The Trip - Day 4 - April 25th
The Trip - Day 4
So, today! Man, I'm still tired, and I just got up after sleeping a full night in a really comfortable bed.
After a good night's rest and much liquid intake, I felt much better. So good in fact, that I felt like taking to the Chicago streets. I didn't have time to see much, but I did get a few pictures. You'll find them at the bottom of the post.
My adventure in Chicago took about three hours. After checking out and depositing my bags in my car in the parking garage, I took the el for the first time. It's pretty awesome. Think the Seattle monorail, only much faster, much more safe feeling, and in general much more useful. I really question why we need to expand the monorail when we should just create something more along the lines of a real city transit system. To reiterate, it was a total trip. Very awesome.
Once I had finished some shopping at the Borders off of the Lake exit on the green line, I headed up to Chicago and Franklin to meet rollick at Bar Louis. Nice place, although it was a little smoky for my tastes. I had a spicy chicken quesadilla, which started out spicy but faded quickly. When you're making a quesadilla, a few elements stand out as more important than the rest (to me, at least). First, you've got to have a nice crispy crust. Second, you need a good filling that's not going to go soggy on you. I'm relatively certain that this quesadilla was a victim of the soggy filling.
Anyways, my conversation with rollick was pretty enlightening. She gave me a bunch of ideas on how to pursue my writing career, where to start, and what to expect. And we both agreed that trying to learn AP Style or Chicago Style by using the respective reference books seemed to be an incomprehensible task.
My meeting finished, I headed back to pickup my car and then navigate my way out of Chicago. This task was compounded by the fact that I needed to follow a long and circuitous detour to get to I-90. I got lost at least once, and called Charon for some help. Along the way I picked up some Popeye's chicken. My verdict? They use small chickens, I'm guessing cornish game hen. The chicken was cooked well, and it did have a little bit of spice on my spicy chicken. Still, I'll take Ezell's any day, and now I am very thankful for it.
Once I got back to I-90, everything else was easy, and I breezed through Indiana like it wasn't there. I was a little annoyed at the $10 in toll road fees I had to pay, but I'll be able to avoid those on the way back so everything should be fine. The last interesting thing I ran across was a travel plaza.
See, a while back I had stopped seeing rest areas, and instead started seeing travel plazas and service plazas. Since we don't have anything like that back in Washington, I stopped to investigate. What I found was like a rest area on steroids. It was huge, capable of dealing with a hundred cars and dozens of big-rigs. Each one had a gas station that could handle any vehicle, any fuel, and the rest area building itself was big enough to fit a larger than normal size McDonald's, a chocolatier, and a convenience store. Plus, the bathrooms were huge, and given the layout and compartmentalized nature of the place, I have a feeling I could believably set a zombie survival film inside of one. It was that big. When I got outside, I finally noticed that the same exact setup was mirrored on the opposite side of the freeway. Swank, very swank.
After that, I made it to my hotel and checked in, and finally got another good night's sleep. The bottom of my feet were a very light shade of purple from all the abuse I've visited upon them, but thank god for lotion.
The Pictures:
Highlights:
- I passed through Gary, Indiana. It wasn't very exciting, although I didn't get attacked by any brujah either.
- Showers without fans suck. That is all.
- It's amazingly comforting to be confronted by a scary old man at the front desk. His name was Albert and he had obviously been the victim of one (or perhaps multiple) strokes. Judging by his left hand it must've been serious, as it was gnarled up worse than a hand of glory.
- Partway through Ohio I kept seeing a cloud bank that was lit up by some bright light source on the ground. I thought it was a city ahead of me. Rather, it was a gigantic car dealership. Suffice to say, they probably use enough candlepower to light up a small town.
Statistics:
Distance Covered: Approximately 370 miles
MPG: Approximately 42 mpg
Elapsed Time: 8 hours
Driving Time: 6.5 hours
So, today! Man, I'm still tired, and I just got up after sleeping a full night in a really comfortable bed.
After a good night's rest and much liquid intake, I felt much better. So good in fact, that I felt like taking to the Chicago streets. I didn't have time to see much, but I did get a few pictures. You'll find them at the bottom of the post.
My adventure in Chicago took about three hours. After checking out and depositing my bags in my car in the parking garage, I took the el for the first time. It's pretty awesome. Think the Seattle monorail, only much faster, much more safe feeling, and in general much more useful. I really question why we need to expand the monorail when we should just create something more along the lines of a real city transit system. To reiterate, it was a total trip. Very awesome.
Once I had finished some shopping at the Borders off of the Lake exit on the green line, I headed up to Chicago and Franklin to meet rollick at Bar Louis. Nice place, although it was a little smoky for my tastes. I had a spicy chicken quesadilla, which started out spicy but faded quickly. When you're making a quesadilla, a few elements stand out as more important than the rest (to me, at least). First, you've got to have a nice crispy crust. Second, you need a good filling that's not going to go soggy on you. I'm relatively certain that this quesadilla was a victim of the soggy filling.
Anyways, my conversation with rollick was pretty enlightening. She gave me a bunch of ideas on how to pursue my writing career, where to start, and what to expect. And we both agreed that trying to learn AP Style or Chicago Style by using the respective reference books seemed to be an incomprehensible task.
My meeting finished, I headed back to pickup my car and then navigate my way out of Chicago. This task was compounded by the fact that I needed to follow a long and circuitous detour to get to I-90. I got lost at least once, and called Charon for some help. Along the way I picked up some Popeye's chicken. My verdict? They use small chickens, I'm guessing cornish game hen. The chicken was cooked well, and it did have a little bit of spice on my spicy chicken. Still, I'll take Ezell's any day, and now I am very thankful for it.
Once I got back to I-90, everything else was easy, and I breezed through Indiana like it wasn't there. I was a little annoyed at the $10 in toll road fees I had to pay, but I'll be able to avoid those on the way back so everything should be fine. The last interesting thing I ran across was a travel plaza.
See, a while back I had stopped seeing rest areas, and instead started seeing travel plazas and service plazas. Since we don't have anything like that back in Washington, I stopped to investigate. What I found was like a rest area on steroids. It was huge, capable of dealing with a hundred cars and dozens of big-rigs. Each one had a gas station that could handle any vehicle, any fuel, and the rest area building itself was big enough to fit a larger than normal size McDonald's, a chocolatier, and a convenience store. Plus, the bathrooms were huge, and given the layout and compartmentalized nature of the place, I have a feeling I could believably set a zombie survival film inside of one. It was that big. When I got outside, I finally noticed that the same exact setup was mirrored on the opposite side of the freeway. Swank, very swank.
After that, I made it to my hotel and checked in, and finally got another good night's sleep. The bottom of my feet were a very light shade of purple from all the abuse I've visited upon them, but thank god for lotion.
The Pictures:
Highlights:
- I passed through Gary, Indiana. It wasn't very exciting, although I didn't get attacked by any brujah either.
- Showers without fans suck. That is all.
- It's amazingly comforting to be confronted by a scary old man at the front desk. His name was Albert and he had obviously been the victim of one (or perhaps multiple) strokes. Judging by his left hand it must've been serious, as it was gnarled up worse than a hand of glory.
- Partway through Ohio I kept seeing a cloud bank that was lit up by some bright light source on the ground. I thought it was a city ahead of me. Rather, it was a gigantic car dealership. Suffice to say, they probably use enough candlepower to light up a small town.
Statistics:
Distance Covered: Approximately 370 miles
MPG: Approximately 42 mpg
Elapsed Time: 8 hours
Driving Time: 6.5 hours