Chicago

So after Richmond and a quick stop in the D.C. to pick up Robert's bike, we were off down Route 70 to Pittsburgh for the night. Maryland is kind of a leftover state. Also it's shaped like a spoon with a lot of noodles hanging off of it. We passed what used to be BP Solar in Frederick Maryland (they laid off 300-something this spring and shut down their MD plant), then headed into PA, the "state of indifference" as according to Robert's un-aided eye. (You always forget something, he left his glasses and passport, crap.) And I saw 6 windmills in PA, woohoo.

Pennsylvania likes these "travel center" plaza stops in the middle of the highway with gas stations, Starbucks, and a few restaurants, so you can actually travel thru the entire state without ever seeing any of it. They also charge you $14.50 to fly thru their state at 80mph. So we took smaller state roads a lot of the way (tho I will admit to stopping at at least one "travel center"). Finally hitting Pittsburgh around dinnertime we ate at some seafood restaurant which turned out to be pretty mediocre and expensive (tho I did bag some leftover pizza for breakfast), and wished we'd tried Primanti Brothers' instead. A friend of mine, Sarah, was in town just finishing up a grad program at UPitt, so we met her for a few pitchers of Yuengling at a nice cheap college bar. After the obligatory van tour, we kept our nice parking spot in a student neighborhood to stay overnight. College towns are great to park in overnight because nobody really cares if a big ugly van parks outside; they just assume it's a visiting friend of a neighbor.

When the sun comes up and you're sleeping in a van, you wake up. The greenhouse effect also makes sure it gets pretty hot in thee shortly after dawn also, so my days of sleeping in are over (at least when staying in the van). I washed my hair and face in the sink and took off walking down the street brushing my teeth. Oddly enough, nobody seemed to think this was anything out of the ordinary. So we took off pretty immediately towards Chicago.

It was pretty rainy in the morning and very windy too, blowing the van all over the road. For all they do to help my power needs, the solar panels aren't very aerodynamic going at highway speeds. We went down Ohio route 2 right next to Lake Erie a lot of the way until we got to Toledo, then stuck to the highway mostly in Indiana. Ohio looked about like I thought Ohio would look. At one point we got out to go see Lake Erie and it was freezing cold outside with gigantic wind and waves bigger than I usually see in the Atlantic. Not the greatest day for boating to say the least.

I completely forgot about the time change until Robert remembered. That's nice driving west, you always get that extra hour, like eternal daylight savings time (until we come back east again...) Anyway we were staying with Robert's Aunt and Uncle, Mark and Sallie, in Chicago so we went to pick up a bottle of wine as a thank you. We get to their neighborhood, and they live in a Frank Lloyd Wright house west of the city in Oak Park. There are literally people walking around the block taking pictures of the houses and we pull up in this beast of a Chester Van with Palmetto 200 paint still on it, "Crazy Legs". This is our style. The house is just amazing, and they have done a lot of work to it restoring and remodeling the interior. Mark gave us the tour of the house and all the work that had been put into it and some of the mob folklore too, and then I gave him the tour of the van. He was impressed. We went and picked up a Chicago-style deep dish pizza and that thing was really deep dish. Like 2 inches thick from a place called Edwardo's. We witnessed a high-speed police chase outside while waiting for the pizza, and never figured out the whole story there, but about 15 police cars went speeding down the wrong way on the street chasing a truck that had smashed into a few cars in the escape.



That was Saturday night. Sunday we took a long bike ride around Lake Michigan (not all the way around). It's a huge city, and strange to see a beach right there in the Midwest. I like Chicago. After lunch it's off into Iowa and Nebraska before spending some real time in Colorado; first stop will be probably somewhere around Des Moines. I'm looking forward to some good camping soon.



Day 4, 932 miles, next up, the Great Plains. Glad I have another driver with me.

PS - gas is insane in Chicago (good thing it's Robert's turn to buy) seems to be around $3.30 to $3.40 in the city...