Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

It’s that time again! This weekend my wife Anne and I attended the latest edition of the Chicago Comic and Entertainment Exposition (“C2E2″), a three-day extravaganza of comic books, actors, creators, toys, props, publishers, freebies, plush dolls, variant covers, anime we don’t recognize, and walking and walking and walking and walking. We missed the inaugural 2010 gala and presciently skipped the February 2020 pre-shutdown soiree, but more often than not, whenever they send out the call to convene, we’re happy to answer…

…and sometimes we even take a break from photographing cosplayers and leave some margin in our schedule so we can see at least a little of Chicago beyond McCormick Place. In all the times we’ve traveled out of our Indianapolis hometown, it’s the one city we’ve visited out-of-state more than any other. Obviously all those conventions are 90% of our incentives, but Chicago has other sights to see and it’s much closer than NYC.

As previously mentioned, Anne originally couldn’t get that Friday off because too many of her coworkers beat her to it. She was on their standby list for weeks with little hope. She was scheduled to report to the office that morning for a full shift and get off at 6 pm EDT at the earliest. Once she eventually got home despite rush hour traffic, then we could leave for Chicago and pray the normally three-hour drive didn’t go awry somewhere. That’d get us into town no sooner than 9:30 pm EDT (8:30 local CDT), plus time elapsed for drive-thru supper, impromptu pit stops for us olds as needed, construction zone slowdowns, gridlock, interstate pileups, tollbooth delays from elderly drivers paying entirely with nickels, roaming “No Kings” protestors, Iranian nukes, or unpredictable cornfield earthquakes, which aren’t a thing yet, but we wouldn’t have been surprised if this had been their big moment to begin existing.

We could’ve shaved off some minutes if Anne had simply been allowed to work-from-home as usual, which she’s been doing full-time for nearly six years. So of course the brain trust at Comcast decided C2E2 week, of all possible weeks, was the perfect week to suck, and to screw up our neighborhood’s internet service for four straight days during day-job hours while they quote-unquote “upgraded” our services, which probably meant laying new mousetraps next to any chewed-up portions of their exterior cables and wires. Because a reliable ‘net connection is a job requirement, she was ordered to head to the office Friday. We weren’t happy. We fully expected to arrive in Chicago just in time to go to bed.

Then came the sort of last-minute reprieve usually seen only in weepy movies: Friday morning, moments before she was about to chuck her peripherals in the car and reluctantly report for in-person duty, The Powers That Be finally granted her time-off request. Unfortunately it was far too late to buy same-day C2E2 tickets (unless we wanted to park several blocks away) and hadn’t made any contingency sightseeing plans. We settled for leaving in the early afternoon at a time that, had all gone perfectly, would’ve gotten us to the hotel exactly at check-in time. Yeah, I know, we’re talking about Chicago. We can dream.

Alas, the dream was short-lived: not only was I-65 semi-infested most of the way, I-90 West in northern Indiana was cordoned down to a single lane for several snail-paced miles due to imaginary construction — no equipment, no workers, nary a hole torn into the asphalt, just a long line of stupid orange cones. That delayed us just enough that we reached downtown Chicago during Central Daylight rush hour, which is always miserable.

We were surrounded by dinner options of all price ranges. We Googled and Googled and Googled; after viewing numerous places, I used the OpenTable app to break the dozen-way tie. As of 5:45 CDT, one of the few restaurants with 6:00 reservations available was The Albert, an Italian establishment inside the hotel across the street.

(We walked past the doggie sculpture out front last year!)

(To be candid: I won’t pretend to have the most sophisticated palate, and I don’t make Hamburger Helper jokes lightly, but I wasn’t picking up nearly as many herbs and/or spices as I’d expect from a restaurant with such an elegant facade.)

On the way back to our room, we shared an elevator with a chatty Asian couple who complimented Anne’s glasses and invited us to go clubbing with them. No stranger has ever asked either of us to go clubbing, not in all of recorded world history. Believe me, I’d remember and I’d have written about it here by now. People we know never even invite us clubbing. Then again, most of them know our shortcomings that leave us ill-suited for the party-hearty world, such as the part where we don’t drink. But I mean, you’ve seen our jazz-hands pics, our ages and our shapes. I would not describe either of us as “club-o-genic”.

It was kinda flattering, though now that I think about it, maybe they were actually con artists picking up on our strong bumpkin vibes and plotting to fleece us. We’ll never know! We politely declined by telling the truth: we had an early morning ahead of us — i.e., targeting our usual 8 a.m. deadline to get into McCormick Place’s Lot A. (We parked farther away in Lot B once when we were younger and less unhealthy. Once.)

We endured the usual Friday night hotel-party noise, plus a crying baby across the hall. We stared at the dingy, unfinished ceiling and tuned out the ruckus with our usual sonic defense — Comedy Central reruns of The Office till those run out, then switching to HLN reruns of Forensic Files, except these were some of the earlier episodes, when it was originally called Medical Detectives. We can sleep through just about anything if we’re lulled by the cozy narration-blanket of the late Peter Thomas.

Saturday morning we walked to the next block over for breakfast at Do-Rite Donuts and Chicken, a local mini-chain with five Chicagoland locations. We last tried them seven years ago as a C2E2 Sunday epilogue and somehow had been diverted from them ever since. I blame their hardy competitors at Stan’s Donuts & Coffee, who’ve gotten our attention a few times.

The chicken sandwich was grade-A but messy. When you’re planning for celeb photo ops within the next several hours, you do not need mayo dribbling down your shirt.

Not pictured: Anne also ordered a breakfast sandwich with avocado, egg and cheese. That whetted her appetite well enough that she set her donut aside, which we ended up splitting the next day.

That’s pretty much it for C2E2 weekend photo outtakes. We didn’t bother taking pics of our Saturday dinner, which was McDonald’s drive-thru in Merrillville on the way back to Indy. In a major judgment lapse on my part, I decided this was the perfect opportunity to try their controversial new Big Arch sandwich. It’s just a Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese on a slightly larger bun, but with weird sauce (not Big Mac sauce, though it was the same color), different cheese, shredded lettuce, and crunchy onions that mostly fell off as soon as I lifted it out of the box. It was so much messier than the Do-Rite chicken sandwich that we had to park and eat in their side lot before I could safely resume driving. And yeah, I finished the whole thing except for the thick layer of fallen crunchy onions covering the box bottom. It’s not that huge; it’s just charmlessly awkward.

We arrived home shortly after 9 p.m. EDT with new memories, new graphic novels, new stickers, new memories, new muscle pains that faded in a couple days, new celebrity names to add to our ongoing master list and new photo ops to add to our jazz-hands Pinterest gallery. We’re the Goldens. It’s who we are and what we do.

…or in some cases, what we don’t do. Our list of Strangers We’ve Gone Clubbing With remains at zero.