Day 3: Chicago for Lunch
Day 3 started nice and early, and I hit the road with a vengence, south and then west to get around lake Michigan. Objective: Lunch
I was getting pumped up and hit the gas merging onto a new highway, which is when I discovered that while this is a great place to charge your solar led flashlight, its also a good place for it to roll off and hit you in the nuts:
At this point im still a little messed up by the time zone thing, and realise that my car and GPS are still on eastern standard time, +1 bonus hour. I get onto a toll road heading north and at first it seems worth it as the road is 3 lanes and my direction and newly built. Within 5 minutes it turns into a seemingly-endless 20 mile long construction zone complete with multiple cross overs, pot holes, metal plates and gaping road seams. I finaly make it through shaken, but not stirred. As I continue the highway keeps adding in girth and traffic volume. Soon it swells to a massive 14-lane wide artery on the verge of heart-attack, with a 2-rail commuter line in the middle. But there beyond the glare of countless illuminated taillights, something begins to emerge from the hazy summer mid-morning:
Crawling along in in traffic I get a great view of the white sox baseball stadium.
It takes another 15 mintues to go a mile and the city starts to loom large. Its tough to describe in words, but just like going to NYC, the scale of this man made mountain range is a truely impressive sight to behold.
I finally make it off the highway and turn into northern down-town Chicago. Now, I will admit I did a tiny bit of accidental planning on this one. I was perusing google maps early in the morning before I packed up, getting a general feel for where the landmarks were when I spotted something amazing: An open air ground level parking lot right on the banks of the river in down town. It was worth the 12 bucks for 30 minutes of parking:
Now, back to the main objective: lunch. Around where I parked there were lots of swanky cafe's and resteraunts and junk like that, to which I say "no thanks". I wanted something native and incredibly bad for my health. With my eye on nothing in-particular, I head north out of down town on foot.
It doesnt take long for my nostrils to flare with the unmistakeble smell of cooked grease. Before hand, I was thinking about maybe something along the lines of Chicago's famous pizza, but Al's Italian Beef had all the signes of a good local local place to stuff your face.
I order to-go and set back off towards the magical parking lot with my Al's golden baggy and similarly decorated soft drink. Along the way I check out the cool elevated rail downtown while the Chicagoan's around me stare jealously at my recently bought treasure, the must know what its all about...
I also tryed to snap a picture of this absolutely ballin' Ford Thunderbird but this stupid Bently got in the way. Get some style, jackass.
In short order I get back to the lot and stand on the banks of the river to unwrap my loot. BEHOLD, THE COMBO
Living in the Philly area most of my life, I'm very familiar with meat-in-roll. Back home its the cheesesteak. Here, its beef ontop of a sausage, otherwise known as a Combo. Its chow down time, OM NOM NOM NOM
The fries were also outrageously good.
Cheers Chicago, thanks for treating me so well!
I hop back into my car, cool inside courtesy of this amazing parking lot and its trees. I pay my parking fee and as im pulling out I knotice this monster Industiral-era counterweight train bridge. I'm sure there are plenty of other hidden sights lurking in the shadows of all these sky-scrapers, but its time to hit the road again.
I cant help but snap some more pictures on my way out (a different route of course)
I swear this has got to be where they filmed the police car going 100mph downtown in the Blues Brothers.
Heading out west from the city was MUCH better than coming up from the south, the roads were in better shape, if still crowded with cars. Real quick though things opened up and got flat and strait. Soon enough I was massacering bugs flying down the highway while admiring huge crop fields. This poor bastard got stuck in my wiper and I had to pull over to take him out (thank you, rural Illinois, for your big highway shoulders!)
Along the road I spoted 4 or 5 huge wind turbine housings freshly manufactured and heading east on big rigs. There was also this ethanol fuel plant, it had a big sign that said "patriot fuels" facing the highway. I guess you had to see it, but the sign may as well have said "f*** Hugo Chavez" or something along those lines. I missed the sign but got the factory with my camera.
I hit camp in Galesburg, IL pretty early today, after only about 5 or 6 hours of driving total. But I'm not done yet, I just dont want to be setting up my tent in the pitch black. The front of my car is plastered with bug guts after only just three days of driving, gonna have to get it washed so I can continue in style.
Since that was taken care of, its on to the nights main event. My friends Neal and Tomo, who I havent seen in the 2 years since I lived in Japan, were in the states visiting and I had to see what they were up to. So I drove my car into down town Galesburg to give a look.
And what were they up to this fine evening? A trip to the museum? Sight seeing? Nay, they came here to rock and f*** roll.
This is neal in the back, AKA Golddigger here on Nico, laying down solid beats on the drums as well as taking lead vocals depending on the song. He has a sick midnight purple R33 back at home. Cant say enough about this international man of action.
And tomo, dear lord can this guy destroy on the guitar.
They play into the night and after its done I'm able to roll back to my campsight a little after midnight glad I got things set up before hand.
Day 4: Finally some damn rest, plus grillin!
Up until this day I had been getting less than adequate sleep, and given that I planned on sticking around town until the afternoon, I slept in. When I finally got up towards noon, I broke down camp and headed into town for a car wash and to fill up on gas. I'm used to pulling up to the auto wash and just doing it all myself but here, a cool old guy walked out of the office, sprayed down my wheels with some sort of solvent, and took care of dialing in my desired wash. Its not every day where you get compliments from the 60+ crowd about your lowered nissan, but you know what they say: there is a first time for every thing. 2 blocks down the street at the Mobile station the same thing happen again, this time with a lady filling up on the other side of the pump.
After the necessities were taken care of, I head over to Neal's parent's place for grill-cooked food. Neal must be even cooler than I thought because ZZ top showed up for a burger too.
Parked in the garage was a finely done corvette stingray. The visiting owner answered all my questions about the awesome workmanship (which he did all himself, respek) and all that was left to do was take a picture or two.
I spent a good chunk of time catching up with tomo, who happens to run his own small bar in Japan. Out of his house. Neal took me there several times and I got to say, its one of the chillest spots on the planet to get a drink. I got to dust off the ol' japanese too, which is always good fun for me because, well, I'm nerdy like that.
Unfortunatly I couldnt stick around for too long, the open road was calling me again and campground offices have a nasty habbit of closing around 8pm. After saying my goodbyes I head off through Galesburg to make a speedy exit. Or not. As I make a left off the main drag I hear a gonging bell and ahead warning posts lower to block the road. Here comes a train just in time to make me sit for 10 minutes while it passes through the heart of town. This definatly isnt the east coast.
With that out of the way, I continue through town and snap a picture of the bar where I got to see the live music last night.
Son of a b****... Another damn train going through the center of the town, this time on another track going in the opposite direction and moving even slower than the first one.
After I FINALLY get out of town, things are looking tight so I wind it up to 3600rpm and set off down the highway at 120km/h, whatever that is, for the next two hours. Did I mention that the NA sr20 has a shorter 5th gear than your standard 240sx/turbo-silvia/180sx?
I'm actually heading south east at this point (who would do something as lame as driving strait west?), making for Springfield, but already farms are stretching to the horizon.
I wanna know who named it Kickapoo Creek...
Looking on the GPS as im driving I see that my the camp is on the other side of a lake right next to the highway. Sweet, I'm thinking, big lakes rock. When I finally get to my exit I took in the beautiful sights on the highway side of the lake.
My fears of having to drink mercury laced water subsided as I drove on, and it really was pretty.
And then of course I have to take a left onto narrow, lumpy back country roads to actually get to the campsite. The KTS coilovers have taken it all in stride so far. I'm just glad I swapped out for a slightly softer set of springs earlier this year.
But finally I get there with just minutes to spare, and I was all to happy to get a shower and settle down.
So far so good, 4 days in and 1,240 miles down. Until next time...
