Chicago, Illinois

The closing to the first chapter of our adventure happened quickly. 

Wednesday morning we cleaned out the RV refrigerator and filled up Jen's refer. This was not very nice. She'll have to move it to their new place in Cascade while we are gone.

I tried to find a fireman to thank for their generosity in allowing us to camp in their park while we visited Theresa. Although there were three cars in the lot at the firehouse, there was no signs of life. I figured they would prefer Jen give them the donation later than have me wake them up.

By 11:00am we were saying goodbye to Wurstchen and Chloe at the pet resort. We'll miss them but they are in good hands.

At 1pm, we were dropping the boat off at 5 Corners Truck and Auto Repair in Cedarburg. We will get an oil change, take care of an air conditioning issue and a few other maintenance things while we are on sabbatical from the RV life.

After lunch at Water Street Brewery in Grafton, we drove the rental pickup to Oak Brook, Illinois. We are at the Double Tree for the Internet of Things North America conference. The sky was dark and threatening on the drive all the way from Milwaukee to Chicago. The rain held off until just a few minutes after we arrived at the hotel.

Everything was in order so we had an early bedtime after a very busy day.

Thursday, the show opened. This is the smallest venue my company has done and it is my favorite. They treat exhibitors extremely well compared to larger shows and the food and drink are always excellent. 

As usual, despite the relatively low attendance, we got some great leads. It's very strange for me to think about turning these over to someone else without following up on them first myself. I'll get over it.

Today was a long day, starting with a 7am set up and finishing at 7 tonight after drinks at the hosted bar. Tomorrow will be a relative short day. Starting at 10am and packing up about 2 pm.

It will be a long day Friday too, considering we will be boarding a plane for a 7 pm departure for Paris.

This afternoon we got notice that our train on Saturday, from Charles de Gaulle to Bordeaux  was cancelled. The reason being one of France's famous labor strikes. Glad we found out about it early enough to make alternate reservations. It will require an Uber ride into Paris to catch a train in the city rather than the airport. The upside is we will actually arrive earlier than we planned if it all works out.

We decided to go into Chicago for dinner and some Jazz. It was a beautiful night to be out.

Buckingham Fountain in Grants Park was putting on a sound and light show with some incredible natural lighting to back it up.

The Chicago skyline is one of our favorite in the world.

Andy's is a Chicago classic serving good food with great Jazz and Blues.

We caught the Three Trumpets band. They took a couple of songs to find their groove but they definitely found it.