That's So Raven!

Iron Raven here.   I'm happy to be back in sunny California for another year, and thanks to those BSB guys for giving me a chance to share some of my pics here on their blog!

I see they showed some pics of me getting to Pittsburgh with them, but then the rest of the trip was a blur to me.  After that first day in Pittsburgh, all I remember was being stuck in a bag for days with no food or water.  Fortunately for my sanity, I was finally released back to BSB in Chicago at Kingston Mines.

The lighting wasn't great, but seeing Dan again might have been the best moment of my day.

 The next day, I had some breakfast with BSB and the other GAR teams at the Pittsfield Cafe.

Pittsfield Cafe was good, but didn't serve anything resembling a rotting carcass, my favorite food. 

At least they had some decent cream to wet my whistle.

 Then they set off to explore the city, while I took some time to socialize with the locals.

What?  Never seen a raven before?  Stupid xenophobic pigeons.

I was told that Giordano's was the best place to get some pizza for lunch, so I joined the BSB guys for that.

It took me a while to figure out how to open the menu.

Four pieces down, four to go. 

I shared a drink with Rich, since I was pretty full from the pizza.  We still convinced them to give us free refills, though.

After lunch, as the guys headed off to solve the Day 5 bonus puzzles from their hotel room, I decided to race them and solve them on my own, to see if I could beat them.

 First I grabbed one of those great bikes from the bike share program in Chicago.

Why fly when I can just use the super-convenient bike share program?

It was no trouble at all to find the brachiosaurus skeleton at the Field Museum.

This guy was no better conversationalist than those pigeons were.

After that, I headed over to the zombies statues, apparently called Agora by Magdalena Abakanowicz.

OK, so this should come in handy for decoding.

These guys were actually LESS friendly than the pigeons.

OK, this looks like the statue I'm looking for.

Apparently this guy had a lot of mettle.

I finished the last puzzle here with no problem.  Wonder how long it took the BSB guys?  I think they might have had a hard time finding all these wreaths.  Well, here are good pics of all of them for posterity.

Well, that was easy!  Once I showed I could solve these puzzle on my own, I flew back to find BSB just finishing up the same puzzles in their hotel room.  I thought it was lame of them to solve them from the room, but hey, who am I to judge?

Anyway, later on Rich and Jonathan took me on a tour of the Chicago Art Institute.  Here are a few of my favorite pics.

I tried, but couldn't get this guy to feed me.

Why so serious?

Hmmm.

This was one of my favorites.  Don't judge.

The friendly docent told me that this painting had two others beneath it!

I doodled this on a napkin once, not sure how it ended up here.

What?  Never seen an Iron Raven before?

I blended in nicely with this room of "art".

That's funny, this is my favorite date, too!

Umm, it doesn't really seem safe here.

This sure is a handsome fellow.  I'm sure his ears are symmetric even though I can only see one.

I love my stacks of wheat as much as the next raven, but couldn't this guy show a little range in his painting abilities?

Yikes, I'm out of here!  No one told me birds weren't welcome.

After that last painting, I fled the art museum and joined BSB on their trip back home.  Looking forward to a great year in California, and see everyone again at GAR 4!