A Quick Chicago Trip With So Much Grit

Man oh man do I love marathon spectating. It’s literally the best of humanity.

Happy Tuesday, friends! I just arrived back from a truly whirlwind trip to Chicago. I was there for less than 48 hours — the girls and Chris and his parents and my stepdad were there one day longer — to watch Chris run the Chicago marathon.

And holy crap was it amazing.

I was in a children’s book writing conference all day Saturday, left a bit early, hopped on the red eye and landed in Chicago around 12:30 a.m. local time.

Thank you so much to the SCBWI for the most amazing conference. But more about that on Thursday over on the newsletter.

Can I just start with … drag racing in Chicago? This is a real, legit things, friends. On our drive from the airport into the downtown area at around 1 a.m., there were several cars and motorcycles doing insane speeds racing each other down the highway. I asked the Uber driver about it and he just nodded and said, “Yeah, it’s crazy.” I asked the guy at the front desk when I checked and he said that yes, it’s a *thing* in Chicago, and that it gets way worse on the weekends. (Seriously, Google it. It’s fascinating. If you don’t live there and have to put up with it.)

Anyway, it’s about a 30-minute drive from the airport into the downtown area, and since we were not drag racing, we arrived at around 1:30 a.m. We stayed at the Palmer House because of its proximity to the start of the race. And while it was incredibly beautiful (with such an interesting history), the cleaning staff was striking while we were there, banging on drums and screaming into megaphones starting at five in the morning.

Exactly what you want when you’re running a marathon the next morning.

But somehow Chris powered through anyway, finishing his marathon despite a hot day, hardly any sleep, and injury plagued training.

I’m so friggin’ proud of him. And this was the first time the girls got to watch him run a marathon, too! Plus, his parents were here, and my stepdad drove out from New York to watch. It was a true family affair.

Half the crew wore red, but I had this Chicago Marathon shirt from Chris’ first run about a million years ago, so I had to wear that.

This was near mile 13 after a pit stop at Starbucks where it took us about 30 minutes to wait for a bathroom.

The girls really did so great. It was a long day with a lot of walking. We checked afterwards and we did almost four miles just running around to see Chris. That’s a lot for little legs!

I wanted this picture to be better — because beyond the fence, as you can barely see, is the sweetest little marathon setup — but this is what we got, so I’m going with it 😉

Had to stop by the Bean (whose real name is Cloud Gate … did you know that???) with the medal, obviously.

Chris booked us dinner at The Berghoff, which was a super fun German restaurant about five minutes from our hotel. I had something slightly off-brand for me — fried green tomatoes. And they were so friggin’ good!

And that was literally all she wrote, friends! We hopped in the pool with Emmy on Monday morning for a super quick dip before heading out. (The gym/pool area in this hotel was insane.)

And we were done! There was a time when I hesitated taking this trip. I thought fitting it in with a Friday event, all day Saturday conference, Chris’ parents visiting, and book events literally every weekend throughout October would be so much.

I’m so glad I didn’t listen to that little voice.