Simon Winchester

I was just listening to NPR on my way home and it was the last twenty minutes of a show with a very interesting guest speaker. He was talking about earthquakes mostly and had a British accent and that British dry wit. They finally mentioned his name at the end, Simon Winchester, and it sounded so familiar but I couldn't place it. After looking his name up it turns out he's the author of two of the most interesting books I've ever read, Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded and The Professor and the Madman. I've been reading more and more non-fiction lately and although most of it is quite interesting, it takes a special writer to suck you in like it was fiction. Winchester does exactly that and it can't just be the subjects, Krakatoa goes deeply into plate tectonics, yet it's all quite fascinating.

The NPR show was recorded back in October and it must have been something to promote his new book, A Crack in the Edge of the World : America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906. I'm sure it will get back into plate tectonics again but it definitely won't fail to be interesting. I look forward to reading it.

My Kind of Town

Chicago! What a great city. I had been there once before but didn't really remember anything about it. This time Veronica and I had an LP and only two days to cram what we could in. It definitely deserves much more time and I know I'll have to return. Just riding The El around is entertaining enough as it travels above ground and above most houses giving a great view of the neighborhoods as you pass by.

The first thing we did on our second day was go to Sears Tower, once the highest building in the world. There's not much to say except that it gives an excellent view of the city and has some interesting history on the walls as you walk around the skydeck.

After that we had a famous Chicago hotdog and then did a walking tour of the downtown sculptures. The 'Percent for Art' decree in 1978 says that any new or renovated public building has to set aside a certain percentage of building funds to acquire and display art for the public, and there are some interesting ones. One of the strangest looked like a big heap of trash but we couldn't get a picture because it was prohibited; probably because it was in a federal building. We did get photos of some, which I'll show or link to below.

The last one we visited, but wasn't on the official tour, was a large bean-shaped sculpture polished such that it created a distorted reflection of the city. I think it was more recently placed than the LP was published, but it definitely deserves its place on the tour. It made for some very unique pictures.

After that it was pretty much time to go. We tried to go to the Field Museum to see the Pompeii exhibit but decided that we didn't have time. We drove back to Cincinnati in the rain and I flew out yesterday, although it was a long trip home. I spent three and a half hours on the plane in Cincinnati waiting for the weather to allow us to take off, and then barely made the last flight to San Francisco from Chicago thanks to a delay on that flight. I then spent another couple hours on that plane waiting for it to take off. I was originally supposed to arrive at 7:38pm but didn't get in until 1:30am. The good thing was that I had three seats in a row to myself and was able to sleep the whole way.

Click on any picture to go to my Chicago page.


Chicago skyline.


Veronica at The El entrance.


The bean, or whatever it's called. Go to the Chicago page
for some other views.

Chicago, IL

The windy city! And they aren't kidding. It was so windy today that they closed the Sears tower skydeck. We have to go tomorrow instead. I flew out to Cincinnati on Thursday night to visit Veronica and we drove up to Chicago yesterday morning. That was my second time taking a red-eye and I'm still not so sure about them. It allows me to arrive in the morning but it throws me off for at least a day.

Friday night Veronica hosted the weekly "coffee hour" for the international students although I insist it was a party and definitely longer than an hour. I met a lot of her friends from the university; we had a fire in the backyard and made s'mores; and then we watched Ferris Bueller's Day Off in preparation for our trip to Chicago. If you've never seen it, it's a great timeless movie that you can watch again and again.

We got a late start yesterday but gained an hour somewhere in Indiana and then ended up in some sort of time warp. Everytime we looked at the clock once we were in Chicago it was hours earlier than we thought. It could be that it gets dark here by 5:00pm and feels much later than it actually is. Last night we went to a blues bar for a taste of the famous music scene.

Today we started the day at the Original Pancake House, which I didn't realize is a chain but if you happen upon it, be sure to try it. They have some incredible looking pancakes that seem more adequate as a stand-alone dessert for four. From there we went shopping on the Magnificent Mile in search of a winter coat for Veronica and a semi-winter coat for me. Our first stop had us looking at $1000 price tags which made the $500 coats look reasonable. That was a bit out of our league but luckily we came across a store with clothing that was more our style and much more reasonably priced. We left the store better prepared for the cold and wind and continued our short day of sight-seeing, or sight-not-seeing. The Sears tower was closed and the Buckingham Fountain (the one from the opening of Married With Children) was turned off for the winter, so we went to the Art Institute of Chicago where we spent some time seeing some well-known works of art, although I just realized I somehow missed seeing American Gothic.

By the time we left the museum it was already getting dark so we went to dinner and headed back to our hotel. We plan to get an earlier start tomorrow and take advantage of the light and a more active downtown on a business day, but there's too much to see for the short amount of time we're here. We need to head back to Cincinnati tomorrow so we'll see what we can and try to make it out before rush hour.

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