then headed over to Wilson hall, the main building at Fermilab, and that houses some public displays, offices, an art gallery, etc. This is where our tour would be starting. After looking around, it was time to head out to the DZero detector/experiment building to start the actual tour. Now is the time that Brian puts me to shame in sharing info about the tour. He has carefully posted all his pictures on Facebook with detailed information about them, where you’ll just get a quick summary from me and pictures without many descriptions. In this post I’ll share a few pictures, but will post all mine of Facebook as well, so if you want to see more pictures, check out my gallery on Facebook.

We went into the building at floor 3 1/2 which was at ground level. We then proceeded to head down the stairs where each 1/2 floor was labeled on the wall, until we got to level 1. We went into an area where they had displays and a model of the DZero setup and our guide explained the detector and the various pieces of equipment that are part of the DZero. The DZero is setup to create and detect subatomic particles, but in order to study something that small they need really big equipment!

 

After this we headed into the control room that was staffed 24/7 while the experiment was running. We learned more about the work they did, then got some safety information about risks associated with the tour including bumping your head, that we’ll get some radiation (although they promised it was no more than taking a cross country flight), and watching our step, etc. We were also given hard hats and signed our lives away – all the fun things in life have waivers! Then it was time to head into the DZero.

 

Another sign of a good experience is when you get to go past doors for authorized personnel only! A quick summary of the tour of DZero is we walked around the various parts of the experiment, looking at all the detectors (that was explained to use in the display area where we stopped first.) The thing is huge! Pictures can’t do it justice as to how large this marvelous technology wonder is. They have to have so many detectors to make sure they capture all the subatomic particles created and can monitor their energy level and motion, so they can piece it all together to determine what actually happened during the collision of protons and anti-protons.

 

Brian and I made sure to get lots of pictures, including one he took of me standing by the detector. You can only see a very small portion of the detector in this picture. The picture on the right gives you a better idea of the size, that picture is looking up several stories. Each of those rectangular metal pieces is 1 pixel in their detector. Talk about low resolution! But because they particles they are detecting are hard to see, they need to make the pixels large to make sure they capture everything!

After we walked around the outside area (and up and down many steps), we got to go up a ladder and even further into the detector. We were within about 10 feet from where the collisions actually happened, where the top quarks were created that were first discovered right here at DZero! We couldn’t get closer to it because that area of the equipment is still radioactive.

When I keep saying we are in the detector, I’m not meaning we are in the room the detector is in, I’m meaning we were actually inside the detector. The whole thing opens up into sections because they have to work on the various sensors and computers, so they need to have it so they can slide it apart to get to the various equipment. Our tour guide said that when they first started it would take them 12-24 hours to turn it off, wait for the radiation to clear, open it up, make the repairs, and put it all back together. Later on they got good enough that they could do it in an 8 hour shift.

Then it was time to go to the Tevatron tunnel. This is the tunnel where the 4 mile particle accelerator ring is. As you can see in the picture, it curves to the right to start the loop around. The use magnets to steer and accelerate the particles to get them moving (pardon the technical jargon) “very fast” until they collide them together to do their experiments. One interesting thing is that if they have particles in the pipe that they don’t need anymore, they basically stop steering them so they go straight and dump them into a concrete or steel block to get rid of them. Don’t worry if you don’t understand any of this, most of it goes over my head as well!

We then headed back up, took a look at the assembly room where they built the equipment before sliding it into place. We headed out, and that was the end of the tour. Very fascinating and a once in a lifetime experience. It was very neat to be able to be up close and personal with such great scientific equipment that is funded by the government. This is what I love knowing my tax dollars go to, unlike somethings that tax money goes for.

The days adventures were not done yet! We gathered our thoughts on what we wanted to do next and decided to go see Ant-Man and stopped for a quick bite to eat at Culver’s before heading to the movie. While I’ve never really seen any of the current (or recent) super hero movies, this was a wonderful movie and I enjoyed it a lot.

At this point Brian’s dad headed back to Michigan (he only came for the day) while Brian and I headed back to his apartment to figure out what else we wanted to do. After our normal struggling of figuring out 1) What I like to do, 2) What there is in the area, 3) what is actually open/available, and 4) what we’d enjoy together, we watched an episode of Big Bang Theory and then headed out for another movie. We went and saw Inside Out. I had heard many good things about this movie (including from Brian) and was glad we went to see it. Wonderful movie and makes you really think about your emotions and how you grow emotionally and what is going on inside of your head. The only downside is the movie is making me think a lot more about how I think and what goes on in my head, which I already do way too much!

Then it was back to his apartment complex to drop him off (I was driving at this point) and I headed back to my hotel. A wonderful day that I will never forget, but it was just the start of my Chicago adventures!