Day 2: Descent into the Great Midwest

It is surprising how quickly the miles melt by, when you tally them up at the end of a long day travelling. Although we have only been driving for two days, we have already been to seven states: Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa.

In order to keep from going completely crazy with all this driving, we have adopted the convention of driving in two 4-hour shifts, followed by two 2-hour shifts, alternating each time. This turns out to make meal breaks fall at convenient times, and provides enough downtime without impeding our forward progress unduly.

If you are spectacularly bored, you can hear what happens when we have been driving too long and go a little crazy.

Sometimes, getting David to put down the camera long enough to pack up and leave can be a real chore. Notice also that the sky is gathering grey -- it promises to be a rainy road ahead.

Despite Michael pointing out to him that this is not the sort of "grass" they mean when they speak of "smoking grass", David was fascinated by this particular bit of flora. Either that, or he was just playing around with his camera again.

You decide.

Surprisingly, this particular patch of grass seemed to have some kind of strange and primitive creature living in it. We were unable to establish reliable contact with this odd being, and he soon ran off snorting and gurgling in his strange, ancient tongue.

Realizing he had a wide-angle lens in his camera bag, and bored of taking short clips of road signs, David took to filming the interior of the car. Fortunately, he quickly realized this was at least as boring as filming the exterior, and so this was a comparatively short-lived endeavour.

At last, the end of Ohio!

True to the doppler radar on The Weather Channel this morning, it started pouring as we drove. The trucks were more than glad to help give us the whole "limited visibility" experience.

In South Bend, we switched drivers and got some lunch. South Bend happens to be the home of the (in)famous University of Notre Dame, too, and we drove past the campus in our quest for sustenance. Much to our disgust, the local pronunciation for "Notre Dame" seems to be "No Ter Dayme".

This offended David's ears more than Michael's. Both agreed, however, that Indiana is as boring as snot to drive through, especially in a rainstorm.

South Bend, Indiana is also famous for its highly evolved system of public transport. Here, for instance, we see one of their subway cars, awaiting a fresh load of passengers en route to the core areas of the city itself.

Bored again, David is back to filming the interior of the car. This time, he's got the camera on his head, and is attempting to preserve for posterity the page of the road atlas that contains our route marked out in yellow highlighter.

The little black device sitting on the dashboard is not a radar detector, but David's GPS. It's really quite nice to have one of these when you are driving cross country.

As we drew near the border between Indiana and Illinois, the traffic worsened. In this particular case, the holdup seems primarily to be the toll plaza at the end of the turnpike. Indiana, it seems, takes a page out of Massachusetts's book, in this regard.

Both are better than Illinois, however, which gives you "The Death of a Thousand Cuts", in the form of dozens of thirty- and forty-cent tolls throughout the roads surrounding Chicago. Fortunately for us, we weren't going to Chicago, so we only had to pay one of these.

At long last, the sun broke free of the clouds.

Billboards are a big feature of America's interstate highway system. Indiana had some of the more amusing ones. This one, for instance, invites its patrons to drive thru the window, and appears to sell smoke.

I guess you have to buy mirrors at some other store.

Not to be outdone on the "amusing billboard" circuit, Joliet, Illinois had this delightful advert to offer. We thought surely something this suggestive must offend the upright moral character of the Midwestern denizens of these parts, but nobody seemed to mind.

(Mind you, it's hard to conduct any meaningful study of how people really feel about a sign like this, from the confines of a fast-moving automobile)

Partway through Illinois, our trip-meter rolled over to one thousand miles (we had set it to zero as we drove out of David's driveway in Massachusetts). We took this opportunity to pull over and deface some public property.

Armed with a big, black Sharpie -- an indispensable tool in the Creative Procrastinator's arsenal, David prepares to demonstrate the proper (ab)use of galvanized steel guard-rails.

Just in case anyone was wondering, we identified the very spot at which it was one thousand miles to Boston. That might be handy, if we ever come back this way.

After a while, we grew bored of Illinois, and decided to get on to the next state along the way. This happened, by no particular motivation of our own, to be Iowa. As Dar Williams sings, "I've never had a way with women, but the hills of Iowa make me wish that I could." I'm not sure how that particular quotation is relevant to our story, but there it is.

Not merely content to put up a sign welcoming travellers to their state, Iowans went one step further, and built an entire Welcome Center.

Apparently, you're not welcome if you drive a semi, however. "We don't serve their kind here." "Huh?" "Your semis. They'll have to wait outside."

After so much driving, we decided to see what a city in Iowa might look like. Here is Michael, pontificating outside a combination gas station and FoodMart. As far as we could tell, Iowa cities consist of equal parts flat ground, gas stations, tall signs, restaurants, hotels, motels, and residences.

This left, in our minds, the question of what people in Iowa actually do with themselves. A fairly significant portion of the population might be employed by the various lodgings, restaurants, and gas stations. We were not, for some reason, able to locate ourselves a grocery store.

Sunset over Iowa. Pretty.

At long last, we arrived at the Days Inn of Des Moines, Iowa. We were told it might be dangerous to walk to dinner, so we did it anyway. Here, Michael is trying to look menacing so that the gang of toughs trying to steal our mozzarella sticks will take off in search of easier prey.

Here is an amusing story we found in a local paper. As you can see, the story came from the Associated Press, so this really doesn't count as "local colour", but you should have seen the picture that was run just above this article. It pictured Fidel Castro, dressed in his uniform fatigues, hugging a small distraught-looking child.

Click this image to see the full article with the picture.