You Take The Long Way Home - Getting Started

I got started Saturday by taking the train out to Midway to pick up the rental to drive back to NC. For all the times I'd ridden the train in Chicago, it had always been on the Red Line and furthermore on the underground part, so this was the first (only?) time I'd been on the platform in the Loop. With the clacking of the tracks and the architecture of the awning over the platform, it felt like being in an amusement park! When I got on, I kept expecting the train to slowly go up a rise and then zoom down and around a curve like a roller coaster.

I took care of business at the Alamo counter in the Midway terminal and took the shuttle out to the lot. Given a choice between a Chevy Trailblazer and a Jeep Grand Cherokee, I took the Jeep since I'd never driven one before. As I headed back up the Stevenson toward town, I checked out the back of the car through the rear view mirror, thought about the stack of boxes and luggage waiting back at the apartment and started getting very, very nervous about how much space I had. Nervous enough that I called Lady J and woke her up to check the weather on the route ahead in case I had to tie some stuff to the roof. But after getting to the apartment building I folded the back seats down and brought the first load down and realized that I was going to be fine. I went back up for the final load, took one last look around the apartment, gave it a wave and headed back out I-55.

I had my digital camera on the seat next to me to take pictures of anything that seemed interesting. Note that you see no pictures of Illiois or Indiana... :-D Traffic getting around Chicago to Indiana was horrendous, the monotony broken up only by the billboards for Kaplan's fireworks every 50 feet. Once I got to I-65 and headed down towards Indianapolis, things opened up quite a bit. Actually everything was pretty uneventful and I don't remember even stopping until outside of Richmond, Indiana for gas.

On to Ohio...