Chicago's answer to the Philly Cheese Steak

It all started more than a month ago when I got an email from my youngest daughter offering to chip in with her sister to buy me a plane ticket so I could come out and visit them for her son's first birthday party in mid-October. Val and I talked it over, first considering [Alert! Motorcycle content ahead!] allowing them to pay for the gas if I rode out instead. It would be about 12 hours each way, definitely doable from a ride perspective, but we decided it wasn't worth it to spend 24 hours on the slab and in Chicago traffic in October. Especially to a destination in a redeveloped area of the south side that I'had never been to (it turned out that the route to their house is not trivial, and parking for the bike would have been exposed). So I accepted the offer of the plane ticket. Val is wise: she suggested I UPS my clothes ahead, which I did, along with a gift for each kid, and the trip through the two airports was reasonably painless. So. Three daughters, two sons-in-law (one's in training at a military base), four grandsons, and one each of granddaughter, sister, niece, niece's hubby, brother, brother's girlfriend, and a dog. Oh yes—a daughter's friend, and for the actual party on Saturday, a couple in-laws. Infant and toddler antics and birthday parties are universal experiences, so imagine these on this trip as the same as your experiences, except my grandkids are cuter and smarter. And better behaved. What does all this have to do with Philly cheese steaks? Next paragraph, but you need a little more background. Thursday we went straight to the Adler planetarium to see their $3 million overhead projector and then we went to lunch. To a place called Ricobene's (pronounced rik-a-bennies, not rik-o-beans). This place is a very 50's cafe, with a big L-shaped dining room surrounding a clean dark-wood-trimmed ordering area with the kitchen just visible behind it. The floor is entirely black and white one-inch tiles, also clean, and the walls are covered with hundreds of period photographs. Seating is at tables scattered all around, and the clientelle is everything from suits to construction workers. They also do a brisk carry-out business. You can park across the street under a highway overpass. My custom when I'm in a new place is to look around with interest and announce to the order taker that "I've never been here before in my life," which tends to make them especially interested in helping me have a good time, and they tend to talk slower and try to moderate my confusion (remind me to tell you about the couple who visited Okonomowoc). As I studied the menu, the lady suggested that if it was my first time here, I ought to try the breaded steak. (Well, Chicago is in the midwest, and they do steak out here a lot better than out east, and I always follow my order-taker's suggestion under these circumstances anyway), so that's what I ordered, expecting something like a chicken-fried steak. Well, it kind of was. It was a whole steak, maybe a third of an inch thick, breaded, in a hoagie bun, accompanied by a couple slices of cheese and a drippingly generous slathering of red spaghetti sauce. I could have gotten peppers, too. It was pretty good if you don't mind needing several napkins, and it was probably just about as healthy as a Philly cheese steak. Certainly filled me up. More motorcycle content: We visited my brother's place for supper Friday night. He happens to own a late model Silver Wing, and he let me try it. He said the 600 cc engine could make it go 100 mph. I didn't try for that, but it certainly was peppy. Automatic tranny—twist and go. Reasonably comfortable, but it didn't feel like it would work for me for long distance riding. I felt as if I was sliding forward. The sensation of not having a shift lever under my foot made me feel like something was missing, and it's easy to generate unexpected results if you start to pull in the clutch to downshift—both handlebar levers go to the ABS brakes, which are as grabby as the bike is peppy. It was fun, but I'll stick with my Beemer touring bike. Saturday morning I took everyone out to breakfast at another local place, where our waitress was Russian (a nice one, Jack) and she liked it when I said "thank you" to her in Russian. And the last timid grandkid decided I was all right. As I write this, the Saturday afternoon party is fast approaching, and I'll descend into a maelstrom of family festivities. Then it'll be time to think about whether to ride a motorcycle home, or an airplane. Probably the latter—that ride is paid for.