Every morning I walk by the Chicago Picasso. Not just by it, but I walk right up next to it, so I can run my hand along the base.
With all the snow we’ve been getting, it’s been fun seeing how the base changes. From all white covered in snow. To melting snow. To salted orange rust.
Today the base was covered in a fresh blanket of snow. The edges of the base showed evidence of a couple people attempting to crawl up the angled base. I snapped some photos of these marks. Then I realized, hmmm, maybe *I* could try climbing up the base.
At first I didn’t want to wreck the beauty of the white blanket of snow. But since I walk by this statue every day, I know that the snow here melts pretty fast anyways. Why not have the fun of trying to walk up the Picasso covered in snow? Could I do it?
My first couple steps were careful and successful, no slipping. As I moved farther and farther up the statue, I could feel the traction on my big boots on the core-ten steel. Going up worked just fine.
Walking sideways across the angled core-ten steel. Hmmm, not so much. My boots slipped a bit, but I was able to regain my balance.
Now I had to walk DOWN the angle. Yeah, that didn’t go very well. My first step down started to slip, and then slip more. At this point I just went with the flow and enjoyed the slide down. It was kinda like surfing. I surfed the Picasso, standing up the whole time.
The large vertical part of the statue certainly helped me when I reached the bottom. I was able to grab onto the Picasso statue with my hands and walk off.
What fun!
The evidence of my footprints are now to be seen by other Chicagoans. Some goofball decided to try to walk up and down the Picasso in the snow.
Tonight if the snow is still on the base, I’m going to walk an even bigger arc. Walk all the way to the top of the base. And then on the walk down, I’ll go backwards. Perhaps my balance will work better that way. If successful, the Picasso will have a rainbow of footprints.
Certainly enough, the snow remained on the Picasso that night. A few others tried to do the same thing! Ha! I inspired others to have fun on the Picasso.
Now on my second attempt to surf the Picasso, I filmed it.
The 52-second mark is pretty funny where I wipe out.