Leaving Home and Heading for Home

We left at ten minutes to nine in the morning. The city took sympathy on us and did its best to let us out painlessly, unlike when we had arrived seven days earlier. There is no other city I have seen where the skyline does so much to define its nature. At times it seems so compact you could imagine it is inside the glass dome of a snow-globe, just waiting to be shaken up.

As we drove down the Kennedy, the monumental buildings increased in size as we passed by their feet, until we got to Sears Tower. Then faster than they had grown they fell away again. The Kennedy became the Dan Ryan and the soullessly named US Cellular Field appeared on our right. After that it was foot down and head for Indiana.

We turned 90 degrees at the bottom of Lake Michigan, the sun shone and the lake was sparkling blue in the distance. We left Illinois via the Chicago Skyway. Sounding futuristic and romantic, the reality is the heavy industrial iron design of the bridge never allows you the feeling that you are on anything more than an interstate. Incredibly we were in Indiana in a little over thirty minutes from leaving the northern suburbs; a journey that has been known to take as much as four hours, though 60 - 90 minute is more normal.

After an hour of driving we had left the black and smoky rail connected buildings that line the Indiana banks of Lake Michigan. The terrain was green and flat. The cold sadistic reality of the mile markers read 30 and reminded us that our friends, family and other comforts were falling further and further behind. Ahead of us another 900 miles of interstate, 700 of which was to be a straight line on one road, I80. In total 14 hours of driving but with nature and food breaks 16 hours of road riding.

<Enter stunningly witty and clever tagline here>


Bazza