On Friday the 3rd, I was bound and determined to see some fireworks, even if I had to go it alone. Which I did; Cass said going downtown seemed like "a lot of trouble to go to for something I've already seen." So I hung out in the office until around 7, then took a backback full of food and books and laptop, plus the lawn chair I'd hauled all the way downtown, and tried to take a bus out to the museum campus, where the Adler Planetarium sticks waaaay out into Lake Michigan and provides a perfect side-on view of Navy Pier and Grant Park, where the fireworks go up from. There's a bus that goes RIGHT THERE, all the way out to the end of the promonotory. Easy, right?

Nope. Mass-teria. The police had shut down Michigan and State streets — two major north-south arteries that take most of the bus traffic — and all the buses were being re-routed, largely by having confused, irritated CTA personnel at every bus stop, yelling to the bus drivers "There's a detour! You can't go down Michigan!" When I first got on the bus, there was so much chaos at the bus stop that I asked the bus driver "Are you still going to the museum campus?" He said "I don't know. I guess I'll find out when we get there."

Traffic was terrible, but worse was the way no one seemed to know what was going on. The people on the bus, who were mostly going downtown to Taste Of Chicago, were surprisingly patient and non-screamy about the fact that the bus they'd boarded was taking them blocks away from where it normally went and where they wanted to go, but a lady next to me started trying to get me involved in bitching about the CTA and how badly everything was run and how terrible everything was. I essentially said "They're doing the best they can with a confusing situation that keeps changing," and I pointedly went back to reading my book.

It took more than an hour to make a 20-minute trip, and the bus driver ended up pretty frazzled, especially when none of those CTA bus-stop minders could answer any of his questions about where he was supposed to go and whether the museum campus was accessible, and one of them started screaming at him for stopping at the bus stop. He kept saying "They told me to honor all stops" and asking how he was supposed to know which stops to use, and she just kept yelling about how this wasn't his stop. He started addressing random loud comments to no one in particular about "These managers, they all stupid," and generally talking to himself.

When we got down to the museums, the cops were letting buses through into places cordoned off from cars, so we were able to bypass traffic and get to the edge of the promonotory, but the place itself was cordoned off; he said, philosophically, "Well, I think this is about as close as we're gonna get." So we all thanked him for his patience and tenaciousness, and got off. And I walked all the way out to the Adler.

The promonotory is a great place for the fireworks, probably BECAUSE it's increasingly hard to get to as the fireworks get closer; there's a parking lot out there (though it was full by the time I arrived), and some people had clearly taken advantage: There were a number of large groups with their own tables, chairs, grills, and 20-person encampments, happily grilling away. But it was much less crowded than Grant Park, and I could have showed up with a 20-person group of my own and still had no problem finding space for them out on the point. So I found a nice spot, set down my chair, and started reading.

Half an hour later, it became clear that I'd seriously miscalculated. It had been a hot day and was supposed to be a warm night; there had been predictions of thunderstorms, so I was wearing my lightest, breathiest shorts and short-sleeved shirts, the ones that dry in minutes if soaked in the inevitable "Tasha is at a public outdoor event" rain.

Everyone around me was wearing sweaters, winter jackets, and long pants, and they were huddled up against each other under blankets, complaining about how cold it was.

So yeah, I nearly froze, and by the time the fireworks started going off two hours later, I could no longer use my laptop because my fingers were too numb to type. It wasn't so much that it was a cold night, but there was a strong wind coming right off the lake into our faces, and it was like standing in front of an industrial air conditioner.

Still, the fireworks were awesome.

However, people are so profoundly dumb. Things are blowing up! Ooo! Aaah! Ohhhh! And everyone was happy and quiet for 20 minutes, except for little pleasure noises and one extremely loud, attention-mongering woman shouting "Now that's what I'm talkin' 'bout!" every few seconds. And then as soon as they were over, I got up and headed for warmth and passed two different conversations where people were bitching about how LAST year the fireworks had been SO much better, and this year they were BARELY fireworks at all and why did they even BOTHER, omigod. Also, predictably, the parking lot was completely jammed up, with people leaning angrily on their horns as though that would make the hundreds of people in their way magically evaporate. Pft.

I'd invited Chris to come down and join me for some hanging out and outdoor gaming, but he went to dinner with friends and didn't start trying to get downtown until 8, at which point Lake Shore Drive north was closed off and the rest of the city was a parking lot, so he parked by his workplace and we found each other after the fireworks and wandered around downtown in the city, where (literally, according to news reports) one million people were trying to get home. A general holiday attitude naturally prevailed, with kids and dogs playing everywhere. We sat down on a hill around 9th and Michigan and just talked and watched the humanity-stream flow for a while. When we finally tried to leave, it felt like Escape From New York with far fewer guns — people and blockades and cars everywhere, and the whole place seething with hyper energy. We couldn't get to his car because it was right by the place where one teenager shot four others downtown, and several streets were blocked off. We passed right by one of the crime scenes, where half a dozen cops were laying down numbered markers on the street, and we had to walk in a big loop to get around a dozen police cars and vans and a fire truck. We weren't really on our way until close to midnight, at which point I was exhausted and vibrating from all the crowd energy.

But I'd do it all over again in an instant. Except this time with better clothes and a blanket.