So this is it my final blog post of my route 66 and storm chasing adventure, and what can I say, its been an amazing journey and even when things haven’t gone to plan it’s added to the excitement and experience.
My last night on holiday was in the Chicago Theatre District at Hotel Allegro where I think I accidently booked a suite for the night, without exaggerating this room was bigger than my apartment I have taken a couple of photo’s but they don’t really do it justice, its safe to say I know exactly what Macaulay Culkin felt like in Home Alone 2!
The Massive Bedroom
The Massive living room
The view from my hotel room, including the L and the sky scrapers of the Theatre district.
After checking in I spent some time watching the Weather Channel one last time where there was more Tornado action being reported from Oklahoma City. The storm chaser providing up to the minute coverage of the storm nearly died when the Tornado caught up with him despite doing exactly what he was supposed to, the wind picked up his large SUV and tossed it around like a matchbox toy flattening the roof. No one was injured in the car however it did make me think about the nature of what I’d just spent a week doing!
After some Weather Channel action I met up with Dorin for a trip to Lou Malnati’s pizzeria, home to the best deep dish pizza in Chicago, apparently. The Pizza did not disappoint and neither did the surprisingly strong Chicago IPA, at 7% it certainly meant I had a merry night.
My very delicious and extremely healthy deep dish pizza.
After a very good nights sleep I had a late start to my last day in Chicago, making the most of my hotel room and the free breakfast. After that I was off to do some last minute sightseeing and got a few more photos of some famous Chicago landmarks and a bit of shopping at Macy’s.
Bendy Dave posing in front of the untitled Picasso sculpture at Daley Plaza
Bendy Dave in front of the Chicago Theatre
The Jay Pritzker Pavilion
After the sightseeing I made my way back to the airport ready for my flight home, I arrived nice and early to avoid a repeat of Friday’s check in incident. Unfortunately in a fitting end to the holiday my flight was extremely delayed due to severe thunderstorms over the airport.
The storm over O’Hare
Due to the delay in Chicago my flight landed in Amsterdam 30 minutes before the connection to Birmingham and my boarding pass had been cancelled, I decided that wasn’t going to stop me and ran across Schiphol with just enough time to get rechecked and onto the plane, my bag wasn’t so lucky. I would definitely recommend Birmingham via Schiphol with KLM for any international flights, the transfer is much shorter than a drive or train journey to Manchester or Heathrow.
Off to bed now ready to go back to work bright and early in the morning, fingers crossed I’ve beaten the jet lag by sleeping pretty much the whole journey home.
That’s it for this years road trip but having been invited back as a guide for next years chasing season it won’t be the last post from me on the topic of storm chasing, thanks for reading and please follow me on twitter @Sean_Sales