Chaos Love: love, life, design and more.

There's a lot of them thar States in this crazy US of A, and I got a chance to tick three more off my list on our recent sojourn to the Eastern side. (Rule: a place doesn't count as visited if you don't leave the airport, so even though I've been through Denver twice, I haven't "been" to Colorado yet.) I have a little widget on my Flickr profile where you can enter countries and states you've been to and it makes a little map showing visited countries in red (see above). So whenever we go somewhere new, I tell Christine that we can colour that place red now. My favourite time was when I got to make all of Canada red just by visiting Victoria, BC for four hours.

So, where did we go? Our first port of call was Michigan, where Christine's dad was getting married to the wonderful Linda, who (as you may know) had made the amazing costumes for our wedding. The ceremony was delightful, held on a sunny day in a beautiful gazebo at a historic park in South Lyon, a semi-rural town not far from Ann Arbor. We had a fantastic time and I loved meeting all the people on that side of the family. Here's a photo I took of the ceremony:

Next, we flew to Massachusetts (which I have now learned to spell correctly!) and caught the ferry from Boston to Cape Cod. Here we spent a few idyllic days with Christine's mother's side of the family... lazing on the beach by day and having good food with good company at night. Here's a view of an old life saving station, the last surviving of many that were set up along this dangerous coast in the 19th century.

Our flight home took us through Chicago, Illinois. We had a four and a half hour layover, and decided to head into town to see Christine's old stomping ground. Unfortunately, Chicago's rickety and antiquated train service just wasn't up to scratch (see Christine's earlier post) and we ended up with only 10 or 15 minutes downtown to look around. Sydneysiders, you should never complain about CityRail again... it's the absolute epitome of timeliness and reliability compared to Chicago!

So we headed straight to the landmark Millennium Park and the incredible Cloud Gate sculpture, which I managed to hurriedly shoot off a few decent shots of before our mad scramble back to the airport began.

Posted in: cape cod, chaosboy, chicago, michigan, travel on August 15, 2007 at at 5:16:00 PM 1 comments    

Yesterday was a hectic but fun traveling day!

Cam I traveled from Provincetown on the Cape to the opposite side of the country, Portland, Oregon. Not only did we use every kind of transportation known to man but we had to stop and see everything on the way. Taking a ferry from Ptown to Boston was clear and perfect. Cam took many pics of the city skyline but we were unable to linger long. From there we jumped on a water taxi to the airport in order to catch our flight to Chicago. Once there, we had a few hours to kill before our next leg to Portland so we jumped on the Blue line so we could see a bit of downtown. I was so excited to show Cam Chicago after hyping it up for so long. But it didn't make a perfect first impression. The train was under construction at a stop far before the one we wanted to get off at. So instead we had to jump on an express bus which doubled our traveling time to a total of an hour. We eventually made it to Clark and Lake and jumped out knowing we had only a few minutes to make the best of this before we had to jump on the bus again.

We ran a few blocks over to Millennium park while Cam fervently tried to take photos of the massive skyscrapers above us. We crossed over Michigan Ave. where you could see a clear view of the Wrigley building and had a gander at the Frank Gehry creation that served as a massive stage. And then of course we had to get a shot of the giant silver Bean in the middle of the pavilion. And then we were off like a shot running over to Dearborn to catch the express bus back to the airport. Once again, we had to jump on the train once the bus reached it's last stop and we rolled back to the airport at a snail's pace.

The trains have designated slow zones, particularly the Blue Line and I can not really say why. The wooden tracks are very old and the train had to abide to the speed limits over certain areas which would be a smooth 55mph to a crawling 15mph.

Having not expected theses delays we found ourselves in a panic. Once the train pulled into the station we began to run down the long corridors to our terminal. Our flight was leaving in 15 minutes. Luckily our bags were checked and we had our tickets but when we reached security, we found we were in for a new challenge. People were wrapped through the cattle yards and down the hall. It would take more than an hour to get through. Never hesitating to take control of this situation, I drag Cam up the line and cut in front of hundreds of people in order to find someone of authority to let us through. Cam, my sweetie, who has always played by the book rules, seemed apprehensive. We skip under the rope with the acknowledging nod from a woman who looked like she worked there and with us followed a dozen others seeing our brave attempt to break the system. Once we put our goods through the machine the gate wasn't too far and made it just in time. They may have closed the doors on us if a woman hadn't been there complaining that the plane had to wait for her because her husband was still at Quiznos getting a sandwich. Cam and I leisurely walked onto the plane past the woman arguing with the ticketman, secretly hoping she wouldn't make it because it wasn't fair to get a sandwich and hold everyone up.

The 4 hour flight went by fast and we decided we had to take a taxi home after the long day of adventures we had had. It is good being back in Portland after having a good dose of travel and family to last for the rest of the year. More to come soon of weddings and reunions... and of course fun filled pictures.. but in the meantime, it's time to get back to the grind!

Posted in: boston, chaosgurl, chicago, portland, travel on August 12, 2007 at at 7:11:00 AM 0 comments