A little shout out to Khalifa

I came across this lego model of the Burj Khalifa (formerly Burj Dubai), which is by far the neatest building ever built by mankind. Surely I've gone on and on about this Tower of Babel in the past, but I figured this picture of me with the lego interpretation thereof would be a good venue to once again state my extreme desire to visit the United Arab Emirates. It doesn't have to be a long trip, all I really have to do is see the Burj Khalifa, the Burj Al Arab (the world's only 6 star hotel), and ski down the indoor desert snow mountain. What would that take, like a day? I guess I better learn how to indoor ski first.

Why are my favorite skyscrapers getting their names changed? I'm never going to be able to call the Sears Tower the Willis Tower, but since my fabulous little Burj was given its name at birth rather than as an adult skyscraper, I can get used to less Dubai and more Khalifa. And speaking of the Sears Tower, even though there are several Asian buildings taller than her, she still contains the world's tallest inhabited floor, at 442 meters up. That is, until the Burj Khalifa was completed in October of 2009, which was topped out at a few meters short of double the height of the Sears Tower, at 828 meters. Those of you who have seen the Sears Tower, just imagine another Sears Tower on top of it, and there's your Burj Khalifa! How could you not want to head out to the Middle East just to see it? The Burj Khalifa has blown every height record completely out of the water, and will likely hold that title for at least a decade, although there's a lot of talk out there about upcoming projects. Hail to Khalifa!

United We Are Strong

Sara and I thought that these posters were quite boss. The walls up and down the hallway and stairs that lead into the lair of the U-505 were bedecked with this United Nations propoganda, and we loved it! I thought it was cool that this World War II slogan is so similar to the post September 11th battle cry of United We Stand. I was out of the country at that time, but I've heard many stories of that slogan being posted all over the country. I can only imagine that the patriotism of the WWII era was even greater. I'm glad to have not been around at that time, and I think its great that the same feeling can be had in America's museums.

You've got a what in the basement?

As if gigantic trains and airplanes weren't enough, down in the basement of Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry there lurks an actual German U boat. I imagine it's kept down there because everyone knows that submarines are much happier below the ground than they are above it. U-505 was successfully captured on June 4th, 1944 by the United States Navy. We had heard that there was a submarine at this museum, but I had no idea it would be so cool to see the thing. It was huge...I mean super huge...huge enough that its like impossible to get the right kind of picture of it without one of those fancy wide-eyed cameras. Not to mention, they have the room really dark (also to make the submarine feel more at home, as I imagine the depths of the ocean are quite dark), so that hopeful photographers have to sit there and debate whether to use the night settings or not. I decided to forget the camera and just enjoy the submarine.

Before she was captured by the Americans, U-505 was a pretty nasty little beast. She sunk 3 American ships, 2 British, 1 Norwegian, 1 Dutch and a Columbian schooner called Roamar. The story of how U-505 was actually captured got kinda confusing to me because there were all these ships and airplanes doing all kinds of weird-o maneuvers and I sorta zoned out. Suffice it to say that towards the end of the war the Americans were able to cause enough damage to get the Germans to abandon ship , but not so much damage that they sunk the submarine. The codebooks and equipment removed from the boat proved very useful in interpreting the German signals for the rest of the war.

In an effort to keep the capture a secret from the Nazis, the Americans docked U-505 at a Naval base in Bermuda and renamed her the USS Nemo. Also, to keep the Germans from finding Nemo the US soldiers declared all 59 of the crew members dead, where in actuality, 58 of them were in Louisiana under strict guard (the other guy actually did die during the capture). The family of the crewmen were told that they had been killed and funerals were held. Can you imagine the reactions of the family when their U-505 husbands and sons showed up at their doors in 1947 having finally been released by the US Govenrment. I wonder if any of them came home to a wife with a new husband?

Right after the war, the US Navy decided to use U-505 as target practice, but the brother of the Admiral who made such decisions convinced his brother to donate it to the newly established Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. After 8 years of fund raising, the people of Chicago came up with $250,000 to fund the towing and installation of the submarine in the front yard of the museum. There it stood, out in the snow, from 1954 to 2004 when the museum people noticed that the hull was getting all messed up by the elements. That's when it was moved into a specially designed room in the basement of the museum. A specially designed gigantic room, that is. I thought it interesting to note that after U-505 was moved inside, the museum curators thought it prudent to refurbish the innards of the sub so it would look brand new. This they did by actually contracting the original German designers of the submarine to do the work. We would have looked inside the boat, but we got there as the last sold-out tour was going through. Seeing an actual German U-boat was a very cool experience. Chicago is such a great town.

More from the Science Museum

Here's the Randy sitting in the jet turbine of a Boeing 727. That's a picture that not many people have, that is, except for the thousands of people that have gone to this museum. In the same room as the model train track they have a whole load of aircraft adangle from the ceiling. How does one dangle a Boeing 727 from a ceiling? That's 169,000 pounds. Plus they had to account for the weight of all the museum goers walking in there to see all the hands-on flight information booths inside the aircraft. Here's another little clue that our move to the west was a good idea, Boeings are made in Seattle. Cue Twilight Zone music now. It was interesting to see how much aircrafts have changed in the last century. From next to the 727 you can see the replica of the Wright Brothers' plane (we saw the real one in Washington DC a few years back), and several other planes across the room. Then you walk into the 727, which was built sometime between 1963 and 1984, and you realize that nothing has really changed in passenger airlines since then. Yeah, maybe the upholstery on the flotation device seats has become less blue, but it really is the same ride in brand new planes. Oh wait, let me take that back, the price of sitting in one of those non-blue seats has changed a lot...on to the next picture!

Now here's that same Randy standing beside a World War II Sturzkampfflugzeug (Stuka), which is one of only two left intact in the entire world (the other one is in London). These were crazy little dive bombers that had rear gunners and sirens that would wail as they made their attack. That would be frightening. I wonder if the reason the Germans lost the war is that it took them so long to say the long names of their aircraft that they didn't have the time to shout "Fire!" before it was too late. The little airplane beside which Randy is looking quite serious was captured in Libya in 1941. These little guys actually had automatic air brakes in them so that if the pilot blacked out from the g-force while diving, the plane would automatically pull up. Neato.

The last picture shows Randy, Sara and Zoe entering passenger train number 999 of the Empire State Express (at least part of it), whose inaugural trip took Syracuse New Yorkers to the Chicago World's Fair in May of 1893. This little train was quite a big deal, as it was once considered the fasted vehicle in the world, hitting a top speed of 112.5 mph. Eventually diesel powered trains came around rendering 999 obsolete. After spending 10 years doing switch car work in New York, it was donated to the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry, and eventually boarded by my family. I really like big metal objects that move really quick. Mankind is a pretty amazing kind.

Heavens to Betsy, Where's the Dern Exit?

I'm not sure which of us took this picture, but it couldn't be any better. Are these people actually waiting to catch this train? Have they been waiting there since their clothes were in style? Maybe they came in with the train and are still trying to find their way out of the museum.

1,425 feet from Chicago to Seattle

Believe it or not, there was more than just pop culture at Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry...a lot more. I just love a great museum like this, all full of stuff you never knew you always wanted to see. There's one gigantic room devoted strictly to land and air transportation, and it's chuck full of actual airplanes, cars and trains. Leave it to Chicago to do this in a big way. In the center of the room there's a 3,500 square foot model train track, on which 34 trains speed their way through and above the busy streets of downtown Chicago, and out across the open plains to the west. Check out how neat those model skyscrapers are in the Chicago cityscape behind Sara and Zoe! That's a good representation of how tall the Sears Tower actually is (taller than Sara).

I could have spent a lot more time looking through the buildings into the streets of Faux Chicago. Model train track building is probably the job that I should have aspired for in college. Strangely, that was never a choice in those career choice computer programs. We couldn't spend too much time looking at our mini-Chicago though, because we had several hundred down-to-scale miles of farms to look at before we got out to the West Coast. Why are model trains so cool? It totally reminds me of that great episode of the King of Queens where Doug's dad lets him drive his train at the model train competition, and Doug ends up catching the entire track on fire.

So we followed the trains all through the Great Plains and around the Rocky Mountains, and what should we come upon but a gigantic model of Seattle! What a strange coincidence that I had just gotten the confirmation phone call that we'd be moving to Seattle, and there in front of us was the trail from Chicago to Seattle. I can't speak for Sara, but I definitely feel that this was an omen. There was our future all laid out in front of us, and how could we question such a fabulous miniature version of the real thing? This was such a great day for us. Chicago has provided many a magical moment in our recent past, I very much miss that place.

The Harry Potter Exhibition

Don't tell the guys, but I'm a Harry Potter fan. I was one of those people that was all anti-Potter until I finally saw the first three movies and became a fan. I guess I'm out of the closet now. My family and I aren't fanatics, but we've all read the books and seen the movies. Several months ago we heard that Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry would host a Harry Potter Exhibition during the summer of 2009, and we figured, "why not?" Ok, well some of us got really excited and bought tickets immediately, while others figured it'd be better than hefting boxes into a moving truck.

The exhibit was quite cool though, they had pretty much every costume and prop from the movies all lined up as though one was walking through Hogwart's School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Cameras were a big no-no, except for next to the Weasley's flying Ford Anglia, which was on display in the lobby. The camera prohibition was probably a good thing because I would have taken a lot of pictures of all kinds of stuff, and not been able to enjoy the exhibit quite as much. Admittedly though, I would have been much more impressed if they had acquired the actual clothes worn by the original wizards, rather than just the costumes from the movies. Witnessing this exhibit would definitely have been a life changing event for any out of control Harry Potter freak. I thought it was crazy awesome how much work and minute detail was put forth just to make a movie. Cool stuff.

My mind was a little out in the woods by itself during that museum trip because just as we were walking into the building I got a phone call from my now current boss out here in Seattle. He was calling to offer me the job! Wahoo! I was pretty certain I'd get this job, given how well the interview went, but one can never be completely sure. As we were walking from wizard wand to witch wardrobe all I could think about was the relief that I had a job to go to in October. There I was in my favorite city, during my favorite month, with my favorite people, knowing that I had three solid months of not having to work (pretty much 12 weeks of vacation), and we were finally getting out of Milwaukee. Sara and I never really loved it out there, I think we spent a lot of time trying to convince ourselves that we did, and making the most out of it, but we were always looking for a way to get closer to home and further from Old Man Winter (he's a big fat jerk). After three years of the dark freeze, I was on cloud nine, and ready for a move into a much brighter future, which it most certainly has become.

My Kind a Town

Thirty Seven. I have 37 blog-destined pictures on my computer from this single day in Chicago. You gotta know you're in a great city when you take that many pictures of it and it's like your 12th trip there. This is why we like Seattle so much, every time we go for a little jaunt downtown we come home with a camera full of interesting pictures. I'm really anxious to start posting all the cool places we've been in Seattle over the last three months, but these Chicago photos are burning a hole in my cyber pocket. Plus, we gotta do this little travelogue (travelblogue) in chronological order, so you people will just have to be patient!

You must understand that we love Chicago like a zombie loves Einstein's brain. Our last day in Chicago we spent many minutes staring into the cityscape bidding farewell to the buildings that we may not see again for a long while. Then we had to snap out of it and go find Zoe again because she doesn't stay in any single place for longer than two seconds. No actually, we never really lost her, she's easy to find because she shrieks with joy so much while in Chicago. Yikes, there I go agin, maybe if I just shut my yap and started posting pictures I'd get it done. So off we go.

Mars Cheese Castle

Off we went for Chicago Trip With the In-Laws 2009 Day II. Not many miles before the Wisconsin - Illinois border is a gigantic building with an equally gigantic sign visible for miles on the freeway; The Mars Cheese Castle. We took a little stop to view the wonders of this mysterious roadside cheeserie and found that the selection therein was both varied and grandiose. It was a dairy paradise bedecked with all the Wisconsin souvenirs that the good people of China have ever made. We got ourselves a miniature hand-painted plastic beer glass on a chain which we festively displayed on our Christmas tree this year. Ah, the memories.
Zoe was struggling to be happy while we cheese shopped, but was pacified when a Cheese Martian gave her this lovely yellow balloon. The balloon made a world of difference, which was not a surprise because look at it! Its a yellow balloon with uddered cows dancing under the word "Wisconsin". Who ever said happy cows live in California? We liked the gigantic Mars Cheese Castle, it was definitely worth the stop.

Slow Down For the Slow

Wouldn't it be cool to walk down the street and come across a crossing sign with your name on it? I can already picture the yellow diamond with a portly silhouette walking between two lines and a sign below that reads "Kason".

Urban Sun Bathing - Chicago style

Here's Randy having a grand ol' time at the Chicago beach. My in-laws are crazy beach nuts and they also go ga ga for Chicago, so this was like Shangrila for them. Afterwards we stuffed them full of Giordano's pizza, rendering them very happy campers. This is a good thing because we had a lot more packing to do back in the real world, and we wanted to keep their spirits high. Check out that kick-trash palm tree! I wonder how it fares during the Windy City Winters.
Zoe really likes to sit in mud. She was confused that the standard ingredients of water and dirt didn't combine at the beach to create her favorite earthen seat. Instead she got sand in every part of her body from the knees down. It took all the strength in me to keep her from walking out into the freshwater sea. We tried our darndest to keep her pants clean because we had a lot more driving home to do that day, and no one likes car sitting with pants full o' sand. We failed. I wonder if I would have gotten in the water had I brought my swimsuit. Probably not. One of my favorite things about a beach is looking for strange sea creatures. There was no such thing in Chicago, unless you include the tourists. Honestly, I'd be a bit afraid of what I'd find if I were to do a thorough search of the coast, there's a lot of soggy diaper potential along a 28 mile Great Lake stretch. What a beautiful day it was.
That was it for this Chicago trip, but don't you worry, we all came back the very next day. We were all pretty tired after all our stops on the way down to Chicago, so it was back up North for us. Tune in next time for some more Illinois fun.

Chicago Beach Squatters

Yes, you're about to be force fed another several postings of our antics in Chicago. We've always said that our favorite part about Milwaukee is Chicago, and perhaps these pictures will prove it. Randy and Diane have been as seduced by the Windy City as we have, and during their summer trips to the midwest, we usually take two drives down there to sitesee the skyscrapers and snarf the pizza. During this particular trip we experienced a new side of Chicago, that of the beach resort.

I didn't believe it at first either, but Chicago actually boasts the "most swimmable" metropolitan shoreline in the US (whatever that means). I haven't the foggiest idea how this could be the case, and surely anyone that has been to South Beach would be just as skeptical. Perhaps it is considered the most swimmable because the tourists that are pushed into Lake Michigan by their mischevious family and friends swim like crazy to get the heck outta there . There must have been hundreds of people prancing around in the tide, and much to our surprise, very few of them were developing strange rashes or legions on their bodies from the polluted water. Sara and I have heard plenty of news stories in Milwaukee which lead us to believe that every time we flush our toilet the lake gets a few gallons deeper. Apparently that is not the case in the Chicago portion of our country's Northern Shore. Perhaps I'm just a little paranoid that I'd get pulled under by a cement shoe wearing ex-mafia man of bygone times.

Big city people get big ideas that lead to big projects (especially if there's a big budget). As I was looking up information about the beahes of Chicago I happened upon one of those huge projects that the modern metropolitanite is most likely oblivious to as he or she enjoys a beach day in the shadow of the world's tallest buildings. Like so many other Chicago stories, it all starts with the great fire of 1871. 15 years later people were still trying to dig out, and most of the excess debris was getting dumped into the lake. A dude named George Streeter decided to bank in on this and let his river boat run ashore 451 feet off the shore and payed rubble dumpers to do so next to his boat. Since the boat belonged to him he had legal rights to squat on the island that was accumulating below it, and before too long he had enough land to establish the "United States District of Lake Michigan", which was not subject to any laws of Chicago or Illinois. Eventually his island became a peninsula, and Streeter sold many deeds to people of low repute for a lot of cash. To make a long story short, for 32 years he fought against the local policemen and politicians to keep his ill-gotten land (which he cleverly called Streeterville) through use of shotguns and boiling water. I can imagine how relieved the policemen (I picture them being Irish) were that the water was purified before it became a deadly weapon.

George Streeter's land remained in his family until 1928, when it was finally ruled to be part of the city of Chicago. Of course by that time it had become a substantial chunk of urban real estate, valued at over $300,000. You'll never guess what stands on top of the exact spot where George Streeter's boat was beached for those 42 years...Chicago's fourth tallest building, The John Hancock Center! That's the double spired one behind Sara in this picture, you know, the one that Clark Griswold works in. I just love to think that all those gigantic buildings are standing on the land dumped there after the fire, and the only reason it was put there was because of one completely deranged guy. This is very similar to the history of Manhattan, don't forget that the entire United Nations complex in Eastern Manhattan is sitting on top of the land that was excavated when building the World Trade Center and dumped into the East River.