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 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.