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Chicago Air and Water Show

Despite the weather being uncooperative it was still a decent weekend. On Friday I hung out on the roof watching them practice. Saturday was the roof-party so I met up with some neighbors and watched and took photos on the big camera until the rain shut it down. Sunday I met with a friend and we went to North Avenue Beach to get the floor level action. There were some crazy strong thunderstorms that passed through in the morning and delayed the show, but that just meant less of a crowd and we got a good spot to sit and watch. I love the Raptor and the Blue Angels. True story: I wanted to be a jet pilot in college, even went to the ROTC recruitment office and filled out the paperwork until I learned that you needed to be at least 5’5″ to fly (at that time anyway) and since the majors offered weren’t anything I was overly interested in I told them I’d go home and think about it…then decided to go to Japan instead. Every year I watch the show and wonder where I might have been if I was just a few inches taller…oh well. Maybe I should go for my pilot’s license? It’s something I’ve always wanted to do.

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Cedar Point 2019

Cedar Point is just as fun as I remembered! I picked my niece, Bella, up on Tuesday and we stayed at the South Shore Inn just outside the park. In the morning we went to Cedar Point, and although Bella hadn’t been on a mega coaster before she chose the Valravn to go on first. Shes awesome 🤣 Then we did Millennium Force, Rougarou, and Power Tower x2 before lunch. After lunch we did Magnum x2, Gemini, and Maverick but by then it was getting really hot so we did Thunder Canyon x3 until we were drenched. Then we hit Raptor, Gatekeeper, Wicked Twister, Windseeker, and Iron Dragon. Dragster was shut down all day, which was a bummer. We tried to go back to Millennium Force but it had shut down for mechanical issues, too. So we wandered to Steel Vengeance, but it was over a 90 minute wait still that late at night, so after waiting 15 minutes or so and having the ride shut down temporarily we decided to jump out and do Magnum again, and Gemini x2 again.

Overall, I think we got our money’s worth on this trip 😁

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Travel Safely Part 1: Avoiding Pickpockets

Barcelona has been getting a lot of bad press recently because of all the petty theft, and it is a legitimate concern. I even got an email from the U.S. Embassy while I was there saying they are aware of the rising problem and more Barcelona police were being dispatched to tourist areas. But to the people saying they want to cancel their trip because of it, please don’t! You just need to be aware and prepared. Hopefully my experiences and suggestions will be useful to those going soon:

– Get a cross body security bag. I got this Travelon Bag off Amazon and this thing is legit. It’s heavy duty, cut resistant, has RFID protection, and the outward facing zippers have clip locks on them. It’s also pretty cute and comes in all sorts of colors.

– Phone theft is the most common thing I hear about, so I got a wrist strap and a finger holder for my phone. They’d have to break my hand to get my phone off me, so not an easy worthwhile target for a thief looking for a quick score.

– I kept 20 euro in a front pocket to use as needed, but the rest of my money as well as my wallet/passport stayed inside the locked purse and I never opened the locked part in public.

– I was traveling solo, so I tried to look for obvious tourists to hand my camera to for photos. Bonus points if they were clearly experienced and taking photos of each other with good angles and stuff on their own. Then I would offer to take a photo of them together in exchange. We all left happy!

– Most importantly though, don’t be afraid to be rude. Don’t feel guilty about it. If someone is bothering you, or making you uneasy, you don’t owe it to them to stay in the conversation. You can leave without their permission. You can walk away without saying a word of goodbye if you have to. Or if you must, you can look them right in the eye and let out the loudest, screechiest, most T-Rex sounding wail right into their ear then stomp off with impact-tremor inducing ferocity. Whatever you gotta do to stay safe.

And that’s it. I walked everywhere, I bought a 3 day metro pass and took trains/buses all over and never once felt unsafe. So go and do the thing! Barcelona is gorgeous, and a half day trip to Montserrat is TOTALLY worth it. I did mine with a company called We Barcelona, and would definitely recommend. Have fun!