Ready to crawl the pubs and bars of Chicago, Beaner, YumYummy, her sister and I headed to Cedar Hotel – a defunct hotel turned indoor/outdoor bar – for drinks with a friend of YumYummy. Within minutes we realized we were in a college part of town and we were those ‘old people’ taking the continuing education classes. Our continuing ed consisted of sitting in front of the TV on which everyone’s eyes were glued, joking about who we might date (odds were good but the goods were odd), eating nachos and enjoying some of their classic beverages.
Once we finished off the nachos, we ‘checked out’ of the Cedar and started walking down State Street. “Let’s just keep going to bars and having drinkings. In fact, let’s go here, I’ve got to pee,” YumYummy suggested and we walked into Hugo’s Frog Bar & Fish House. After sharing a bottle of wine we butted into the world-famous Billy Goat Tavern for a cheezborger and a beer.
I enjoyed a double cheezborger while the other girls enjoyed grilled cheese sandwiches. Sam Sianis would have had a heyday with these ladies. “What is our next stop? Pizza at Giordano’s?” YumYummy asked. “Absolutely!” I reply. Although we were now backtracking, we didn’t care. Eating and drinking was our vacation thing and we were on a roll.
As we crossed Ohio Street I turned to point out that we had finally made it back to Rush Street. It was then that our eating and drinking without a care in the world almost came to a quick halt. Excited to be so close to our next destination, Beaner and I had been speaking in Italian (translation: in English, using our arms a lot for ‘accent’), while crossing the street, a few steps ahead of the others. It was then that I took a trip within my trip – just as I finished crossing the street I hit the curb and then hit the ground – face down. Like an inflatable punching bag, I bounced right back up (with the help of a very concerned gentleman). Everyone had the same question, “Are you OK?” I thought I was, but knew I had done something to my arm. I looked at it and couldn’t see any bones sticking out so I put it by my side and asked the ladies, “Does it look like my left arm is hanging lower than my right?” They responded “no,” YumYummy picked up my shoe from the gutter and handed it to me, and we made our way to Giordano’s.
As the Italian say, Pan di sudore, miglior sapore – Bread that comes out of sweat (and due to this ‘trip’ I was really starting to sweat), tastes better.