Doomed Dillo Day

Every May Northwestern has an event called Dillo Day. They put up two stages on the lakefront and get some surprisingly big bands to play. Starting at 7AM the students started heading out to the tailgating parties held by some of the fraternity houses.

The old expression, if you don’t like the weather in Chicago wait ten minutes, did not apply this year for Dillo day. The morning started in the 60’s with light rain but deteriorated quickly.  Enter me.

I had dropped my Goddaughter off at work at 10A. Having no idea that that this was any special day at all at the university, I put myself online just in case I could pick up a couple of rides. My first request took about 15 seconds. It was a group of 3 people that I picked up at a fraternity house.

The police officer directed me to turn. I pulled over in the middle of a crowd of about 30 students. Three of them got in. The two girls sat in the back and a very tall young man sat in front in my little car. Not having enough legroom, his legs were up high close to his body. I could see the goose flesh covering his legs. I immediately turned on the heat in the car. I looked at the display on my dashboard. It was down to 45 degrees and they had been outside in the wind and rain wearing shorts and tee shirts.

“Where too,” I asked.

“I’ll direct you,” came the reply from the guy next to me between chattering teeth.

As he directed me toward the dorms I gathered from there conversation that they were heading back to the dorms to change into warmer clothing and then heading back out to the parties. I told them that it was silly to call another ride. I would be happy to wait for them while they changed clothes.

Two of them ran in to change and one girl stayed behind in the back seat. We started to talk and I learned that they were 3 out of 5 siblings. They girl that went inside was graduating from the university and they and one other brother came down to visit her. From what I gathered the missing brother was kind of the screw-up of the family and they had lost him at the party. Her exact words were, “He’s a big boy and he’ll find his way somewhere.”

I brought them back to the party that I had picked them up from.

From the next 5 hours I spent the day shuffling students back and forth between dorms and the 3 fraternity parties going on. They all found it amusing that all they needed to do was get in the car and tell me which party they were going to and didn’t even need to give me an address.

I did pick up the same person twice, once by himself and once I picked up his friend first and then picked him up. He got in the car and said, “Hey great seeing you again.” I told him it was great that he was back in the car because the scent of his really nice cologne had started to fade.

There were two girls who were pretty drunk and speaking a language I could not place. They decided to take advantage of the option to use my Aux cable to listen to there music. I was happy to let them until the earsplitting volume started to scream from my speakers. They asked me if they could turn it up, and I asked them to please keep it low enough to not blow out my speakers. I believe that was the only less than 5 star rating I received that day.

As they day rolled on the wind picked up. By 2 o’clock they had cancelled the actual concert due to dangerous conditions at the lake, mainly the 30mph wind gusts that the stage were not built to sustain. I felt bad for the kids. The outdoor parties wound down and I started shuttling disappointed people to restaurants instead of the concerts that were promised for that evening.