Mr. Cub & A Crazy Night of Random Fun

So....that's right. That's a picture of Ernie Banks. If you don't know who that is, well he's Mr. Cub, one of the greatest Cub players of all time. Last night Jason and I attended a charity wine tasting event in honor of Mr. Ernie Banks.

So as I have mentioned Jason is a writer on a baseball fan blog called, Goatriders. The writers of the site were contacted last week about if they would be interested in covering the event this charity wine event. Jason immediately jumped at the opportunity and said that I, as the official Goatriders photographer, would need to attend as well.

I met Jason downtown after work and we stopped at Monks on Lake St. (Awesome place to hit after work for beers and snacks) and had the aforementioned beers and snack while we were waiting to head over to the Kinzie Chophouse for the event which started at 6:30pm. So a few beers & chicken tenders heavier we made our way north.

I am always early for everything (except when we are supposed to meet Jake and LaurA! out somewhere and so I feel that they think I'm lying about my need to be early...well they haven't ever flown with me so they don't really know the true crazy...ANYWARS) and so we got there at about 6:10. The people at the door recognized Jason's name (we were on the list! That's right, we're awesome) and we made our way in. At this point no one was there except for a few reporters and Ernie Banks. Jason and I of course are way star stuck and were caught on more than one occasion staring at him with our mouths agape. The room was also *really* small. We thought this was going to be a big deal and we were just going to take some pictures and whatever. It was a really nice deal and very personal feeling.

So apparently VinLozano Imports, opted to start a philanthropic wine project called Charity Wines. About 75% of all import proceeds go directly to the charity of the 500 Home Run Club member's charity of choice. (It should be noted that the previous two sentences are literally copied word for word from CharityHop's website). We got some glasses of the new 512 Chardonnay and made our way to the back of the room. I'm a red wine girl and so I'm usually just ok with white. Well this wine was *delicious*!

I was really nervous about taking pictures but had to as that is why I was able to come to the event. I'm sure the dude from WBBM radio who got a flash right in his eye was less than thrilled with me, but he called the wine a "Chard" and so I was all like, whatever.

So when we were there and no one else was around Ernie Banks came up and just started talking to us. We were trying to not sound like big nerds who didn't know what they were doing here . He asked us what we did and we told him that we were physicists and from that point on we were like his best friend. He would walk around the room and talk to other people and then he would end up back by us or just walking by and he would say, "These are my friends, the physicists." Can you believe that! How awesome is that.

Then after the crowd had rethinned out a bit, Jason got a 10 minute one on one interview with Mr. Banks. After they had talked for awhile and I was done taking pictures, I joined them and talked to him about our neighborhood and the media in general and new camera technology. It was great. I'll leave all the details though to Jason who will be writing his full recap on the goatriders site on Monday.

But it was just a wonderful opportunity and I have to say, in good days in my life it's something like, Birth, Meeting Ernie Banks, Getting Married. So yeah, it was pretty awesome. For all the pictures from the Ernie Banks evening check out this smugmug gallery.

So after we left I had to call someone and so the someone ended up being the RunningJayhawk herself. She answered and I started screaming, "OH MY GOD WE JUST GOT TO TALK TO ERNIE BANKS AND WE TOOK PICTURES AND HE'S LIKE OUR BEST FRIEND NOW DO YOU WANT TO SEE PICTURES!!!!!" So she said yes, and we headed over there to show them the pictures I had taken.

Well it just turned into one of those nights. Jason and I were already a little bit tipsy from the 512 Chard (oh please) and then I was all like I'm going to be best friend ever and get these kids drunk and so they won't be getting up early to go get their swim in. Yes I'm just that awesome of a person. So we laughed and drank more and laughed some more and drank some more. I do believe that Mike was drinking some Rum and Cokes and so I think that Barb and Jason and I finished off 2 bottles of wine...could that be right. My headache this morning was saying that it was. And obviously the 3 mile run didn't happen but whatever, I'll take a great evening with Ernie Banks and some of our bestest friends over a workout any day.

It was just a really really fun night. Those Kansas kids are so great and we might have planned a NIGHT! OF! FUN! coming up next month which should be a *riot*. For more pictures of our night of crazy head to this other smugmug gallery.