Sailing, Takes me Away...

As a thank you for hosting some giveaways and blogging about Lands' End products (which I honestly love), Amanda from Lands' End invited me, Kim from Hormone Colored Days, and Lisa from My Thoughts, Ideas and Ramblings to take a little sail around Lake Michigan today. (Lands' End is a sponsor and participant in this year's Race to Mackinac.) I'd never even heard of The Race to Mackinac before this month and now I'm so excited about it, I'm thinking of heading downtown to see the boats off on Saturday! If anyone's interested, you can follow the race HERE.


(from left to right)
me, Randy, Lisa, Kim


Chicago


Chicago


Navy Pier





Anyway, we climbed aboard their boat, Guaranteed. Period. (named after Lands' End's guarantee; not some form of birth control) where Randy, one of six crew members who will be racing this weekend, taught us a little bit about sailing. Wow! How fun! I'd never been sailing before but I LOVE water and I love boats so naturally, I loved sailing! Randy even let me steer the boat for quite a while. I didn't do too badly either. Well, except for the time when he said, "You have to tell me if you're going to tack."

"Tack? Um, I'm not sure what that is, but I just had a brain malfunction and forgot for a minute that you have to move the steering thingy to the left if you want to go right. Oops." It was a beautiful, windy day so Randy just had the jib (little sail at the front) raised while we were out so thankfully I didn't knock anyone off the boat with my little, um, sudden, uh, mistake turn.

After a very enjoyable cruise out on the lake, we headed to shore where we had lunch outside at the yacht club. We just couldn't have asked for nicer weather. And after waking up to thunderstorms, it was a pleasant surprise.

From the lake, I started toward the train station, but realized there was no way I'd make the 2:30 train, so instead, I walked to Millennium Park. The new Millennium Park has been there for like 10 years and yet I still hadn't seen it. It was time.


the bean



Then I walked 5000 2 miles to the train station. The wrong train station. Yeah, because that's the kind of thing I do. Want to know why I walked? Because I was afraid to hail a cab Because I needed the exercise. And it would've been a mile and a quarter except I had to get lost take the scenic route.

I've put more than 50 other pictures up on Flickr. If you want to check them out, you can click HERE.