Pride Parade fell on our last day in Chicago. Our apartment was just east of the parade route near Lake Shore drive which gave me a false sense of security that we would have a clear exit route to the airport. Also, the parade started at noon, so it would definitely be over and traffic would be a breeze by the time we needed to leave. HA! Wrong.

Michael, my fiancé, kept insisting that we needed to leave by 4 to get to the airport; our flight was at 9 so worst case, a 90 minute Uber ride would give us 3.5 hours at O’Hare. I’m really glad he was paranoid because as it turned out, not only did the Pride Parade make traffic a nightmare, it also put us in a restricted Uber zone from the hours of 8am to 8pm…

Our friend Jon came over around 3:30 to say goodbye (our pre-planned goodbye lunch was also foiled by the festivities) and thank god he was there! When Uber failed, we tried to call a cab service to request a van which also failed – this is about when panic set it. Luckily, Jon, who was calm, cool and collected, had Lyft on his phone and they were picking up in our area. Even though it was more than double the normal fare we jumped on it.

Thankfully, our driver was relentless. After realizing he would not be able to get off Lake Shore Drive coming north on our exit and not be able to pick us up at our building, he worked with us to devise a plan where most drivers would have cancelled. He went a few miles up Lake Shore to where he could finally turn around and would take our exit coming South (that one was open). Because he could not come to us, Jon helped us haul our 7 overpacked bags to the off ramp to wait for our driver, Mohammed. After 45 minutes and many tactical phone calls he finally got to us. At 5:15 we loaded our bags on the on-ramp and finally made it out of the city and to the airport with time to spare. Mohammed, thank you for never giving up on our trip! 

And Jon, thank you for sticking with us to find the seemingly impossible solution – great friends like you are truly hard to come by!