I know this post is a little late, but I have been really busy since I got here for An Event Apart Chicago.

I left South Bend , IN around 10:00 AM Sunday and headed towards Chicago. Instead of taking the main route which was route 90 directly there and only two hours I took the more scenic route (3 hours). This took me through or near Michigan City, IN, Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, Ogden Dunes, Gary, IN, and East Chicago.

Some of these places where really cool. While going near Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore you passed right by a huge steel plant the was right on the edge of lake Michigan. It makes sense for the shipping part but for the environment it probably was not as good back 10 or 20 years ago as it might be now.

With going through a lot of the small towns, especially Gary, IN I saw a lot of what seemed to be abandoned homes and buildings. A good amount of the homes and businesses had either boarded up or broken windows and the lawns looked like fields. I guess things are not so bad at home as I thought, compared to other parts of the county.

On a brighter note, when I finally got to Chicago they were running a triathlon in downtown near lake Michigan. This closed up a lot of the main streets to get to my hotel. I tried a few different ways to get there and it took awhile since I was not familiar with Chicago. I tied going down one of the streets that my hotel was off of and found out I was on South State street instead of North State street. I turned myself around and started in the right direction only to find that the road was being torn up for major construction. I took the detour and finally got the the hotel. Once I registered at my hotel  the Comfort Inn of downtown Chicago, I realized I was staying a half block from the original “Uno’s Pizzeria”.

I went over to the conference hotel which was the Chicago Marriott Downtown on the Magnificent Mile and found out we could not register until after 4:00 PM. I had planned  on meeting another person that is from the DC area that I had being sending messages to through the An Event Apart meet up and information website. Once they got to the hotel we walked down to the “Art Institute of Chicago“. They have some great works by Jackson Pollock, A Sunday on La Grande Jatte–1884 (1884–86) by Georges Seurat, Pablo Picasso, modern furniture, armor from the great wars, and a ton of other stuff. we spent a few hours walking around.

That’s enough of the trip so far for now. I have to get ready to go over to the conference for the second day. I can not wait to see Jermey Keith and Derek Featherstone talk this morning. More to come about the conference later in the week when I have more time to write a post about each day.