David to Chicago: Part Four The Final Chapter

Downtown Naperville is what every town in America is striving to obtain. It is honestly a totally cool downtown that is probably 6-7 city blocks filled with shops, restaurants and bars. It was buzzing with people when we arrived at about 8:30. It was almost impossible to find a parking spot, we cruised the entire parking garage and finally lucked out on the street. Bordered on one side by a 5 mile brick walking path down the Dupage River it is a just perfect.

We chose, what else?, a Chicago style pizza place called Lou Malnati's. This pizza was great. Definitely recommend the butter crust deep dish style. http://www.loumalnatis.com/ We enjoyed some Sam Adams and and the pizza then cruised around downtown for a bit.

Next day we headed back to David's place and got him unpacked, went to Target, Bed Bath and Beyond, etc to get him all hooked up. He even picked up some new furniture. We had lunch at Portillos, http://www.portillos.com/portillos/look/, a must stop while in the Midwest. Portillos makes great hot dogs. We went to the Naperville location where the line was around the block to get a dog. We opted to go inside and the service was quick and food terrific.

We picked up, Shawn and Lindsay at O'hare who were flying back from Amarillo after visiting the family. We stopped off for Italian food that night at Carrabas and it was good as usual. Only funny part was the waiter, who basically insisted that he was the best waiter we would ever have , and refused to write down our order, only to screw up Lindsay's order. To compensate of course, he stared at his book and blamed the kitchen!

Next morning we headed to Davids new church Community Christian Church (CCC), http://www.communitychristian.org/. This is a forward looking church that has several campus locations but teaches the same message at each campus. David is going to be working at the Romeoville location which was the first official satellite location. They have a very nice facility for the youth programs and then have the services in the community center there. The service was a lot of fun and everyone was very friendly and seemed excited to have David there. We had time after the service to hit the "Yellow Box" service back at the main campus back in Naperville. There we got to meet some of the staff and check out the service there for comparison.

We grabbed lunch and wrapped up back at David's apartment. It was already time to head back to Amarillo (Southwest this time!!). So onto the next adventure!

David to Chicago: Part Three My Kind of Town!

We hop in the truck the next morning and trying to get to Omaha. Immediately we notice that the trailer is pulling all over the road if we got anywhere over 55 mph. Not good for a 15 hour trek. After about an hour we had had enough and decided to pull over and re-stack the the trailer which involved pulling about 3/4 of the trailer out and then putting it all back with a little more weight balance. A painful process but luckily it worked and we were able to top 70 for the rest of the trip.


Nebraska is boring. No doubt about it. So I won't go on about the grass and cornfields. We stopped for the night in Omaha and had a great steak at the a place called The Drover. It is a little hole in the wall place on 73rd street. There Whiskey Steak is the bomb. Served with no frills this marinade that the use is excellent.

That night we stayed at the Comfort Inn and Suites which has a great bar called FireWater Grill. We were luck to get to hear a really talented performer named Monica Eby. Check her out here : http://www.monicaeby.blogspot.com/ Sang some really fun covers, but has a super original lineup as well. David and I got a chance to talk to here after the set. She actually started out in gospel at a local church that is a sister church to Trinity Fellowship in Amarillo. She even adopted her twins from a family in Amarillo so we had a small connection. Anyway lookout Nashville, this one is going to be good.

Next day we headed through Iowa and stopped in Davenport. We had lunch at The Machine Shed. This great home cooking chain was started at this Davenport location. http://www.machineshed.com I had a pork sandwich that was awesome. Great home cooked meal. I got Shannon a John Deere T-shirt that says "Country Girl". How appropriate!

We drove through a nasty rain storm (that spawned lots of tornadoes along the Iowa/Illinois border). But we made it to Aurora just in time to get David's keys and find his apartment. Got David moved into the 3rd floor apartment (I will not forget that David!) just before the rain came in.

We headed over to Shawn and Lindsay's place to shower up and headed to downtown Naperville . . .