Embarrassing Confession #1: Or, Why One Should Keep Up With Sports

One of the advantages of living in Milwaukee is that you are spittin' distance from Chicago: about an hour and a half during low traffic times. This means that it's easy, even with two small children, to say, "Hey! Let's go to Chicago this weekend!"

Last fall we found out about the ASTC Passport Program, which gives you free or discounted admission to science museums (mostly in North America, but a few in other parts of the world) if you become a member of any participating museum. And we found out that by joining Discovery World in Milwaukee, we'd qualify for free admission to science museums in Chicago, including the Field Museum and the Museum of Science and Industry. (There's a rule about having to live 90 miles away, as the crow flies; we're just barely beyond that, I think. Or maybe it's that the museums have to be 90 miles apart. Or maybe it's both. The rule is a little confusing, in my opinion.)

So, since the semester still hasn't started, we figured we'd take the boys down for a little museum-going. We settled on the Field, since our younger son Max is very much into dinosaurs, of which the Field has plenty. We spent the afternoon there on Saturday, but we didn't have quite enough time to take in the Gold exhibit, primarily of interest to our older son Baz, who speculated about whether it might be possible to steal some of it. So we decided to return on Sunday morning (we had booked a hotel room not far away).

This is where the title of this post comes in. Had we been following the NFL playoffs more closely (don't worry, we knew that the Packers had beaten the Falcons the night before; we even watched much of the Steelers-Ravens game on the big TV in our restaurant), we would have known that the Bears would be playing at Soldier Field on Sunday afternoon. (If you're unfamiliar with Chicago's lakefront, Soldier Field is across the street from the Field Museum - named after Marshall Field, not Soldier Field.) Needless to say, the traffic was kind of bad. And museum parking was nonexistent.

We cut our losses and drove down to the Museum of Science and Industry, where we didn't have a lot of time to explore (we'd been there a couple of times before anyway) - but there was at least enough time for Max and me to take in the indoor plumbing exhibit. (Why doesn't the museum site provide a link? It's one of the museum's less flashy exhibits, to be sure, but Max and I took great delight in watching the waste water go to the sewer. Granted, this is a time in Max's life in which toilets are of exceptionally great interest.)

So to sum up, my advice:

1) Don't go to the Field Museum when the Bears are playing at home.

2) The ASTC Passport program is a good deal, but don't forget that nothing is truly free in Chicago. It costs money just to get in the city, and that's just the beginning.

3) Make sure to check out the see-through toilet at the Museum of Science and Industry. You won't be disappointed.