[I was going to post this on the front page earlier in the week, but it's already getting late on Wednesday so we're saving front page stuff for Ohio State.  Here's a picture recap of our trip to Chicago.]

Not that we had a lot of extra time to roam around, but Chicago is rather excellent.  Great vibe to the city, beautiful scenery, nice people.  Cheap public transportation.  Really, all of the things that are good about big cities.  We drove up to Evanston and tailgated with the PSU-Chicago group, which ran an All You Can Eat/Drink deal. 

Eventually, we took the shuttle over to Ryan Field, which was probably 40% Penn State fans.  Although nobody had seats quite as good as these two guys:

The stadium is old.  Really old.  At least it looks really old.  The upper deck you see in the picture above couldn't have been more than 5% occupied.  The endzone bleachers never got more crowded than what you see in the picture. 

Ryan Field wasn't without its charm, though.  Concessions were cheap, lines were short, and getting around the place was easy.  Northwestern has the names of their All-Americans across the façade of the upper deck, along with their bowl appearances (and yes, they actually posted their 2003 Motor City Bowl appearance up there).

So, yes, lots of Penn State images:

And yay we won.

The next day, we did a little walking around Millenium Park and the Wicker Park neighborhood.  And seriously, giant shiny jellybean:

This is "Cloud Gate":

The 110-ton elliptical sculpture is forged of a seamless series of highly polished stainless steel plates, which reflect the city's famous skyline and the clouds above. A 12-foot-high arch provides a "gate" to the concave chamber beneath the sculpture, inviting visitors to touch its mirror-like surface and see their image reflected back from a variety of perspectives.

And yeah, it's kind of massive and cool.  Half the fun was watching other people be amazed by it. 

Would love to check out Madison someday, but it's hard to beat Chicago for a weekend road trip.