Weekends in the forest

Spare time is indeed spare. I don’t know how time passes. Yet it’s goes slowly. Weekends, especially the last couple, have just flown by. Last weekend I went to visit the Baha’i Temple in the suburb of Linden. It was a lovely rain washed day with dark clouds but just enough warmth. The temple itself was simply lovely, a towering, white dome made of stone. The pillars were carved with symbols of faiths from around the world and the temple is surrounded by lush gardens and fountains. The neighborhood of Linden is lined with picturebook houses complete with the famous white picket fence and even a small golf course. The houses were too good to be true, they had such lovely designs.

On Sunday we went to the Springbrook Nature Centre in a place called the Village of Itasca in the suburbs. All these places are considered villages (can you believe that) and they are called as the “Village of …” I needed to take the Metra, which is the train that plies between Chicago and the suburbs. It’s a small town, they call it a village, and it had three different hiking trails. A couple of them went through woods and forests and one of them by a soybean field. It was simply breathtaking and the scenery was picture perfect. Like a postcard. Using the Metra is not too difficult once you figure out how to get to the station usually through a combination of bus and walking. Different places involve going to different Metra stations.

This weekend K/G, Dazz and I went to two places. On Saturday we went to the Morton Arboretum in the Village of Lisle, which is a huge park. They have recreated different kinds of forests incorporated with long hiking trails through them. That took the whole day, as we hiked through some five different trails seeing deciduous and tropical foliage. We saw different kinds of trees, many of them endangered. The weather helped, it was actually hot and sunny. The only experience that I can call ‘bad’ was the fact that my arms got eaten up by huge mosquitoes in the tropical forest section and by the time I came home I had huge red welts all over my arms. Thankfully I wasn’t wearing shorts! Other than that the hike was beautifully tiring and we had clocked around 18 km that day.

The next day Shanghai joined us and we went to the Chicago Botanic Garden in the posh suburb of Glencoe. This is one of the more affluent suburbs and also home to a few famous people including Fred Savage, the guy every girl swooned over in The Wonder Years.

That is Fred Savage as “Kevin” in the Wonder Years on the left and the way he looks now.
We didn’t see much of the town since we didn’t have the time. But the Botanic Garden was a splash of color with vegetable gardens, potted plants, sprawling greens with flowers in all shapes and sizes and a waterfall. We had just about time to finish seeing this beautiful tract before it was time to rush to take the Metra. The problem with the Metra is that on weekends it’s scheduled to run every two hours instead of every one hour like the weekdays. So if we miss the 4.40 train the next one is at 6.30. Since it’s still very much light at the time it’s quite ok to take a late train, so it depends on how much there is left to see in each place.

It is also safe enough to take the Metra because there is always someone from the Railway Police present. You have the option to buy tickets on the train on the Metra, so there is also a ticket collector always walking up and down. And he looks quite formidable in his blue and white uniform with polished ticket punching machines and keys and stuff jangling all over the place. On Saturday, a group of college students entered the train while we were returning from Lisle. They were all obviously drunk and quite in a boisterous mood, making a lot of noise and opening up beer cans. The TC came after a few minutes and warned them to stop the party or they would be thrown out. But they were really not in their senses I guess, and after some time the railway policeman came. There were two Indians in the group. He singled out one of the Indian guys, made the train stop in the middle of nowhere and escorted him out. The other Indian guy got flustered and he jumped out at the next station to rescue his mate. I am inclined to think that it was more racism because even after he went the “blondes” left in the group were continuing their party, albeit at a lower decibel, with the policeman watching over constantly from the door. It was quite a scene and reminded me of the presence of racism. If it was racism.

Well, the other thing worth mentioning is that I bought myself a new swim suit thinking I will learn swimming. Dazz knows swimming and we anyway need to go to a pool at least three times a week for K/G’s leg therapy. We located one about 20 minutes away from the office and we have decided to make it a swimming outing for all of us. Dazz is supposed to teach me the basics of swimming and I shall be reporting on my progress soon. And the best part of it all? It’s FREE! The place where we go is in Pulaski Park and it’s a community pool. But very clean, hygienic and not too deep.

That is my pool

That’s it from me at the end of a long post.