Blogging for Bloomington

[tanarill]

Route 66 Day 1:

Got up at 7:20 AM. For those of you unfamiliar with my normal sleep patterns, this means that I got about six hours of sleep. I am unusual in that I can't function with less than seven, instead of on the four everyone else seems to manage. Eight hours is my minimum goal . . . yeah.

So, six hours of sleep. Then I spent the next two hours packing the Vehicle and trying to get my mother, henceforth to be called MW, out of the house. We got going around nine, but we were in separate cars because my father's Pacifica needs to be repainted all the way down one side (somebody keyed it) and we dropped it off along the way. Then we took Telegraph, a road that goes all the way to Toledo, south until it hit I-94.

The next four hours were spent on I-94, at 75 mph. I-94 goes East-West across the state of Michigan, curves around through Indiana under Lake Michigan, and then goes north to Chicago. It does keep going North and West all the way through Montana, but we weren't interested in that.

Anyway, we stopped at the Tabor Hill winery, a place that to me epitomizes the smells of wine: cork and hundred-year-old-wood and a sweet, fruity smell that's the wine itself. I am, however, only eighteen and they are a good winery so I got sparkling raspberry juice. I do not like raspberries.

Then we went for lunch at this little diner in the middle of nowhere. Practically the instant we got back on the highway, the speed dropped to 55 mph, which it has not exceeded since. Indiana - 55. Illinois - 55 on a good road with no cars on it. More normally, especially in Chicago, 2. I have been driving 10 to 15 mph faster, mostly due to Shutup, the Po-Po detector.

We got lost in Chicago, hit IIT (where my father earned his degree), kept being lost until we hit the North branch of the Chicago River, turned around, got unlost, and eventually found the beginning of Route 66. We took pictures, but as we don't have the convert-from-camera-to-computer device along, I can't put them up. Then we started following the route, according to the Route 66 Book and some handy brown signs put up by somebody all along the old route.

The next bit of the trip occurred along secondary an even tertiary streets. Joliet Road in particular is noteworthy because:

We stopped for gas at the place where Joliet dead-ends onto another road, and then it was fifteen minutes before we got fast enough for the Vehicle's automatic door locks to lock. And in the next fifteen minutes, we didn't go below 40 mph once. It still felt like we were crawling.

The other interesting this about Joliet (the town, not the road) is that there's a state penitentiary right outside of town. We passed it on the way in.

. . .

Dinner was Mexican. The enchiladas were too salty, but the guacamole was good.

Then we pushed on to Bloomington, through a lot of little towns which had names like Dwight. As we drove, it got dark out, and there were fireflies. There aren't a lot of fireflies in the part of Michigan I live in, so it made me happy. Then the aftereffects of dinner hit me, and I spent an hour driving with a fever.

We made Bloomington at about 9:30 PM, and this is on Central Time (with Emmy!) when we started the day on Eastern. On six hours of sleep. MW took a shower, but I stripped and collapsed, quite literally, into bed. I did not wake up when the alarm went off.

Anyway, that was Day 1. Now it is 10:30 AM and we should get driving. Hopefully, with eight hours of sleep and stopping earlier tonight, I will be on later. But don't hold your breath.

Comments

[lachattenoire13.livejournal.com]

When you hit the end of rte 66, aka Santa Monica Blvd, you can try real Mexican food. Different from what you're used to. Veeeery different.

Have funs.

[tanarill.livejournal.com]

Your assumption here is that we're going to make L.A. Which I highly doubt. we're probably going to turn around somewhere in Oklahoma.

Because I have a job, that's why!