| The Drive to Chicago (August 5, 2003) We leave at two in the morning, throwing aside the objections of others and driving out of Boston in a rented car, moving west in the darkness. The familiar landscape of eastern Massachusetts gives way to the western half of the turnpike, and then to New York state, where concentrating in the rain and darkness tire me out, and my travel partner takes over. The sun comes up behind us when we are somewhere west of Albany, and the Empire State rolls on and on�Utica, Syracuse, Rochester. As the morning passes we dig into the Styrofoam cooler in the back seat, filled with soda and sandwiches made by Wally�s wife. Buffalo is a milestone: nearly halfway to our destination and the spot where I-90 turns, after taking us due west for hours, southwest along the curve of Lake Erie and farther west than I�ve ever been. At the rest area in Angola, Wally buys sunglasses, and I take the wheel again, feeling totally awake, and we are back onto the Thruway. With the rain stopped and the day lit, the driving is much easier, and the main focus becomes how fast I can go without getting a ticket and which rest areas to pull into for gas and bathrooms. Pennsylvania welcomes us for a brief visit and then it is on to Ohio. We cross into the Buckeye State around noon, failing to realize that it is 241 miles across and that we are going to spend most of the afternoon navigating its turnpike. By this time we are devouring Darlene�s sandwiches and thanking her out loud. Cleveland is the first big city that we see up close, and we go right by Jacobs Field, and then it is one hundred miles to Toledo. In northwest Ohio we see acres of cornfields rolling out from both sides of the interstate. Maybe a half-mile or more back from the road is a farm house, a barn and a silo, and then another open expanse of cornfield, occasionally giving way to some low, leafy crop. Ahead there is a small stand of trees on the horizon, and when we drive by them we find more corn stretching to the next group of trees. From a plane I would not have seen this, and�though I wish there was time to leave the interstate to really experience this part of the country� this is the main reason I wanted to drive. We stop in a rest area that has been recently rebuilt and is rather impressive considering its purpose. Some �service plazas��as they are referred to in Ohio� are plain, old, and dingy, but this one is circular, made of brick and glass, and topped with a flat dome. Inside it is bright and clean, and there are a number of food options, but we don�t eat much on the road as the sandwiches keep us full. We pass Toledo and then more cornfields, and then, four and a half hours after we entered the state, we exit Ohio and enter the Hoosier State. More cornfields line the Indiana Toll Road, which is 157 miles across, not quite the breadth of Ohio, but two and a half hours is significant when you�ve been on the road all day. In Indiana we hear an �Amber Alert� for the first time, with a buzz coming across the radio before the announcement. Later, we hear the buzz again and this time it is for thunderstorm and tornado warnings. The rain comes down in torrents and I slow the car and keep it steady in the wind, as we search for funnel clouds in the sky. At a rest stop in the western part of the state we hear people talking about traffic up ahead, and we learn just what they mean when we become mired in a river of barely moving cars approaching the Illinois state line and the Chicago Skyway. It is more than an hour before we negotiate the final two miles before the Skyway bridge. We see the Sears building and the rest of the skyline, and then the road turns away. Once into downtown area, we are surrounded by vehicles zooming past us on both side. It is dark and I am reading road signs, looking for exits, and trying not to get us killed. We take I-90 to I-294 and exit in Deerfield, a suburb north of Chicago, and after several false turns, we find the Marriott Suites. It is ten o�clock, twenty hours after we left Boston. |