Happy Birthday, Drunk Generous Weird-Haired Guy - Desiring God National Conference 2006 Day One

Hello to all of our friends in Canada - I don't have to yell as loud as I normally do for you to hear me since I'm only a few miles south in the glistening metropolis of Minneapolis. I'm on a bit of a road trip with Aaron Slaten and Matthew Vestal (who is single and available and has been described as a rather attractive man), specifically for the purpose of attending the 2006 Desiring God National Conference. Here are a few of our highlights:

• Two mornings that began no later than 6am. Aaron normally doesn't begin to function until around noon, so this was a bit of a challenge for him. But he carried through like a trooper.
• We can report that AirTran runs a very smooth operation. Short lines, little biscotti squares and planes that take off and land without incident. Plus, they have XM radio which I didn't listen to but apparently makes them pretty cool.
• Our man Omar set a world land-speed record in getting us from Chicago Midway airport to our hotel near Wrigley Field. We were in a 1971 Ford Econoline van with windows that had been rolled down and probably couldn't be rolled back up. This created an experience tantamount to riding inside of a tornado. We survived - including the fish-tail we did heading into the final turn at the Best Western Hawthorne Terrace. If you're ever in Chicago north of downtown, you need to check out this pretty cool little 4-story hotel. My wife wanted to know if it had a neat bathtub - the consensus here is that the tub was rather ordinary in appearance.
• We walked north on Broadway (no, not that one) and then turned west on Addison for almost a mile, the light standards of Mecca beckoning us to come and worship inside its hallowed walls. But that was later - first order of business was food. So we stuck our head inside Wrigleyville Sports and asked for the best pizza place around - he directed us to Giordano's which was about 15 minutes away. Wrigleyville is such a cool neighborhood. Rows of brownstones and shops and beer gardens (the concept of which was explained in great detail at lunch today by Jason Gammons) - a lot more life and activity than we see in the cloistered life of the 'burbs.
• So we get into Giordano's, which is well known for its Chicago-style stuffed pizza, and order a medium sausage and pepperoni (which our waitress assured us would be enough). 35 minutes later out it came in all its golden glory. Aaron considers it the greatest pizza he has ever had and while I'm not ready to put it into that kind of stratosphere it was very good. We also learned that Giordano's will half-bake your pizza, freeze it and ship it same-day air via UPS. It would be well worth it to try it out...
• After we got back to the hotel and had a nap in between the latest news of Terrell Owens attempted/accidental suicide, we headed back towards Wrigley for the first pitch. We were there early enough to catch most of batting practice, which included listening to a few dozen high school students doing everything they could to get Cubs reliever Will Ohman to give them a baseball. Ohman hooked a couple of them up and kept us laughing pretty hard.
• The vibe at Wrigley is so good. We were surrounded by something like 4 different groups of people - little communities of people who gather together around their common love for a very bad baseball team. I already mentioned the students, but in addition you also had a gaggle of Milwaukee Brewers fans (the Cubs opponent on Wednesday night) who were fairly obnoxious for people whose team consistently finishes with a worse record than the Cubs. You also had a couple there with their nine-year old son who left the park $150 richer than he was when he showed up. Why, you may ask?
• See, there was this guy who was celebrating his 30th birthday with about a dozen of his closest friends. They had already been drinking a bit which apparently had led to some kind of prank because by the time the birthday boy showed up, all of his head had been shaved except one scraggledy patch of hair in the middle of his head that had been lacquered up and would have skewered you like a rhino if he had chosen to do so. So the Old Style is flowing freely and so is the bowling language. Pretty early on, drunk birthday guy notices the 9-year old and declares that for the rest of the night, anyone who used said bowling language would have to give this boy $1 - he goes ahead and gives him $10 just to buy himself some credits. So now you can use your imagination to figure out how this little boy Jared made somewhere around $150. Drunk birthday guy was actually very generous and nice, spending time talking with Jared's parents and giving the little man high-fives any time the Cubs made a good play.
• The game itself began pretty crappily but ended up  really well as the Cubs scored two runs in the bottom of the 9th inning to beat the Brewers. Understanding that I am biased towards the Cubs, watching a game at Wrigley is a great reminder of why going to the Ted to watch a Braves game is such an inferior experience to something like this. First of all, people are here to watch baseball, not go  to an amusement park. Second, people love the Cubs and sport a ton of Cubs gear. Third,  they provided pretty good evidence that Northern people are actually nicer than Southerners. I saw community, generosity, laughter, and besides the verbal abuse that went back-and-forth between Cubs Fan and Brewers Fan, you got the feel that everyone there was part of one, big, happy family.
• We went home and went to sleep...a 6:00 am van ride back to the airport awaiting us.

Comments

[Doug]

Glad you guys are having fun in Chicago. BTW, Edwardo's is much better pizza. When Susi and I moved to Chicago we ordered Pizza one night when the in laws were visiting. Not realizing how big nor how expensive the pizzas were (we just called a local pizza place, Edwardo's in this case), we ordered 3 large. My father-in-law went down to the front door to pay for the pizza and when he returned he looked a bit awestruck. He had paid over $75 for three pizza's (pepperoni and sausage). He had never paid $75 for pizza and vowed he never would again. What made it even funnier was that he does not even like pizza. Needless to say the pizza's were awesome but we only managed to eat one of them. Chicago-style is the best.

Go Bama! Leave the kicker at home this weekend.

[george]

Northerners rule! Generally speaking they are blunter and less socially conscious, but they are more honest, forgiving, and kind. Generaly speaking.

[aaron]

doug- thanks caring about us enough to tell us about Edwardo's. We relied on a local to tell us a good place and now you drop the "i know the best place to eat pizza in Chicago" thanks.
-a

[matthew]

Thanks for the props in the opening paragraph Matt. we all know I need all the help I can get.
I like the write up, I might just site yours rather than write my own.

[Matt Adair]

Note to everyone - my computer has died, hence the limited posting. Here's hoping my hard drive didn't crash. Mac is starting to look very attractive...

Doug - I echo Aaron's comments...thanks for helping the brothers out. Yeesh. I wish you had been in the Great White North with us.

George - yep

Matthew - I'm doing my best to hook you up. My guess is that our worldwide readership will flock to your door now. You're welcome in advance.

[Whitney]

What a fun and fantastic post! I hope your hard drive does turn out OK... I had to replace one earlier this year--it can be pretty devastating. And, yeah, I've decided my next laptop will be a Mac. Apple's got it going on.

[Whitney]

I'd like to add:
Matthew is total Christian man-candy. (see, I used "Christian" as a modifier, so it's legit and not at all inappropriate)