I picked the wrong day to go for a morning walk. The weather turned suddenly cold today. It IS Chicago in February, after all. But I had to fix our Ventra cards because we would need them today, so I walked about 25 minutes to the Ventra Service Center so that I could have a human being straighten out the mess for me. It was cold but I made it. There was a very nice human being there who did indeed straighten out the mess. So I now have an active Ventra card on my phone and a plastic one for Bernadette to use. Turns out, yes, you can register multiple cards on the app but only for managing the cards. You can only actually use one card per device at the turnstile. I wish their website would have made that clear.
Win came and joined us about 12:30 and we showed her our room and then we all went out and took a bus down to the Museum of Science and Industry. (The Ventra cards worked, yay!) This museum is absolutely huge and overwhelming. You could spend a month here and not see it all. We checked our coats and picked up museum maps. B and Win hung together and I split off to go at my own pace.
I saw the exhibit on Black architects, then went upstairs and spent the rest of my time in one wing with an exhibit on melting glaciers, another room with a suspended sphere with seats all around it with projected images of various planets, and someone answering questions about all the planets. She controlled the projections from her iPad. In the next room was a display of the history of bicycles. It was interesting to look at how development came along: the addition of brakes, changing the tires to rubber, adding gears, springs and shocks, seats, redesign of frames, until we arrived at today’s modern bicycles.
The real attraction for me was a huge gallery room full of art work by Black artist. I was especially struck by one titled “Ubuntu” by Russell Harris. The style of the painting reminded me of the Italian renaissance. I don’t think it would be appropriate for me to post the image here, but you can see it on this page from the museum: https://www.msichicago.org/explore/whats-here/exhibits/black-creativity-juried-art-exhibition/awards/ (scroll down a bit, on the left)
We had plans to meet other friends, Liz and Larry, for dinner. We got brave and arranged our first ever Lyft ride to take us from the museum up to Liz’s place. It worked out great! The ride took a little longer than expected because of the slower traffic but we got there just fine. Liz texted that they had started walking over to the tavern because Larry walks pretty slowly with his walker. We got out of the cab and saw them down the street and caught up with them.
Dinner at the Community Tavern was really noisy. It was hard for me to hear. We did manage some conversation. And the food was tasty. Bernadette and I ordered another Lyft to get us home. Win took her own ride. Liz and Larry and their daughter, Jessica, who had joined us, were able to walk around the corner back to their apartment.
As I was emptying my pockets back in our room, I realized I had left my credit card at the tavern. *SIGH* I hate this sort of thing. I called the tavern and confirmed that, yes, they had my credit card. So at least that’s a relief. Bernadette had the fabulous idea of calling Liz, since she was right around the corner from there. She or her daughter graciously went back to the tavern and picked up my card for me. Liz then offered to drop it off tomorrow at Helen‘s where we would be tomorrow. I am so grateful for kind friends. Thank you, Liz!!
We spent a little time on the computer late in the evening making sure our bank accounts were OK and the credit cards were paid off, staying up probably later than we should have. We did some packing, in preparation for checking out in the morning, and put the two large suitcases in one of the luggage lockers on the fourth floor to be sure that we had it for tomorrow.
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Adrian Dee, flutist, composer 