"Canning" Adventures

This past weekend, I went "canning" for the first time.  Basically, my friend is raising money for her school's Dance Marathon, and we went downtown to stand around with a big red bucket and beg for money.

Overall, it was one huge adventure, and it was a lot of fun! 

A recap of our day:

I got off work around 3 pm, and we were planning on taking the 4:47 train into the city.  But, of course, we pulled into the station just as the train was closing its doors.  My friend is not a fan of driving on expressways, but the next train wasn't for another two hours, so we decided to just drive.  

A combination of detours, confusing iPhone directions, and shady neighborhoods led us to South Chicago before we found our way to the Tollway.  This was only kind of scary and was definitely made better by the sight of this:

But...why?

That, my friends, is a Cadillac on the tallest wheels I've ever seen.  In addition to that, it had BALLS hanging from the back of it? WHAT? We were laughing hysterically the entire time.  You know you're in South Chicago when you see THAT.

After a few more wrong turns and one near accident when a little boy ran into the street, we made it onto the expressway.  Before long, we saw this beautiful sight:

The Cell and the Chitown skyline-perfection.

Canning itself was probably one of the funniest things I've ever done.  My friend has done it up at school a bunch of times, but it was never something I'd done.  We picked a light post to stand by and just started asking people if they wanted to donate.  

At first,  I was not feeling it, and it just seemed like creepy people were talking to us.  But eventually, we were getting some serious donations.  Granted, the majority of them came from drunk men asking us what we were doing later, but hey, it's for the kids, right? 

Standing on a Chicago street asking for money may seem like a weird thing to do, but it ended up being a good time.   

My thoughts in a nutshell:

• 9/10 times, women our age would NOT donate.  
• Old ladies were telling us we were cute and OF COURSE they would donate.
• When you tell me you have no money, but then pat your pockets and change jingles, you're not fooling ANYONE.

We ended before the sun set because we didn't want to walk around with a bucket of money in the city, but I did get to take one fun picture with the Art Institute Lions:

We're tight.

 It only ended up being a three hour trip, but it was exhausting!

Can't wait for my next foray in canning.