Grievous Injuries, Joyous Victories

Although the job situation in Chicago certainly causes me quite a bit of grief, there is something that I look upon every day that makes me even sadder: a beautiful stallion, born to race, born for speed, severely injured, left to die alone in the middle of a dirty city lot, so far from its natural habitat, the open road. The images that follow are graphic and may make my male followers cringe, but I felt that a story this sad had to be shared with the world.

I first noticed this wrecked Ferrari 360 Modena while looking out on the parking lot that sits caddy-corner to our penthouse suite. There are quite a few wrecked cars sitting over there rotting away, but this is by far the most noticeable, mostly due to how exotic and out of place it is in a wrecker lot in downtown Chicago and also due to the severe state of disrepair the car is in. As you can see in the picture above, a significant portion of the left front bumper is missing and the rest is cracked and scraped pretty badly. However, the damage to the front pales in comparison to the rear damage.

The rear bumper has been ripped nearly all the way off. How, I don't know, but the whole thing is riddled with cracks and ready to fall completely apart. It's also apparent the car has been sitting there a while, as the exposed structure underneath has begun to weather pretty harshly. The tailpipes you can see on the right are actually beginning to rust and a lot of the trim around the windows has begun to peel and fade. The Ferrari logos on the top of the trunk area is gone as is the one on the front right quarter panel.

The interior is also in a pretty bad shape. The leather in the seats is cracking, another sign the owner hasn't come back for the car in a very long time. It's pretty dirty inside and there's a compartment behind the driver's seat that's missing a cover, showing some exposed wiring and electrical boxes. Probably the saddest segment of decay in the inside is the engine itself. Because of the bay window over the engine compartment, the paint on the engine has faded a lot. Somehow, there's dirt in the engine too, and what looks like leaves or something. I can only imagine how bad the state of this once-proud racing motor is.

There are a couple of things that baffle me about this car. One, how and why could/would someone wreck such a beautiful car? An original Ferrari 360 Modena cost around $120,000. You would think that people who are rich enough to buy such a nice car would take better care of it. And two, why, even if you wrecked it, would you not pay for repairs to your beautiful car and get it back on the road. As it is, it will rot away in that lot unless someone foots the bill to repair it. I did hear from one of the staff that the repairs could cost around $40,000, so maybe the owner thought it wasn't worth it to pay a third or more of the cost of the car to get it back. Heck, someone give me 40 thousand and I'll buy it, fix it, and then have a Ferrari for my own. Regardless, rich people baffle me with their wasteful excesses sometimes.

However, lest you think that Chicago is all rain and no sun, "The View", as we call it, was on full display a couple days ago. It is absolutely stunning to look out on the sunlit Sears Tower every day. I guess that's one of the little joys I've had while living in the Windy City. The view from the penthouse is superbly exceptional!

"The View" in peak condition

Also enjoyable was the family dinner that we had with the room of girls from 605. We invited them over for yesterday so that we as men could serve them and get to know them better. Stephen went out in the pouring rain to get groceries for us to cook and then we made sesame chicken with red peppers, snow peas, and chopped green onions. This we placed on top of brown rice and then served with Caesar salad and grapes. The girls were duly impressed. I would say the guys were equally impressed by the cake that the girls brought over for dessert. It was really fluffy and very flavorful and so, so moist. The whole dinner was a fun experience and it was nice to socialize with some of our sisters in Christ.

The green onions that I chopped for the chicken

Some Caesar salad

Steve, Dan, and Taylor hard at work impressing the ladies

The final result

Well, that's all for now. I hope this wasn't too long, but I wanted to post all these pictures and update you on some of the things that have been happening.