Chicago, Day 2 + 3

Woke up somewhat painfully and booked it down to the hotel lobby to meet up with the rest of the group for early-ish antics.

The mission: Infiltrate the St. Patrick's day parade and pass one of us off as a celebrity. So we went around the group, looking for ideas, and one was chosen to be passed off as Dan Brown, writer of The Da Vinci Code.

Plans were made, and we were off.

First run was a success. A few wanted their picture taken, nobody questioned us, we met back up at the safehouse. It was asked if we wanted to go again, and most were all for it. Round 2 would be at a recognizable landmark, but while waiting for others to catch up, I missed it. Got down there eventually, had some fun, wandered back to the hotel.

The grossly hung-over (you know who you are) went up to take a nap, the rest of us wandered off to a restaurant of quality for a couple hours. Festivities, yeah!

Regrouped in a hotel room, spent a pleasant evening just hanging out, finally packed it in and collapsed again.

Next day, woke up late for the festivities, went and caught up with the group, much fun and knowledge was spread. Our mental capacities were dwindling, though, which is why I'm abbreviating that day into a single paragraph. But my memories of it will last orders of magnitude longer than it took you to read this.

With some difficulty, the group was rounded up again, herded to another hotel room, and we were festive and silly.

In short, I wouldn't give up my memories of the time easily. I meant it when I said this was the most inclusive group of people I'd ever met, and they mean a lot to me. This weekend was just the ultimate reinforcement of it.

My deepest thanks, all of you. You know who you are.