Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Trip to Chicago

My trip to the passport agency in Chicago went a lot smoother than I thought it was going to. The day before I left, I had called to check on my appointment, and the automated system told me my appointment was for 11:00 AM, rather than 12:00 PM like I scheduled it. This made me worry that things wouldn't be set up correctly once I got there, or even that they'd say they had no record of my appointment! I tried numerous times all morning yesterday to call the passport hotline to try to find out what time my appointment actually was, but they said their computers were down, and that they couldn't look up that information. And every time I called, they told me that they "should be back up in about an hour." Well, after four hours of hearing that, it was almost 11:00, so I couldn't wait anymore. I just decided to assume the appointment was for 11:00.

When I got to the passport agency, there was a long line of people waiting. As it turned out, this was the check-in line, and I waited in it for 45 minutes. They had two people working the windows, going over each person's documents and making sure that they were eligible to have their passports done by this agency. I would say that more than half of the people in line either didn't have the right forms filled out, didn't have the necessary paperwork, didn't have an appointment, or were told that they weren't eligible for an expedited passport. And of course nobody was happy when they were told they'd waited 45 in line for nothing! But when I finally got to the check-in window, the woman looked through my documents and said everything looked like it was in order. She gave me a number, and told me to wait in an adjoining section.

This part of the process was relatively quick and painless. I waited for less than ten minutes, and they called my number. A second woman processed my paperwork in about five minutes, and I was done. She did have a little bit of trouble finding the information for my previous passport (since it was lost), but she found it after a few minutes of searching. She said that the passport was guaranteed to be delivered to me by Wednesday!

After I got done with the passport agency, I decided to walk around Grant Park for a while. This is the main park in downtown Chicago, right on Lake Michigan, and it is absolutely amazing. Here are some pictures I took of Buckingham fountain area, but even this is only part of the park.




After this I walked over to the Field Museum. There is so much there, and in four hours I only got to see a few exhibits. The first exhibit I saw was an exhibit about the history of the Americas and Native American cultures. I got so involved in this that I didn't realize how fast time was going by! I ended up spending more time here than anywhere else. I also saw an exhibit on the evolution of life on Earth, including tons of cool fossils, from trilobites to wooly mammoths. I took tons of pictures, but here's a small sampling.






The first picture is a photo of the front of the museum. The next is Sue, the "largest and most complete Tyrannosaurus skeleton in the world." They're really proud of this, and it's the first thing you see when you walk in. The totem poles are also in the lobby. The next photos are of ceramic pottery that dates to about 900 AD. It's amazing how much the mugs look like something you'd buy in a store today! The next pictures are of a bunch of trilobites, a Triceratops, and a Tyrannosaurus standing over the skeleton of a Hadrosaur. The last picture is a comparison of a Neanderthal skeleton (Homo neanderthalensis) and a modern human skeleton (Homo sapiens). I especially like that last one.

Up to this point in the day, I was having a blast. The trip started to go downhill once I started driving home. Although it took me just around 4 hours to get to Chicago, it took me more than 6 to get home. There were several reasons for this that all ganged up on me to make the trip as annoying as possible: 1) I made the rather thoughtless decision of leaving Chicago at right at 5:00 PM. Oops. 2) There was a major accident on I-65S and they had to close the entire highway. However, instead of posting a clear detour route, the sign simply said "Crash I-65S, All Lanes Closed, Use Alternate Route". Not very helpful if you ask me. So, I looked up the map on my phone, and decided to bypass the accident by taking US-231 to IN-10, and back to I-65. This was a mistake. Halfway down US-231, in the middle of some little northern Indiana town, there were barricades up, saying that the roads were closed. I ended up driving around in residential areas for about 20 minutes until I finally got to the other side of the construction. And finally, 3) I decided to get off the interstate and travel on smaller highways in order to avoid the horrendous traffic in Indianapolis (I did this on the way to Chicago and everything worked out fine). However, on the way back I missed a turn and ended up on some random road and had to work my way back to the correct highway. All together, these events added more than 2 hours to my trip.

Although the trip home was rather terrible, I did have a good time in Chicago. And I'm really excited that my passport will be here tomorrow. And only 8 days until we leave!!