It's been another week, and, because my last blog post was one of general observations instead of following the trip, I'm once again behind my travels. This blogging is a bit like keeping my room tidy - if I did a little each day it would be no problem at all, but I always let it heap up until there is lots to do in one big session. On the other hand, this highlights exactly why people who keep their room excessively tidy are boring - if I published a couple of sentences each day, I'm pretty sure no one would read this blog.
We left off on in Chicago, I think, after a long day of driving up from the South. Chicago is one of those cities - world famous, a big city even in a country of big cities, setting for many movies and tv shows - yet I didn't really have any preconceived image of Chicago. That is in part, I think, because Chicago lacks an iconic image - it doesn't have that one post card picture that everybody knows is Chicago, the way New York has the Statue of Liberty, LA has the Hollywood sign, Paris the Eiffel tower, et cetera.
It does have the bean, which may in time become that image. Officially known as Cloudgate, you've probably seen it movies. The Bean is a large, rounded metal structure shaped like a bean, that reflects the surrounding skyline, as well as the hundreds of tourists standing around its base gawking at their distorted reflections and trying to take tricky photographs of themselves and the buildings behind them. Well, when in Rome, as they say, and Kate and I couldn't resist visiting the bean more than once to join the gawkers and tourists marveling at this brilliant piece of public art.
Crucial to the success of the Bean is the city's architecture, which is so roundly reflected in the silver. Architecture, as it turns out, is something Chicago fancies itself as rather good at, and the amazing array of skyscrapers that make up America's most impressive skyline is in fact Chicago's true highlight.
It is a vast skyline. To walk from the 110 floor Sears tower to the 96 floor John Hancock Centre would take close to an hour, and those two giants are well inside the boundaries of downtown. On either side, and for all the ground in between, the skyscrapers continue, most rising a more reasonable 50 or 60 floors, but with several bigger ones than that jumping around the place.
Chicago, in fact, claims to have invented the skyscraper, and was the first city where high rise, steel skeleton buildings took off. The reason for this was, truth be told, largely one of timing - one of those periods where everything came together at the right time to transform a city.
With Lake Michigan to the East and rivers to the North and South, Chicago has always been pressed for space. In 1871 the city was beginning to feel the constraints of its geography. At the time the city was built almost entirely of wood, and the engineering techniques of the day meant that buildings were supported by their walls, and the higher they went, the thicker the walls had to be. Then, on the outskirts of the city, a cow kicked over a lantern and its barn caught fire, and the fire spread to neighbouring houses. Two days later and just about the entire city had burnt down. (As it turns out the cow story is still told, but apparently not true - the actual cause of the fire is unknown).
Chicago was faced with rebuilding the entire city, and at that exact time in history, a number of other things were happening. Steel was becoming a viable form of construction material, allowing Chicago to rebuild without the wood that, understandably, was considered too dangerous now. By using an internal skeleton, builders had found a way to increase the height of a building without wasting half the footprint on ever thicker walls. That allowed for a tall structure, but several things still had to come before buildings could practically be more than four of five stories. At various places in the world people developed the elevator, modern plumbing and electric lighting, all of which are essential to a skyscraper. So just as the technology to build skyscrapers emerged, Chicago was rebuilding, in an area where up was the only sensible place to go for more space. And so the huge urban canopy that now puts Chicago into permanent shade and wind began to take shape.
THe rivers have long since been passed as geographic boundaries. All that steel also allowed for the building of bridges, and Chicago boasts of having more opening steel bridges (32, I think) than any other city in the world. A cruise along the river system is today the best way to see much of the amazing architecture of Chicago. The other way is to see it from the top, from the observation platforms atop some of the tallest buildings. Sears Tower, at 110 stories, is the tallest building in the USA (it lost the World title to Petronas Towers in Malaysia, which has since been surpassed by buildings in Taipei and Dubai), but we choose to view the city from level 96 of the John Hancock centre. The reason for this was simple. You can pay $14 to go to the top of Sears, or you can go to level 96 at John Hancock for free, on the proviso you buy at least one $14 cocktail. Its not a very good cocktail, but still a cocktail. I should thank Jules for this tip.
Next stop from Chicago was Sandusky, Ohio, home of the Cedar Point theme park. Cedar Point bills itself as America's roller coaster capital, and it fully lives up to that hype. As I think most people know, and my blog may have made clear, Americans don't really do understatement. If they are going to build a roller coaster park here, you can bet your life that its going to be big - really big. Remember the days of visiting Wonderland in Sydney, or even Luna Park - after you'd ridden the roller coaster it always seemed there weren't that many exciting things left to do? Well, Cedar Point has solved this problem - with more roller coasters than any normal person could ride in a day. Throw in log rides, the classic tower drop ride, giant swings and more, and you have almost infinite ways of simulating the feeling of being dropped from a great height and then being hurled around at high speed. Flagship attractions include the Millennium Force Coaster, which, at 310 feet tall, was the tallest coaster in the world when it was built (2001), and the Magnum Coaster, which was also the tallest coaster in the world when it was built in 1989. Taller than both of them now is the Dragster Thrill Racer, which is unlike any roller coaster in the world, in that it reaches its top speed at the start, before climbing a 400 foot, vertical arch and plunging back down the other side. Powered by magnets in the same way as high speed rail lines, it reaches 120 mph in just 4 seconds at take off. Its a 22 second ride - after a 1 hour wait - but its worth it. I've tried to attach a video to the bottom of this blog, but it is giving me some technical difficulties, so apologies if it isn't working.
On more sedate lines Cedar Point also offered mini golf, which was a good chance to give churning stomachs a rest, and play the latest installment of the Great Escape Mini Golf Challenge, in which O'Brien held a 2-1 lead going into the game. It wasn't O'Brien's day however, as the accurate short range putting that had served her so well in Washington back in May deserted her, and Albrecht managed to play a 1 under par 42 to win by 7 shots. It's two all now, and the decider looks likely to be played on my old home course, the Seehausen mini golf course.
You probably couldn't find a bigger change in pace than from the Dragster Thrill Racer of Cedar Point to the horse and buggy of Amish country, but that was where we headed next. The Amish are spread around a few rural areas of Ohio and Pennsylvania. They are known as the Pennsylvania Dutch, but they came from Switzerland - because they spoke German they become known as Deutsch, which at some point morphed into Dutch. The Amish are committed to maintaining their traditional farming lifestyle - they reject technology such as cars and mobile phones and dress like something out of Little House on the Prairie. Ironically their determination to isolate themselves from the modern world has made them a major tourist attraction, and it seems that the Amish are more engaged in running restaurants and bed and breakfasts than farms these days. I noticed the ban on technology didn't extend to electronic cash registers. That was emblematic of Amish country as a whole. It is pretty scenery, and the people riding around in their horse and buggy and sporting chest length beards provide a curious spectacle, but that's about it.
We have arrived in Washington, DC now, but that again warrants a post to itself, so I reluctantly leave the blog still not quite up to date. Look out for the Philadelphia and Washington entry in a couple of days.
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