6/24/99, 12:07 --
Well, I finally made it. 'Bout friggin time. To the right is
me right before I finally got out. Things are going quite well,
I think. I set out from Jersey City at roughly 1pm, and made
serious time on I-80 all the way out to the middle of Pennsylvania
before breaking for lunch. Lunch was definitely when I became
a cool cross-country traveller. See, I'm trying to do this whole
thing without spending like I'm on vacation for the entire 2
plus months, 'cause if I ate all my meals out, I'd be spending
like $20 a day on food only, meaning roughly $1200 on food alone.
And that would be all on crap like McDonald's or BK, and assorted
other Rest Stop fare.
No. That is not the way. When I noticed,
almost by accident, that I'd be passing the Susquehana River,
I decided that was the place for lunch, turned off the highway,
and found myself in a teeny town called Miffinville. Bought a
can of vegetable soup and a package of frozen Spinach, and rode
down to the river, busted out the stove, and had myself some
soup and some Spinach. Read a little Zen and the Art of Motorcycle
Maintenance, packed up, and got back on the highway. To the
left is pictured that remarkable river, no, guys, I didn't find
the body of John Wilkes Booth, possibly because I didn't stay
long enough to locate Sasafrass cove.
To the right is my lunch,
you can see the awesome MSR Whisperlight Dragonfly stove heating
up my soup in the upper right corner of the picture.
Since I'm basically making up time, I've continued to drive all throughout the day, and have recently pulled over to rest the night in a rest stop about 30 miles past Cleveland, OH. Tomorrow I should be in Ann Arbor.
Here
the sun sets on my first day out.
6/24/99, 10:45pm -- I've arrived at Kim and Mate's place in Chicago! What, what about Ann Arbor, you ask? Well, here's how my day went:
I
woke up at 6am this morning and got on the road immediately.
I drove until I reached route 23 and headed north towards Ann
Arbor. At around 9:00am I got off the highway at a random exit
and found myself in the town of Dundee. It was a worthy stop
-- as soon as I passed the McDonald's and the Mobil, I saw a
building with a hand painted sign on it -- "Farmer's Market."
I was inspired, and decided it was time for breakfast. I got,
from the friendly shop owners who spied my Connecticut plates
and wished me a good journey, 3 eggs, an onion, a green pepper,
and an apple for desert.
I went across the road to get some coffee
from the Mobile Mart to go with breakfast. When I approached
the door to the store, I got my first glimpse of a local plague
known as Mayflies. Out of politeness to the viewer, I have no
in-lined the photo of the pile
of dead Mayflies that I took. Follow the link if you're curious.
Basically, these things spawn and die within a week, and all
they do is feed fish. If you've paid attention to fly fishing
lures, you may have seen several which are crafted to look exactly
like Mayflies. I took some pictures of the town to give you an
idea of how it was. The gazebo is in the center of the town,
and the hardware store is opposite it.
Anyhow, the attendant there told me I could find a park close by, and so I went there and had myself an omelette. While I cooked, a local resident came by and asked me where Connecticut was.
Before I got back on the road, I gave Sam
Stavis, the cousin I was going to see in Ann Arbor, a call, only
to find that he's in Philly for the week! So I continued up to
Ann Arbor before heading West again on I-94, because Michigan's
speed limit is 70. Wow, I've never seen a 70mph speed
limit before. Way cool. But there was no reason to hang in Ann
Arbour, so I continued all the way to Chicago, and got here by
5pm. I met up with Mate, and we wend downtown to pick up Kim.
She's over there on the left in her office. Nice monitor, huh?
There was one on every desk in this array of cubicle after cubicle.
We all went out to watch the US women's soccer team kick hell
out of the Nigerian team in the World Cup round robin round.
7 - 1. Go team!
So, Chicago is pretty cool. It's
the only city I've ever seen which could hold a candle to NYC
for bustle and metropolitan bulk. The skyline as I drove into
the city was amazing. Be sure to check out the other skyline
photos in the gallery. Another neat feature about Chicago is
the subway/L system -- extensive, like NYC, but cleaner. Not
quite the classy artsy Metro of Montreal or Paris, but still
nice. Here I am on the platform. Well, that's it for today. Tomorrow
I'll go check out a few things around the city.
Oh, yeah, one last
thing. In Chicago, the cabs don't have partitions! Weird!
6/25/99 --
Got up late, went down to the Chicago Historical Society. That
was pretty cool, and I was pretty impressed with the web-based
kiosk which had all this info on the Great Fire of 1871. Way
impressive. Of course, these days you'd have to say "What,
they paved their streets with tar-covered wooden blocks, and
didn't see the conflagration coming?" I'm beginning to see
how the fire has shaped Chicago and influenced the character
of it's inhabitants. There are statues of cows everywhere, too,
a sort of embracing of legend (for those of you who don't know,
the Great Fire of 1971 was rumoured to have been started by one
of Mrs. O'Leary's cows kicking over a lantern in her straw and
coal laden barn). To the right is the Historical Society building
with a statue of a cow kicking over a lantern. You can pull a
lever and the leg moves. Har.
Later
I met up with Kim
and Mate and Jenyon and we went down to Buddy Guy's Living
Legends blues bar. Was rocking good. We saw two excellent sets,
Sam Cockerell and the Groove, and Duke Robilard. We hung out
there till quite late. Then we all went back to Kim and Mate's
for rest. Tomorrow we attend "A Taste of Chicago" and
hop around a few museums.
