this evening we finally did something that has been on my chicago to-do list for years: go see the Navy Pier fireworks. as a bonus, we managed to do it without actually having to brave the awfulness that is Navy Pier, because went via kayak! our tour put into the river around Halsted and Division, paddled 2.5 miles to where the river meets* lake michigan and huddled there, 30 orange duckies bobbing in a flotilla, while we watched the evening fireworks, and then paddled back. it’s a beautiful way to admire the city architecture – all lit up on a summer night and reflecting on the water’s surface. the water is…alarmingly bathtub-warm. it was a little more up close and personal than i ever thought i’d get with the chicago river, but we don’t seem to have grown a third arm or broken out in hives just yet.
Ben is an experienced kayaker. I’ve been in one only a few times. In addition to being wobbly with my kayak navigation skills, i’m pretty stubborn and independent, so in a move that i felt sure would protect my marriage**, we opted for separate kayaks instead of trying to share a two-person one.
* i say “meets” rather than “pours into” or “pours out of” because the issue of which way the chicago river flows is a sticky one:
“… in 1900, the Sanitary District of Chicago, then headed by William Boldenweck, completely reversed the flow of the Main Stem and South Branch of the river using a series of canal locks, increasing the river’s flow from Lake Michigan and causing it to empty into the newly completed Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal. In 1999, this system was named a ‘Civil Engineering Monument of the Millennium’ by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE).’
In 2005, researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign created a three-dimensional, hydrodynamic simulation of the Chicago River, which suggested that density currents are the cause of an observed bi-directional wintertime flow in the river. At the surface, the river flows east to west, away from Lake Michigan, as expected. But deep below, near the riverbed, water travels, seasonally, west to east, toward the lake.”[58]
** my brother and i had a nearly sibling-relationship-ending-argument while trying to pilot a two-person kayak around a quiet bay in thailand a few years back. while we paddled in hopeless circles and chris grew more and more frustrated with me (all warranted, probably), our travel companions sat on the sailboat, ate their breakfast and laughed at us. later it was revealed that i was sitting on something that was not, in fact, a seat, and weighing the boat down all wrong. also, i suck at 1) paddling and 2) following directions.