Rainy Tollway, Illinois

I discovered a number of things on the road through Illinois to Chicago. I discovered, for example, that Illinois, like Iowa, has a lot of corn. The endless corn fields provide ample opportunity for roadside urination. Unfortunately it was pouring with rain for the entire drive, so nobody wanted to get out of the car for any reason at all.

The rain was singularly unpleasant. It robbed us of the views that we imagined we would have been enjoying if only we could have escaped from this endless mist. The whole world seemed grey and heavy and uninspiring. Our merry band was not predisposed to love Chicago based on this. After one particularly long silence in the car while we soaked up the soggy atmosphere, Patricia and I had a conversational exchange that I think is worth preserving in its entirety just because it captures the mood so well.

Heather: This is crap.
Patricia: Yeah. It's really shitty weather.
Heather: It's totally shitty.
Patricia: It's crap.

The rotten weather persisted throughout my short time in Chicago so several of the sights I wanted to see, like Millennium Park and, oh, maybe a building or two, were completely obscured by fog and drizzle. Sightseeing was going to be a waste of time here.

I also learned that Ronald Reagan has a tollway named after him. A goodly portion of the drive to Chicago took place on the Ronald Reagan Memorial Tollway. I don't know how you want to be remembered, but for me, a tollway would not be high on the list of preferred tributes. Maybe a park, or a tree, or even a bridge could be nice, but not a tollway. Every time we reached for more change to pay the toll (which was many, many times), we thought about Ronald Reagan in most unflattering terms.

We amused ourselves by reading the roadwork signs as we piloted our Puff Lite submarine towards the city. Patricia briefly spotted a sign warning of the penalty for hitting a worker, but didn't quite manage to read the whole thing on the first pass through the rain. The first I heard about it was when she suddenly said, "How much for a worker?" We speculated for a while on how much it would cost us to attack a road worker with a loaded VW Jetta and how many rich hunters might be willing to pay the price just to relieve the tedium. It turns out it's $10,000 and 14 years in prison, which is probably prohibitive for even the most enthusiastic hunter.