Dhammerica – Day Three

Our buddies for the trip constantly herded us. This day began no differently when we made our way to the Astoria boulevard station to get on our way to La Guardia. And then on to Chicago.

One common feature of all our flights in the US, regardless of time spent in air, was that we fell asleep quickly and were thankfully never woken up.
Bade Bhaiyya received us and like a dutiful brother carried our luggage. He should have also, considering that most of our luggage was food.

Before we reach home, we went to the nearest café, where we have some gigantic latte and some breakfast. Brother thinks we look odd with popeye forearms and a weak looking upper body – symptoms of a low protein diet. We are equipped with a laptop for our surfing for the 2 days we are in Chicago.
Once we get home, we are terrorized into memorizing the train routes from the suburbs to downtown. Once we can comfortable recite the different stops all the way to town, we are let off. First day, we head to the Art Institute which rivals MoMA, NY.

There was a fantastic exhibition of the collection of Ambrose Bouillard, who was a pioneering art agent/collector. The collections ranged from Picasso, Gauguin, Van Gogh, Cezanne, etc (essentially every painter that a normal soul can recall). Now we can almost recognize Manet as well. The Art Institute occupied almost the entire morning. Next, we went to the nearest Subway to get some really late lunch.
The Michigan Avenue has a section called the Magnificent Mile , an essential shopper’s delight. We did walk around town for quite some time till we realized we had walked past 3 train stations. Do we really need so many stops – so close to each other?

We returned home to partake in the riches assembled for us by our benevolent bade bhaiyya – the Garmin Forerunner 305 (a GPS watch cum heart rate monitor), a new pair of Pearl Izumi shoes as well as another pair of New Balance shoes (currently our most trusted and favoured brand). And then there were 2 books amongst several big bro wanted to lighten his shelf of – the Billy Crystal book and the AT Jacobs book, both of which we eagerly lapped up. In fact we finished the Bill Crystal book before we got back to NY. And then there are also the assorted jackets, sweatshirts, etc. Big bro disapproves of our taste in clothes and thinks we should have more classy clothes. We also get a mobile phone which is fairly invaluable for the duration of our stay in the US. Of course, one must have big brothers. We have a preference for big sisters – ours has been very nice to us, but for this life, this brother has not been doing badly either.

At night, we are taken to visit the neighbourhood Borders bookstore which is huge, almost a block by itself. And then we move to the nearby Barnes and Noble store – another huge store. But we are no longer impressed – just about everything we see in the US is huge.