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Day Two- 1/4 Lap of America First FLW Contact  39796 Mile 586 Wake up in Toledo   First item in the morning is to call JTP in Wisconsin and tell him we are coming a day early.  Well after asking the nice cheese-eating folks at Taliesin if we can get in a tour on Wednesday instead of Thursday. No problem. JTP was equally easy-going. OK, no problem. Breakfast at Bob Evans- yum, so good we scarfed up some extra Banana Breads for gifts, as we were going to visit friends! It was eightyeightyeighty west west west again all through Indiana.  Indiana opened up into spreadeagle green expanses and mostly fun drivers.  We were going too fast. The sun was shining. All was well. I called Teachum and said, "We'll be there a day early!". It's actually 80/90 all though Indiana for no reason, who cares, it went by in a flash. La la la cross the border into Illinois and almost immediately everything changed.  Over the course of the next few days I became intimate with the Interstates (ha! What a misuse of that word!) in Illinois.
These people are nuts. They aren't nuts like New York where "everything paved is fair game", they aren't nuts like in New Jersey where they they thought it was a good idea to make people turn right in order to go left, they aren't nuts like in Boston where they are aiming at you, they are just insane. At least in New York if someone is driving crazy it is because they are trying to get somewhere, in Chicago they will cut you off in the right hand lane to sit in front of you at the stop light. It is obvious when you are on the roads that they were planned by a corrupt city government. Every few miles of gruntingly slow congestion you are stopped and asked for an arbitrary about of money. Like 40 cents. 40 cents? Each toll booth is different and usually there's one on the exit too. One of them had a red light that stayed red even after you paid, another one had a basket so high I cuoldn't reach it wihout unbuckling my belt and standing on the car floor. What is this? SUV only? Never mind that we all know the roads are already paid for, and this one is in horrible condition and hopelessly jammed, we lost count of how may times we nearly died when a 18 wheeler suddenly lost it's lane and found itself nearly parked on top of us. Beyond that they have an EZ pass type system, only it's called the "I pass" and doesn't accept EZ Pass. That makes sense. Not. Here is another thing I don't get: The reason why we have traffic in Manhattan is because it's an island. You have to go over a bridge or through a tunnel to get there. Understandable. But Chicago is on land. There are other roads. Ask someone from Chicago why they take the Interstate- they call it aptly, the "Tollway"- and they'll tell you, "Because it's faster". But it's NOT! It's slow as the 2000 Presidential election and just as annoying. Well screw it, the rain clouds were looming and we pulled off at the first exit. That's another thing about driving west, you can always tell what the weather is going to be across the wide flat plains. Everyone is a junior weatherman.  So we pull off on 95th Street, get gas and call Fred. "Did you say 95th street?" he asked. Yeah, 95th street. "You are around the corner from the best BBQ in Chicago." Oh really? Oh REALLY? We're on the way to KathyM's house, maybe we should have lunch here first. "If you are going to the Pit before you go to KathyM's house, you better make sure you get her some BBQ too. Better yet, I'll meet you there." Gee. It Jest Don't Git No Better. Uh huh.    We met Teachum at the Pit- apparently the owner also drives a Z3- and chowed down on the best BBQ sandwich I ever had. Swapped lies, talked about routes, blew off KathyM. :) We followed Teachum home, stole some garage pics,    
and one of Teachum in a suit.  Kathy and CarlM turned up shortly thereafter, Kathy proudly stuck a printout of a post from skin_mechanic in my face when she arrived. It was a picture of a box, with my bday present inside, (someone gimmie the urls to add here??? Please?) being sent to my house in New York while I drove west. Everyone on the Z3 planet knew what he had sent me, and kept the secret, saying only "Heh heh heh". I am still amazed that the Message Board could keep a secret like that. Pretty cool eh? Even Teachum had deleted the correspondance from his hard drive just in case I went poking around. The Teachums and the Melbys had the sad journey ahead to share the burden of the loss of family of close Z3 friends. Nice friends who come out to stand with you when you have to bury a parent, even if you have to drive 4 or five hours and leave the Z3s at home. In a suit. We sent along a banana bread with our sincere sympathy for their loss. They went one way on dreaded 294 and we went the other, North and West please. I 294 still sucked as bad or worse than it did when we arrived and within a short time we abandoned it again. I could not for the life of me figure out why so many people were in a rush to get to Wisconsin.  It took some poking around but we finally found a backroad that would take us all the way to JTP in Wisconsin.  Route 14 was- as the French say, "pas mal". It even had some nice bits.  Art Shot, sue me It was a nicely paved road, with few cars, few lights. It was getting dark though and I was beat. Beat beat beat. And hungry. There was nothing except fast food. We tried some of the homey-er looking joints but they were full of cigarette smoke and seedy. Ended up at a yucky Taco Bell for dinner. Yuck. We try to avoid fast food on these trips. We kinda blew it, if we had waited just another half hour or so we would have made it to "Dave's BBQ". Oh well.    Next big winners were the "Gentleman's clubs". Later JTP would explain that the folks in Illiois rush to Wisconsin for cheese and sex. Cheese and Sex please. Cha-ching. Madison, Wisconsin. They don't very much like signs. Kind of like Pennsylvania where we figure that we already know where we're going and if you don't know then you should ask someone from Pennsylvania or just go away, who needs you anyway. (I'm from Pennsylvania, I only live in New York City.) There were no roadsigns for the exit JTP told us to take. We blew the exit and gave up. It was 1130 at night and I had stopped functioning about halfway through Illinois. I wanted a shower and a bed and goodnight, see ya in the morning. We found an Applebees, called JTP and followed him like helpless bees to the hive. But... oh oh oh "did you know that Frank Lloyd Wright designed a fabulous Community and Convention Center in Madison?" Uh, no.  "Manona Terrace, and it is especially beautiful at night." Keep talking. "At night there are special lights to cast the shadows of the waves on the exterior of the building, the exterior was designed to reflect the water..." that's right baby, sell it. OK of course we are going to go see Manona Terrace at midnight. It's about 45 degrees, I have been wearing my  heated vest like a life preserver for the last 2 days, let me just put on my  head sok and I'm with you.JTP dropped his top when he saw us do it, naturally he couldn't let a couple of thin blooded East Coasters catch him with his top up at midnight in frikin freezin Madison frikin Wisconsin. It was definitely worth the trip, driving under the building as Frank Lloyd Wright had planned,  Click on the image to view an animated gif of driving under Manona Terrace Click here to download a 2.89mg avi of driving under manona terrace our first taste of Frank Lloyd Wright on trip that promised more, more, more.    I'm not sure why we had to stop by the local Porsche dealership on the way home, and I was going to kill JTP, but later. JTP extended his hospitality and his home to us, DaveT and he stayed up planning all sorts of stops for the next day while I showered in bliss. When I got out of the shower it was close to 2am and they informed me that we'd have to be out the door by 7am to make our tour at Taliesin. Really? Goodnight guys. |
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1 1/4 Lap of America Part 1 Day 1, NY to Ohio~~ Part 2 Exit 29~~ Part 3 Road Find, PA~~ Part 4 Accident Scene~~ Part 5 Amish~~ Part 6 It Leaks! ~~ Part 7 Ohio~~ Part 8 Youngstown, OH~~ Part 9 Cleveland, OH~~ Part 10 Toledo Rain HenZ~~ |
 1/4 Lap of America Frank Lloyd Wright Gumball Page May 21-30, 2001  Esmerelda's Home Page
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