Adventure in Chicago

I just finished my first year of dental school, and had a week break between the spring and summer quarters. This just happened to be the time that Shawn's brother, Ryan, and his mom were coming out to Chicago to visit Ryan's mission (which he returned home from in April). We decided it would be fun to drive to Chicago to meet them and spend a couple of days with them. We had a lot of fun walking through Chicago with someone who knew where he was going. The first day we were there, we walked along the shore of Lake Michigan, and when we got to the end of the little peninsula, we could see the whole skyline of Chicago. It was beautiful! The next day, we decided to go to the top of the Sears Tower (now called the Willis Tower). It was a beautiful clear day, and the visibility was wonderful when we got to the top. As we were looking out, we could see the shadow of a dark cloud in the distance.
The tower has these clear glass boxes sticking out from the building that you can step onto and see all the way down, and all the way up. Shawn and I sat in one, and we could see the river and all 103 stories beneath us. It was spectacular! This is the picture of us sitting in this box. It felt like we were suspended in mid air!


As we were standing there in the 103rd floor, looking out, we could see the distant cloud rolling in. Along with this cloud came thunder and lightening, and lots of wind. Pretty soon, the cloud had surrounded the building, and we could see lightening in all directions striking the buildings around us! It was a very magnificent sight. As we stood still, we could feel the building swaying under us. The people there said it was designed to be able to sway 3 feet! We could definitely feel it as the wind picked up. This picture was taken from the adjacent view box as the rain was pounding down around us. You can see the blurry raindrops on the glass, and in the background, you can see where the glass jets out from the building.



Just as were we ready to go back down to the ground, the elevators were shut down. We were told that it was normal procedure for them to shut them down during a storm, and they would be running again in a few minutes. After waiting for about a half an hour, they allowed us to go down 4 flights of stairs to level 99. Here, we waited in line for the elevator again for about 10 minutes before they said that we could either wait longer for the elevator or take the stairs the rest of the way down. We decided to wait for 20 more minutes, and if the elevators were still not working, we would take the stairs the 99 flights to the bottom. This is us waiting for the elevator!
Finally, we decided to take the stairs down to the bottom. After running down 27 more flights, the door was open to a Law Firm on the 72nd floor, and a guy said that we could take the elevator from there. He was just one of the guys working on that floor, and I'm not even sure he knew what had been going on up at the 103rd and 99th floors. When we got to the bottom, we were quickly rushed outside because they were having a mandatory evacuation. Apparently (as we learned from one of the firefighters outside), there had been some falling glass. The wind from the storm had blown out a couple windows, and they couldn't let anybody inside until they were fixed. We were more than happy to be leaving! They were blocking of the street and sidewalk outside the building we just came out of. We made our way through an adjacent building in order to get to Giordano's, where we wanted to eat. from the street outside Giordano's, we could see the missing windows!

We made it home safely on Father's Day! It actually took us about half an hour less time to get home because we went around Chicago and Indianapolis instead of going through the cities and getting stuck in traffic, like we did on the way there!