Ian Came to Visit

Last week my brother Ian and his girlfriend Elvira came up to Chicago to visit. Friday was the start of "summer hours" so I had a few hours to kill before they arrived -- time I killed with a nap and time in the coffeeshop around the corner reading the Omnibus of Cometbus. One of the stories I read was about Cometbus' time in Arcata, CA. The article included a map of town, which showed where all the good skating spots and record stores were, circa 1988. Because I'm curious, I Google Mapped the town and tried pinpointing the places he mentioned -- I found a few. I do this often when I'm reading a book or newspaper article -- if a story mentions something about a water tower on the horizon, I want to see the water tower for myself. It has no bearing on my understanding of the story, but maybe I do this for context's sake.

This post isn't about water towers and Arcata, though, so my apologies.

After Ian and Elvira arrived, we walked over to Andersonville for a drink at Hopleaf and stopped by Transistor. I bought a guitar USB adapter after wanting one for well over six years. Friday night was also the launch for the Ten Speed Hero website. I dropped Ian and Elvira off at the house of her friend Ducky's and went to pick up Allison before heading over to the Get-A-Grip fit studio in the Fulton Market area. The 10SH website, a long time in the making, features content about cycling, with an emphasis on photography and long essays. It's going to be exciting to see what happens with it. The launch party went exceedingly well -- a keg of Gossamer helped things along. Ian, Elvira and her friends stopped on by, too. I'm not sure they were too interested in $12,000 Parlee bikes, but they acted like they did, which I appreciated.

Saturday, it was off to a mellow start with calisthenics in the park while Ian and Allison were sleeping. After they got up, I prepared everyone smoothies and we went off walking to Andersonville and then to Lincoln Square. We lunched in the Gene's rooftop beer garden and I predicted that Allison and I would make a regular go of it. So far, we've been there twice in the past week, it's that great.

In the afternoon, we wandered back to the house and took naps, then met up with Elvira and her friends in the afternoon at Hamburger Mary's. They didn't stick around for long, so they left and we got burritos at Carmela's.

Sunday, I raced the Gravel Metric in DeKalb in biblical conditions. I came in 7th place out of 120-something, with many participants dropping out of the race due to the severe thunderstorm that decided to roll through as we were racing. I'm working on a post for 10SH on the race, so when that's done I'll link it to here. Afterward, I was treated to a BBQ at Ducky's place. Then I got sick.

Since then, I was pretty much wiped out from a horrible cold that I caught from Ian and fatigue from the Gravel Metric. I recovered in time to help Allison celebrate her 30th on June 1 in style at the Brauhaus in Lincoln Square with her parents as surprise guests. Al James, renowned magician wowed us with feats of illusion. Friday night was karaoke with a whole host of friends at Spyner's. I also rode a lot; a HP trip with Kevin Clark and Catano on Saturday and MTB action on Sunday.