Day 12: Wheaton, IL to Indianapolis, IN Muskegon, MI

Image of the day: The Illinois-Indiana State Line. It took me hours longer than normal to get this far on the trip.

Trip meter at start of day: 1,006.0 mi
Gas: $2.889/gal

"Well, you were right, Aunt Jane," I admitted over the phone. "I should never have left Wheaton today."

This morning, I had been so happy to move on with my trip, and so sure that I would bypass any problems caused by the storms and flooding of the previous two days. Now, it was already 4 p.m. and I still hadn't crossed into Indiana. I had to call Aunt Jane and tell her she had been right.

Like Aunt Jane, I too had had my doubts this morning. Power was still out across most of Wheaton, and as we drove to the grocery store in the morning, trees were down everywhere. But I was eager to continue on the road, and also to see Tammy, a Peace Corps friend of mine, in Indianapolis. After lunch, Claire and I said goodbye to Aunt Jane, got into the car, and drove in to Chicago. I dropped my sister off at her apartment, and prepared for the first solo leg of my trip.

Now that I'm on the road by myself, it's a good time to introduce my rules for the trip:

1. Visit every state I've never been to before. I've already been to 34 states, leaving Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Kentucky, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Tennessee, Washington and West Virginia. The one state that I won't visit on this trip is Alaska; I'll save that for a special trip.


2. No driving for more than seven hours in a day. If you're always in your car, you're not seeing things. I feel no pressure to rush from one place to another, so I won't go on any crazy 17-hour drives like I have at other times in my life. This trip is a circle from California to California, so if I were in such a rush to get to my destination, I wouldn't have left at all.


3. No interstates. A lot of people think I'm stupid for adding this rule. Conventional wisdom says that the interstates have simplified travel and made it safer. I don't know if it's safer, but it's certainly more sterilized. Americans can drive from San Francisco to New York without hitting a stoplight, without driving through a bad neighborhood, and without eating anything other than McDonald's. For many Americans, this is a comfort and symbol of national unity; for me, it's a road to division. The more that Americans are able to cocoon themselves, whether it be in private schools, neighborhoods of new-money McMansions or anonymous Arby's restaurants that look the same in every state, the less we as a people understand one another. Driving is one of the few ways left that people of all sorts can interact, and the interstates have taken much of that away from us. In order to see America, you have to leave the interstates.

I started the day with those three rules, and I broke two of them. From my sister's apartment, I planned to travel through the South Side of Chicago and through some of the southern suburbs until I got to the Lincoln Highway. I would take the Lincoln Highway across the Illinois-Indiana border, then take Highway 41 south toward Indianapolis. The first part of the plan went well; then it got bad fast.

I drove down Lake Shore Drive until it ended, and then headed west to Halsted Street. I was on the South Side, which is predominantly black. A lot of white folks in Chicago wouldn't venture to the South Side, but I hope to teach in the public schools here next year, so I can't afford to feel uncomfortable in this part of the city.

As I drove south down Halsted, the things I noticed most were the churches. There seemed to be a church on every block, and they were simple one-story buildings that from the outside could have just as easily been doctors' offices or insurance companies. These churches were not focused on looks to attract their congregation; instead, it seemed that the minister's name itself was a draw, as each church's marquee displayed the minister's name in big black block letters.

I continued down Halsted, which became Route 1, out of Chicago to Chicago Heights. I turned onto Highway 30, the Lincoln Highway, drove a couple miles east, and thenÑ

Nothing. All traffic stopped. It was long before rush hour, yet the Lincoln Highway, which I thought would be a little-used four-lane road where I could drive 55 mph across the border, was backed up for miles.

I sat. I waited. I called Tammy and told her I would be late. I listened to a podcast about psychology. I called my buddy, Mike. Hours passed, and all I had driven was maybe 5 miles, including a part of the road which was flooded with five inches of water. I called my grandma in Muskegon and asked if I could show up a day early. When she said yes, I called Tammy again and told her I would have to skip Indianapolis. Then I waited some more, as the highway patrol directed everyone away from the Lincoln Highway, which was closed due to flooding just short of the Indiana border.

I followed the long line of cars until I saw a strip of convenience stores and small-time fast food restaurant. I needed to use the bathroom, so I parked and walked over to a spot advertising BBQ in its window. A guy was mopping in the back, and told me that the only bathroom was at the barber shop at the end of the strip. I walked further, past a couple of other chicken shacks, until I reached the barber shop.

As a white guy, I will never understand what appeals to black men about hanging out at the barber shop. I don't like paying money to have my hair cut, and I've never especially wanted to socialize with one of my barbers or with anyone else who was getting their hair cut at the barber shop. I have some ideas as to how barber shops became such important hangouts, but my theories are probably wrong, so I won't bother writing them. What matters to this story is that the guys working there let me use the bathroom, and then they gave me some driving advice. They told me that I-80/94, the major interstate from Chicago to Northwest Indiana, was flooded and closed for miles, forcing all of the normal interstate traffic to come through the streets of the small towns alongside the freeway. The guys at the barber shop also told me about a shortcut, which took me through a residential area and probably saved me 20 minutes of driving.

Eventually, I got to the non-flooded part I-80/94, breaking my third rule of not using the interstates. After hours of not moving, I couldn't do state roads anymore, and I needed to move fast again. The rest of the trip went quickly and smoothly: I found the White Sox-Red Sox game on Chicago radio, which miraculously gave me clear reception all the way to Muskegon; I stopped at a Michigan gas station, where four attractive girls were having car trouble, and I wished that I knew more about cars so that I could help them; I bought a cheeseburger at McDonald's for 99 cents, and then saw that a double cheeseburger costs the same amount of money; I found my grandma's new house just before 11 p.m., parked, got the tour, and got ready to go to sleep.

I had driven for too long and on too big of roads. I had broken two of my rules, out of both disgust and necessity. It's okay to break rules, I suppose. A road trip has to be open to improvisation.

Day 11: Chicago, IL to Wheaton, IL

Image of the day: Uncle Bill stands by the remains of the plum tree taken out by high winds.

Trip meter at start of day: 1,006.0 mi
Gas: None bought today

After leaving my friend Patrick at the bar last night, I walked back to my sister's apartment in the rain. When I woke up this morning, I saw reports of heavy flooding in Ohio and deaths from a lightning strike in Wisconsin. I didn't realize how bad it was about to get in Illinois.

Claire and I planned to take a Metra commuter rail train from Chicago to Wheaton, where we had left the car at our cousins' house a week earlier. The train was going to leave at 3:40 p.m., so we took a cab from her apartment to the Loop. When we got in the cab at 2:45, the sky was partly cloudy, and although the humidity was high, it wasn't too hot. When we got out of the cab 15 minutes later, the air was 10 degrees hotter and the wind was whipping us with heat like a hair dryer on full blast.

We went into the station, bought our tickets, and found seats on the train by 3:15. We were in the middle of the car, and behind us in the back of the train a group of eight men and women in their 40s who had decided to have a party on their commute back from their city jobs. It would have been rude for me to turn around and look at them, so instead I just listened to them talk behind me about chips, salsa and alcohol.

Many commuters on the train seemed to know one another. They greeted one another by name, they knew what company they worked for and in which suburb they lived. The train at rush hour had become its own little community.

This train, however, wasn't leaving yet. Five minutes before the train was supposed to depart, the conductor announced a delay because of severe weather and tornado warnings. Several women came on the train, drenched in what they described as "sideways rain that just came out of nowhere." The train left 15 minutes late, and we were on our way to Wheaton.

When we got through the suburb of Elmhurst, we started to see the damage. Fences had been blown over. Trees three feet wide were sideways on the ground, their roots showing like God hadn't gotten around to planting them yet. The train traveled for miles, and we never saw a single house with the lights on.

When we got to the station in Wheaton, our aunt and uncle picked us up and drove us through a town of non-functioning stop lights, huge downed branches and large trees split in two. We finally got to their house, which had no power, standing water on the front lawn and a plum tree that the wind had snapped in half behind the house. Power, they said, could possibly be out for the entire weekend. It was early evening and the sky was already darkening with more storm clouds, so we gathered flash lights and candles, and started drinking cocktails in anticipation of a long night. Uncle Bill had just put potatoes and steaks on the grill (the electric stove and oven were out of commission) when the second wave of the storm hit. He grilled in the pouring rain, going outside every few minutes to check on dinner.

As the storm got worse and worse, Claire, Aunt Jane, Uncle Bill and I stood in the living room and looked out at the front yard. Hudson, the dog, never acknowledged the storm for a second, and was seemingly not bothered by the thunder and lightning. The only thing that concerned me was when the water in the front yard got to within 18 inches of the front door; the best sandbagging material at our disposal was half a bag of cat litter.

After dinner, the storm calmed down and the water receded from the front door. The "lake" in front of my cousins' house had crested, and the only evidence of damage to the property was Aunt Jane's lamentations of, "Oh, my plum tree!" Claire and I tried to entertain ourselves by playing mancala, but I stopped after two games and went to sleep at 9:30.

Day 10: Chicago, IL

Image of the day: My friend Patrick and I after more than 12 years without seeing one another.

Trip meter at start of day: 1,006.0 mi
Gas: None bought today

When I returned to my childhood hometown of Chicago, I got back in contact with a few family friends so that we could meet for the first time in years. Today, I met with all of those family friends. I had lunch with my godfather, and later that night we had dinner with Claire's godparents. But the big surprise came in the afternoon, when we met with our old neighbors, the McDermotts.

Honestly, I have very little memory of the McDermott family from my childhood, and the two daughters, Jackie and Jennifer, who are starting college and high school, respectively, have almost no recollection of me. In these situations, I suppose it's best to go into a re-introduction stage, so I offered some general college advice, talked about my life in Moldova, and so on and so forth. The real surprise from meeting with the McDermotts, however, was the two friends that Jackie brought with her; one of them was the younger sister of one of my best elementary school friends. I got Patrick's number from her, sent him a text message, and arranged to meet for drinks later that night. (Before anyone comments that a text message isn't the best way to contact someone after 12 years, I'll mention that Pat is mostly deaf. Although he can understand people and speak very clearly face-to-face because of a cochlear implant and his ability to read lips, a phone call from me wouldn't have worked at all.)

After dinner with Claire's godparents, I sent Pat another text message, and he and his girlfriend picked me up in her car in Lincoln Park. We went to a bar on Halsted Street, and talked for more than an hour, switching from stories from our childhood to details of our lives now, and then back to childhood. When there was a lull in the conversation, I would turn to Pat and say, "Zach Muhrer!" or the name of another one of our old classmates, and Pat would tell me what he knew about him.

While talking about one of our classmates, Pat said, "You know, he's got the job, the apartment, the girlfriend," counting off on his fingers in the same way one reads off a lengthy set of chores. He finished his sentence with funny hand gestures that resembled both hand puppets talking to one another and happy little birds; as if to say that having those things were both what defined happiness at our age and, at the same time, the most cliché arrangement you could ask for. I reminded him that he, too, had the job, the apartment and the girlfriend. "I know, I know," he said as he smiled and made the hand gestures again.

Pat and his girlfriend had to go to work the next morning, so they left the bar at about 11. I stayed another few minutes to watch the Cubs win in extra innings, and then walked back to my sister's apartment.

Day 9: Chicago, IL

Image of the day: A statue of Christopher Columbus near Museum Park.

Trip meter at start of day: 1,006.0 mi
Gas: None bought today

Chicago is all about meat, so my sister's college friend, Jon, was excited when he found a list of where to get the best burgers in Chicago. In exchange for helping move some of his and his fiancée, Amy's, furniture to their second-floor apartment, they took my Claire and me out to The Grafton Irish Pub and Grill, listed as the best pub burger in the city.

When we entered the pub, we were surprised to find the entire back half of it filled with folk singers and guitars. According to our waitress, they come in every week and play for hours. We sat near them partially because we wanted to hear some nice background music and because we didn't see any other tables. We enjoyed them for about 15 minutes, but after a plump woman named Kathleen came to our table and asked us to "talk a little more quietly, because they're doing some really amazing stuff over there," we decided to move to a booth that had opened up at the front of the pub.

Our burgers came relatively quickly, mine with pepper jack cheese, Amy's with a fried egg, and we started to eat. The first bite was amazing; the buns were buttery, but not greasy; the meat was so soft and tender that it must have come from babies. I devoured mine twice as fast as anyone else at the table and concluded that it was the best burger I had ever eaten. Jon said that it was the second-best burger he had had in all his life.

We finished our fries, then returned to Jon and Amy's to help them move their furniture. Usually when moving your friends' furniture, they save the burgers, pizza or other food as an incentive to keep you working, but these burgers were so good that we remained thankful long enough to help without a single complaint. Burgers that are good enough that they make you help a friend move in; now those are good burgers.

Day 8: Chicago, IL

Image of the day: A worker cutting the grass on a lot on Roosevelt Road in the South Loop.

Trip meter at start of day: 1,006.0 mi
Gas: None bought today

It may only be the NFL preseason, but Chinese food, pizza, chips, beer and Da Bears on a high definition TV still makes for a good night. My cousin Lindsaey and her boyfriend, Jim, invited five friends, my sister and me to their apartment to watch tonight's preseason Bears game against the Indianapolis Colts on their new 42" LCD TV. Before guests came, Jim, Lindsaey, my sister and I ordered Chinese food, the first I had eaten in God knows how long. Then the game started and the other guests came, and we were ready for a completely no-pressure rematch against last year's Super Bowl champions.

I've been a Bears fan all my life, but there's a major difference between following your favorite team from another part of the country and actually being in the same city. When you're far from your team's city, you don't see the team jerseys on game day, and you don't catch the references in the banter between the Channel 7 News Team's anchors. Training camp news isn't on the front page of your paper, and you don't see the defensive linemen in ads for discount furniture stores. You can read about your team in the paper, but you can't feel the excitement in the city. When you live away from your team, you are an island of fandom.

Watching football in a group is something quintessentially American, at least according to beer ads. There's always lots of food, people put on their jerseys or their good luck shirts, and everyone has an opinion on each player. One example: Lance Briggs, a linebacker who said over the summer that he would rather test the free agency market during the next off-season rather than extend his contract with the Bears, earned the jeers of almost everyone in the room whenever he was shown on camera. The group also had their pet players; whenever defensive tackle Tommie Harris was shown, my cousin and her boyfriend would both cheer, "Tommie Harris!" When I asked why, Lindsaey explained that Jim's brother liked him, and so they all liked him.

Pet players, weekly heroes and villains, highs and lows. They're all phenomena that you can't duplicate when you're thousands of miles away. The internet makes it so that you can follow a team from anywhere. But in order to feel a team and live its season, you have to be there.

Day 7: Chicago, IL

Image of the day: My friend Jeff trying to orchestrate a 1930's style sing-along at Jon and Amy's house. The only problem was, none of us plays the piano very well.

Trip meter at start of day: 1,006.0 mi
Gas: None bought today

As my cousin drove down Lake Shore Drive near Buckingham Fountain, I began singing the theme song to Married with Children:

Love and marriage, love and marriage,
Fit together like a horse and carriage.
This, I tell you, brother:
You can't have one without the other.

I'm 24, and sometime last year, the rush of engagements and marriages began among my friends. Tonight, my sister and I met up with two friends of hers, Jon and Amy, who had just gone on a vacation to France and gotten engaged after over three years of dating. Last night, I was invited by my friend Nirali to go to dinner with a group to celebrate another friend of hers getting engaged. I had to decline the invitation, and later that night a college friend of mine told me that the had just popped the question to his girlfriend.

Engagements are everywhere, and marriages can come out of nowhere. Several times in the past two months, I've checked an old acquaintance's Facebook profile to find out that he had just gotten married. I meet strangers my age who are already married. I see people my age pushing strollers. When my college roommate got married right after graduation, it was easy to dismiss him as a statistical outlier. Now, engagements and marriages are becoming the norm.

It's frightening to think of someone my age already having kids, and it boggles my mind that as I take this schedule-less road trip, the essence of not planning in advance, others are already choosing wedding cakes for next October.

I recently heard the rule that an engagement ring should cost as much as two months of the man's salary. With that in mind, maybe I should find a girl on this road trip and propose to her; I'm unemployed, so even if the girl weren't perfect, at least the ring would be cheap.

Day 6: Chicago, IL

Image of the day: A lion at the Lincoln Park Zoo barely notices as a B-2 bomber roars overhead. Photo by Katie Grim.

Trip meter at start of day: 1,006.0 mi
Gas: None bought today.

Today I met with a Peace Corps friend of mine, Katie, who was in Moldova from 2004 to 2006. We decided to meet, along with two of her friends and my sister, at the waterfront for the 49th Annual Chicago Air and Water Show. The show takes place along the waterfront and is free, unless you consider that the show is done with public money and the headliners are military units that our tax dollars pay for. Planes had been streaking across the city at high speeds for the previous few days, so I knew I had to check it out.

Unfortunately, the weather didn't want to cooperate. While it never poured, it rained off and on and the clouds were thick all day. As a result, my sister went home after less than an hour, and the rest of us spent our time alternating between walking around the Lincoln Park Zoo and watching the show from a nearby strip of park. It was at the zoo that Katie took the amazing image of the day.

When I mentioned in conversation to Katie that I had already visited with some old friends in Chicago, she said I had more friends than she did in the city. She's been living in Chicago for two months, and as she said to me, "I've only got, like, three friends." I wouldn't mention this if I thought that Katie would remain friendless in her new city. She'll make many friends, but it shows an interesting aspect of American culture: Americans, as opposed to people in most other parts of the world, are fiercely independent from their parents. Katie, for example, has lived in Ohio, North Carolina, Moldova, France and now Chicago. At 18, I moved 2,600 miles away to college, and at 22, I moved to Eastern Europe. Americans, in general, need to keep moving, need to establish themselves in a new place, but then can't stand staying there for too long. America is a culture in which the closer you live to your parents, the lower your social status is. This dynamic doesn't exist in other countries, but Americans are obsessed with the need for a fresh start.

Katie could have stayed in Ohio for college, grad school, and the rest of her life. She would have known lots of people, had support nearby all the time, and never would have had to feel like she was starting from scratch. I could have stayed in California, too, and perhaps have lived a less complicated life until now. But something deep down inside every American says that it's time to move. We adjust in the new area, and soon that becomes the home to which we are so closely attached. Luckily, what I'm discovering this week in Chicago is that you can go home again.

Day 5: Chicago, IL

Image of the day: A self-portrait in front of the Bean, the new sculpture in downtown Chicago. Some of the skyline is reflected in the background.

Trip meter at start of day: 1,006.0 mi (on the Sentra)
Gas: None bought today

After waking up in my cousin's apartment in the South Loop of downtown Chicago, I needed to go to my sister's apartment in Lincoln Park. Any sensible person would have taken the El train system to travel 5.6 miles. I walked.

Walking is a dirty word in America. People drive three blocks to the grocery store just to pick up a gallon of milk. Even people without a car wouldn't be caught dead walking. Any decent American city-dweller depends on the subway and bus system; to walk more than a mile in a city is either an adventure or a hassle, depending on your outlook. It is almost never, however, a matter of habit. There should be no question as to why Americans are some of the fattest people on the planet. When I told my cousin and sister last night that I would walk to Claire's in the morning, they took out a map and desperately tried to persuade me not to go. I wouldn't listen; Friday, I was going to walk, and nothing was going to stop me from using my God-given two legs. Clearly I was in the grips of madness, but my cousin and sister let me go.

As I headed north, I was amazed by one sight after another, some of which I had forgotten since my childhood: the Chicago Public Library downtown; the old Water Tower; the recently constructed Millenium Park, complete with a large fountain area and the Bean, a three-dimensional fun-house mirror that reflects the skyline on the outside and distort images of yourself on the inside. I walked through the Lincoln Park Zoo, which I had forgotten was free, and saw lions, a jaguar and seals. I picked up a copy of the Onion, found out the Art Institute of Chicago is free on Thursday and Friday evenings, and gave five bucks to the American Civil Liberties Union. (After working as a door-to-door fundraiser in 2004, I try to support canvassers with small donations. It turns out that the guy who was working for the ACLU was working for the same organization that I had worked for when it was contracted in 2004 to the Democratic National Committee.) I walked along the lakefront, found two ATMs for my bank, ate an Italian beef sandwich, and scouted out my sister's new neighborhood for good stores and restaurants.

Yes, it took me three hours to do all this, but there was no need to rush; remember, I'm unemployed and on a trip. I could have taken the El and gotten there in a half-hour, but then I wouldn't have seen so much of the city. My feet are a little sore, but that's a small price to pay for a full day of exploring the city.

Day 4: Wheaton, IL to Chicago, IL

Image of the day: The view down into the alley from my sister's new sixth-floor apartment.

Trip meter at start of day: 1,006.0 mi
Gas: $2.919/gal

Americans very rarely feel that they can relate to their entire country. There have always been divisions in this country: revolutionary vs. Tory, white vs. black, north vs. south, recent immigrants vs. established immigrants, and now the contrast that has been brought out into the public eye more and more in the last 10 years, red state vs. blue state. Although Americans share an incredibly large basic set of values, we find ways to split ourselves into smaller groups, to differentiate ourselves from groups that act differently from us or live in a different section of the country.

These differences, real or imagined, stay with every American, and we instinctively feel less comfortable around people who are different from us. A white woman might cross the street rather than walk near a black man. A banker in New York might talk more slowly and with a patronizing tone to a man with a Southern accent. A man like Tom Tancredo, whose family clearly has Italian roots, decries the dangers of invading immigrants. Evangelical Christians and non-evangelicals around the country get into shouting matches with each other every day over gay marriage and abortion.

As a result, Americans don't feel natural in many parts of their own country. I, for example, feel unnatural in both the conservative South and what I consider to be the "Look-at-Me" liberal Boulder, CO, where it seems that everyone dresses in a crazy style and is incapable of listing a single positive thing the president has done in the last six and a half years. In these areas, I feel like people were brought up differently than I was, that they can tell I'm not like them, and that I'm offending them with my phoniness. One of the purposes of this trip is to feel more natural in these places; to better understand the people and the attitudes that make up America these days.

One place in which I always feel comfortable, however, is Chicago. I was born here, and I lived here until I was 12. I'm not in touch with any of my childhood friends, but I know relatives, family friends, high school classmates, college buddies and fellow Peace Corps volunteers all in this city. I plan to live here again a year from now. With these close ties to Chicago, it's no surprise that as my sister and I drove the U-Haul into Chicago on the Eisenhower today, I yelped with joy when I first saw the figure of the Sears Tower on the brown, muggy horizon. In my excitement, I gave my sister a high-five, supplementing it with only a two-word explanation: "Sears Tower."

My sister, Claire, my cousin, Lindsaey, and I pulled up to Claire's new apartment building at 9:30 a.m., and with the help of a freight elevator and two of Lindsaey's friends from grad school, we moved all of Claire's possessions up to the sixth floor in well under two hours. Then we dropped off the U-Haul truck and began searching for a place for lunch—Claire's treat.

As Alma, one of Lindsaey's friends, drove us south down Halsted, we passed through Boys' Town, a large gay-friendly neighborhood on the North Side. Rainbow flags were everywhere, even on two-foot-wide poles placed by the city that stood maybe 10 feet tall. I didn't get out of the car to go to any stores, but most of the businesses—music shops, video stores, etc.—looked perfectly normal, with the exception of a sedate rainbow flag or sticker in the front window. Other stores clearly identified the gay community as their main customers, such as "Gay Mart" and a store displaying men's thongs in the front window.

We decided to eat at Melrose Restaurant, on the southern border of Boys' Town. We didn't know, but would find out later that the Melrose was the first restaurant at which our dad ate when he moved to Chicago 30 years ago. We sat outside, since the weather was warm and slightly overcast. From our table, Alma, a Mormon, and Corey, a guy from small-town Wisconsin, kept noticing the obviously gay men walking down the street and commenting on them. It was clear that although the guys didn't have a problem with what they were seeing, it was definitely something new. It was necessary for them to comment on every gay person who walked by, whereas I noticed but felt no need to mention it. My sister, who as a performing arts major in college was friends almost exclusively with gay men, didn't see anything odd, either. Alma and Corey were in their own country, but out of their comfort zone.

Lindsaey, Claire and I returned to Claire's apartment and began emptying boxes and arranging the place. When we noticed that there was no shower rod, Lindsaey called and asked for a superintendent. One came up, and I couldn't place his accent in the few sentences he said. Then this exchange came up as my computer played a song by Moldovan band Zdob si Zdub:

Claire: Peter, what's this song about? All I understand is "Davai".
Me: Well, it's in Russian. If it were in Romanian, I would understand it better.
Superintendent: You speak Romanian?
Me: Yeah. Where are you from?
Superintendent: Romania.
Me: Serios?
Superintendent: Da. Vorbesc romaneste.

I talked with the superintendent, who introduced himself as Gabriel, for 10 minutes about his life in Romania. He was the first person with whom I had spoken Romanian in the 10 days since I had returned home from the Peace Corps. It was invigorating to use my language again after so long, and it gave me a little taste of The Old Country.

It amazes me the number of people that can fit comfortably in a big city like Chicago. Whether you were born in Chicago like me or you're a Mormon from Arizona like Alma, whether you're a gay kid looking for an accepting community like the guys in Boys' Town or a Romanian immigrant like Gabriel, there's a spot for you. Chicago, like the rest of America, is not without its divisions. But like America, Chicago gives a chance to everyone.

Day 3: Wheaton, IL

Image of the day: Hudson relaxing in his own special bed.

Trip meter at start of day: 1,006.0 miles
Gas: None bought today

John Steinbeck wouldn't travel the country without Charley, his poodle. Although I won't be bringing any dogs with me on my trip, I've found my canine muse: Hudson.

Hudson is my cousins' soft coated Wheaten terrier here in Wheaton, a suburb of Chicago. He's two years old, but my cousins have only had him for a few months. Despite his mature age, he still has a puppy's face and a puppy's attitude. Hudson does what my cousins call "zooming," in which his caramel-colored 35-pound body runs laps through three rooms and two hallways in less than 10 seconds. He might not be the smartest dogÑ-my cousin Lindsaey referred to him several times in the first half-hour of my visit as "inbred". But I believe that enthusiasm matters more than intellect, so Hudson is my kind of dog.

After sleeping in until 9:30, I took Hudson for a walk. As soon as we left my cousins' house, we ran into the mailman. We happened to go along the same route as the mailman, and after several houses, he offered Hudson a dog treat. I wonder if he buys treats on his own to keep them in his pocket, or if the U.S. Postal Service gives mailmen a stipend specifically for that purpose.

Hudson didn't seem to get along with the other dogs. He met several of them on our walk, and I think he bothered them all in some way or another. In each situation, they would start barking at him, and he would slink away without a sound, not knowing what he had done wrong to offend his fellow dog.

As we walked down the street, I was startled by the contrast among houses in the neighborhood. In my experience, all the houses on a block usually look similar and are worth similar amounts of money. But here it was different; I saw huge recently-constructed million-dollar homes next to houses that had been there for decades and were worth a third as much money. I thought back to 2004, when I worked as a door-to-door fundraiser for the Democratic party. At half of the houses I was walking by today, I would have asked for $50, while at the other half, I would have asked for $250. That dichotomy is something I've rarely seen. Of course, Wheaton is a largely Evangelical Christian town in which, during my childhood, the Republican governor would always walk in the Fourth of July parade, so if I were campaigning here for the Democrats, most of the people would have slammed their doors in my face before I asked for a penny.

Hudson and I returned home, and I began to think about how Americans treat our dogs. I just came back from living in Moldova, a small Eastern European country. My host family had three dogs, one of which almost was never allowed off of her chain. The dogs were never allowed inside the house, no matter how bad the weather was outside, and they were never petted by anything more than my foot. Compare that to America, in which we feed our pets specially formulated food, let the dogs sleep in bed with us, buy them toys, take them on walks, send them to groomers, pay for a kennel or "doggie day care" when we're too busy to deal with them, and finally lay them to rest in pet cemeteries. Something about being American creates a strong connection to our pets, even though it might be so strong at times that it's ridiculous.

But if Steinbeck needs a dog, then I suppose we all do.

Day 2: Lincoln, NE to Wheaton, IL

Image of the day: This is me after a full day of sweating in the car. My shirt would go well with a lime and a shot of tequila.

Trip meter at start of day: 505.2 miles
Gas: $2.879/gal

Claire and I made good time today, leaving Lincoln at 8:45 a.m. and arriving in Wheaton, IL, a Chicago suburb, at 5:30 p.m. The biggest thing slowing us down was having to repeatedly fill up the U-Haul's tank. The truck gets about nine miles per gallon, compared to the Sentra's 25. In an attempt to get better mileage and to pay less for gas, I tried out a fuel that is fairly unique to the Midwest: ethanol fuel.

Ethanol 10 has been getting more publicity in the news, but I had never put any in my car. I decided to try it in the truck today for two reasons. First, it had a higher octane rating, which presumably would give me better performance. Second, it was cheaper than regular gas; while 87 octane unleaded gas cost $2.879, gas with 89 octane and 10 percent ethanol cost $2.659.

I tried out the ethanol gas, and while I didn't calculate my exact mileage with the fuel, it appeared that I got worse performance with ethanol than without it. When we arrived in Wheaton at my cousins' house, I asked my uncle Bill some questions about the cheaper fuel. Bill, who works at a chemical company, told me that ethanol fuels actually deliver fewer miles to the gallon than regular gasoline.

"But it's cheaper," I said. "So maybe it doesn't give better miles to the gallon, but does it give better miles to the dollar?"

"Nope," Bill said.

"So the only real benefit is political," I said.

"Yes." It turns out, Bill said, that ethanol-mixed fuels have been available in the Midwest for years. They are big in the Midwest because they're made from corn, and they're mostly unavailable in other parts of the country because of the cost of shipping ethanol across the nation, which is high because ethanol cannot be transported in pipelines. However, American farmers benefit from ethanol because of the increased demand for corn, and America as a whole benefits from being slightly less dependent on imported oil from the Middle East, Venezuela and Russia. Supporting ethanol-based fuel (and placing high tariffs on the same product imported from Brazil and China) is a political win-win, even if the benefits outside the political realm are minimal.

Later in the trip, I'll try to calculate whether or not E-10 is actually any good for the consumer in terms of miles per dollar. In the meantime, it seems to only be good for a small-scale political statement.