Bye Bye Chicago

And the default world as a whole, soon. I'm in Reno now, on the playa tonight!

A lovely send off dinner last night with my darlin. Great BYOB Mexican place called Chilapan. A very similar shot to another I took dining al fresco recently.

MWGP

I think the Monster Wheel Grand Prix should be on playa by now. Here's a shot my girlfriend took from behind the 'bars of one of the bikes while I helped with a dry run of setting up the track before loading the truck. Look for these guys at 3:00 & Esplanade at Burning Man, or in my pictures after the fact! BTW that's the inimitable Beebop passing in the background.

I leave in roughly 36 hours. Holy crap I'm excited.

Food Court

Another stop along En Route's route. This was in the pedway, near Macy's. The day before En Route, I got a text message telling me where to show up, and to "look for me, I'll be clearly marked." This was "me":

Routed

Holy crap was En Route awesome. It was like walking through my city as if in a dream, or a video game. Well, a really abstract and thoughtful video game. It was a sort of large scale, interactive, guided art piece. With downtown Chicago itself as the base medium.

Layered on top of that was music, mostly of the ambient variety, but some of which came to the foreground at very opportune moments, often on emerging or entering an alley, to great effect. There was also abstract, poetic narration. All of that came from an mp3 player strapped to my wrist. And the directions from point to point came as text messages to my cell phone, right when they needed to. I was definitely being observed from afar, but it felt somehow comforting rather than creepy.

These pictures were taken in a parking garage I was led through, onto the roof for a solitary moment of contemplating the skyline. It was all solitary really, even when walking through crowds, and lulled me into a calm, pleasant, meditative state. I feel a bit bad raving about it so much, since it is totally sold out. Look out for it in London in the coming year if you can though. They will be designing a whole new site-specific experience there sometime in 2012. The company that put it on is called One Step at a Time Like This.

En Route

To a solo, outdoor, experiential theater piece called "En Route". I actually have almost no idea what I'm in for, and excited about that.

Update - this is what I just did: http://www.chicagoshakes.com/main.taf?p=2,62,10

More when I get some time to process it and post pictures.

Spiral

From the patio at Ciao Napoli on the square in Logan Square. There were these wacky spiral plants I thought might be a variety of chive. I bit one, it was not chive. But I didn't die either. PS I thought the non-planter box food there was dope.

Look Up

I love how the sky looks in the gangway between my and my neighbors' buildings. Gotta shoot some video there to give the full effect of clouds drifting by in that cinemascope frame.

E-Waste

Part of a large and ongoing project of responsible de-cluttering. This was all of the stuff I dropped off at Recycle Tech on the far South side. They seem to accept the broadest spectrum of e-waste in the area, although they won't accept CRT monitors of any kind. I'm hoping the Salvation Army will, although I dunnno who would actually want to buy one. I guess at a certain price a working monitor is a working monitor.

August Showers

Bring dramatic clouds at sunset. It has been RAINY this summer in Chicago. But mainly in thunderstorm bursts.

Green (and gold) Roof

The rooftop of my gym, from the garage, as seen not long after dawn. My tendonitis seems to be pretty much under control, so now it's time to buckle down to some serious training in these last two months before the marathon. Goddamnit I wanna beat my time...

ULTIMATE BEEF

It may be your last. If it were mine though, I went out on a high note. The restaurant Ruxbin is in this building. And I had some damn fine hanger steak there, among other awesomeness.

Both Ways

I didn't even notice the opposing arrows when I took this, I just liked the larger composition. Score!

Coasterface

I don't know why I'm making such an extremely silly face in all of these shots. I did deliberately wait to take them until we were on a drop. I think it's part jest, part picture-taking concentration, part actual fear. Isn't it weird that we do this to ourselves? And that it's so awesome?

Claire on the other hand, looks relatively composed and happy in all of these.