Colorado to Chicago

I’m sitting at The Common Cup, a wonderfully laid back coffee shop in the Rogers Park neighborhood of Chicago. The coffee is good and breakfast treats are delicious. I’m really happy to be back here. Chicago is a city of industrious beauty, history and really great people. After being away for a few years, I can easily say it is truly the second city, only bested by New York in its cityness. No other American cities come close to those two.

Despite the 5 years I spent here, Chicago has never felt like home to me. There’s something about it that’s completely oppressive. I suppose that it’s the fact that, if you’re in Chicago and want to do something, you’re going to do it in Chicago. There’s no easy escape here. You’re boxed in by city, traffic, miles of suburbs and then hundreds of miles of flat flat fields. If you want to go camping or backpacking, you drive to a different state. To go skiing, you get on a plane. To go surfing, you go to the video store and rent a DVD on the subject.

Not really a place I would like to spend my life but it’s still a great place to be today. Fall lasts about 10 days here and I caught one of those days. Good timing.

The drive here was long. About 1,300 miles from Grand Junction. After experiencing Southern Utah, Colorado and the Rockies had no appeal for me. I longed to stay in the same bed for few days, spend time with some good friends, enjoy good company and make use of the internet, shops and everything I’m used to back home. I’m also enjoying not having any real itinerary to speak of.

Yes, I’ve been on a schedule. Once you set goals to see certain sights, it’s hard to back away from racing from pin to pin in the map. I don’t believe I’m alone in this traveling fault but awareness is one stop on the path to recovery.

The Rockies were pretty, but far from spectacular when blowing by at 75 miles per hour from scarred interstate. Upon dropping down into Denver, I got a feel for what was ahead for the next 1000 miles: Flat. Flat. Flat. That’s something I hadn’t seen since the start of the trip in the central valley of California. If you remember, I didn’t like it then either.

Stereotypical Nebraska starts long before you cross into the state and continues until you’re within sight of the Missouri river. For the most part, the entire state was a labor to cross with the exception of one moment. As I wearily walked out of a rest stop bathroom and begrudgingly faced my sentence of 250 more miles, I looked up into an electric neon sunset. Hot pink fading to aqua blue. With no trees or hills around I had 180 degrees of brilliant sky above me. The land smelled warm and dusty, rich in soil. As I merged back onto the freeway and barreled eastward, I locked the wheel with my knee and whooped it up while clapping.

Notes:
I spent the night on the outskirts of Omaha at a Motel 6. The people were fun and made my stay memorable. I slept too late to make use of the indoor pool (my main reason for stopping there).

Iowa has beautiful rolling farmland and would have been a joy to travel through if it wasn’t keeping me from getting to Chicago. They have wireless internet at their rest stops and the most awesome picnic tables ever. I think the only way that table could be more awesome is if the eagle was playing electric guitar.



The Mississippi is a gigantic river and brought back memories of traveling along the Columbia in Oregon. It’s surrounded by beautiful rolling farmland. If I had another few weeks, I’d love to travel the length of it. Perhaps a barge tour? There’s always a Next Time.

My apologies for plagiarizing HST but Chicago comes on like good psychedelics. One moment you’re driving along, wondering what you’re doing, bored and thinking the boring farmland will never end. Then, without warning, you’re not sure how or when it happened but you suddenly notice the huge office buildings, the road has opened up to 3 or 4 lanes in each direction, there’s construction, confusing signs, bumpy unmaintained narrow lanes and traffic that jams into all available spaces. About 20% of the cars dart around you at ridiculous speeds while the other 80% get in your way. Driving here feels like being in the middle of a gradeschool playground at recess.

It’s unbelievably fun once you get into it.

Then you get into the real jams. I spent 2 hours getting to Chris’s house. Over 1,300 high speed miles in two days and I’m standing still on the freeway within 10 miles of my destination. At 8PM! And I thought the bay area was bad.

After bringing my stuff inside, we reacquainted after 6 or 7 years over drinks and burgers. I was too zonked from the drive to understand any stories that involved pronouns. I said this a lot: “Hold on, who again?”

Then 10 hours of glorious sleep. Chris' dog Gus finally woke me up midmorning. He sings along with the fire trucks.