Nicholas Thurkettle » Travel

Chicago 09/10 – Trading Sights for Shoe Leather

nt — Sat, 29 May 2010 17:04:11 +0000

(Many months old, but the pictures are new to you!)

Maybe I give the impression that there isn’t a nook left in downtown Chicago I haven’t explored, but this is thoroughly untrue. City be big, you may have heard. Usually only one or two of my days on these winter trips are spent exploring on my own. The weather dictates the pattern: walks punctuated by shelter. There’s a train station lobby halfway between the Shedd Aquarium and Michigan Avenue that, on this trip, proves vital more than once for taking the sting out of my cheeks.

It’s a mix of pursued goals and fortunate finds, and I never hesitate to stop for a meal. A good one of those is rarely too far away. And I really believe the city has a way of rewarding the wanderers. How else could you explain the random gift on a snowy night of a puppet show riding up to you on a bicycle?:

Somehow I always end up walking. If it’s freezing or blazing, wet or green or gray; if I’m in downtown Chicago, I want to see what’s a little further down every street. I want to take it at a speed where I can see the age of every brick.

The spouts at Buckingham Fountain

I think some statues wait for the dramatic weather. In peace and sunshine they must feel so out of place.

The goose survived another Christmas. He must love America, where we all eat the turkeys.

Outside the Aquarium. We’ll go inside in a future post.

A mural in the underbelly of Steppenwolf

The Harold Washington Library downtown – I had to cheat a LOT to make this shot anything close to visible this near sunset without a tripod.

I keep returning to this spot with my camera year after year – still don’t know that I’ve taken a truly awesome shot from here; but I’m getting better.

Just outside Union Station, right before my train to the suburbs

2010

nt — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 21:40:51 +0000

I have a borrowed computer, and a few minutes of warmth and quiet before I set out for the trains and the suburbs and the final days of my visit. I started this trip with a lot of unconfirmed plans (including where I would be sleeping some nights!), wobbly health, and the sense that maybe it was time to end this New Year’s tradition. After all, my first Chicago New Year was the Millenium, the great ‘99 cosmic odomoter rollover. So much was freshly behind me then – college, the break-up of (to that point) the only romantic relationship of my life, my first attempt to live away from the family homestead. Only weeks before I had begun the script-reading internship which eventually became my Hollywood development job. I had finished exactly one screenplay and one full-length stage play. I didn’t know what was ahead and I feared all that I had lost. But I got to see a city I loved, and take comfort from dear friends who wanted the best for me.

There has been so much living in the decade since. Technically there have been eleven New Years’ celebrations in that time. I have spent eight of them in Chicago, and every time I have been able to draw strength and joy from those simple things – the place and the people. I have come here happy, come broke, come broken. But I always leave better.

I don’t know that the numerical roundness of it, or the gray hairs creeping through my beard, are enough to end this tradition. I know it’s colder than it has ever been on one of these trips. I know that my father’s old overcoat doesn’t fit me anymore. I know that my group of friends here has evolved – some of the ones most important to me now I never even knew at school. And I know that something about these trips puts me in touch with the best part of myself, and re-fuels it for another year of life on the sunny coast of Fantasia.

Something to tide you over

nt — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 05:21:30 +0000

I wrote this article last year – it was published back then, but reading was something of a pain, since you had to download a .pdf and page through it. They have since made it more easily available; so if you want to read a little travel piece about a State Park in the mountains undergoing an extraordinary recovery from a fire, make like a dance machine and Do the Clicky.

Still Learning on the Jorb

nt — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 05:59:55 +0000

Behind the cut you will find, taken on Saturday, my first-ever Multi-shot Panorama; which proves that:

1) Silver Lake is chock full of The Pretty
2) I am nowhere near good enough in Photoshop to blend out places where the sky failed to merge seamlessly.

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