Jefe's Next Chapter

On Sunday I had a lot of road to cover, my goal was to stop in Madison and make Chicago by bedtime. If I had done a better job getting more distance in Minnesota, that would have been easier.  I’m remembering that one of the rest stops in South Dakota, as I got near Minnesota was my first indication of really leaving the West, and entering the Mid-West. There were 3 beverage machines near the entry way and they each had a sign indicating that rest area staff would not be responsible for money lost in the machines. One of the machines referred to “cans of soda”, while the signs on the other 2 machines referred to “pop”. I’ll call that a sign of the Mid-West.

I closed a shade over 560 miles for the day, breaking 2500 for the trip, with fewer than 1,000 left to go for my destination. Sightseeing was more-or less over, it was going to be a long day on the road, Monday resting and working, then 2 more days of steady riding to get to New York. Most of the day was hot, in the upper 80’s, with all of my leather on I was sweaty, and needed to stop often for water. Also, I’d been riding, more or less, for about a week now, and my butt was pretty tired of being on the bike for more than about 90 minutes at a time, really, I was shifting around and looking for a “comfortable spot” after 30 minutes, and there just wasn’t one.

It was close to 3:00 and I’d covered around 275 miles when I decided to stop for lunch. I got off I-90 and rode around a little bit. There isn’t much in the town of York, WI but I definitely wanted to be a little bit away form all of the chains at the freeway exit.  The Greenwood Café was just getting ready to close for the day, there were 2 customers chatting with the server, and the kitchen was breaking down, and taxidermy animals displayed on every available surface.. The waitress, who spoke with an accent that would have fit in as a key character in the film Fargo, insisted that I sit, and they’d find something for me. The kitchen had just finished roasting off some beef, for sandwiches, and she recommended the French dip. The service was more friendly than efficient, and the food was nothing special, but I was glad to be off the bike for a little while.

OK, another 100 miles to Madison, and a brief chat with my Aunt Linda, who I don’t see nearly as much as I’d like to. It was nearly 5:00 when I arrived, and my goal had been to hit Chicago for supper, that was looking like a distant and unlikely scenario, with another 150 miles to go.

Aside from the construction in much of South Dakota, coming into Wisconsin, and especially the highway toward Chicago, as well as into Illinois and in Chicago were really some of the first, consistently bad roads I was on. These are roads that suffer the brutal effects of winter, combined with heavy usage by large trucks loaded with merchandise headed out to the rest of America. This was also the first place where traffic was frightening, because so many of the vehicles around me where so much bigger that I was, and there were no wide gaps. It wasn’t exactly bumper to bumper, but it was a pretty maximized use of available road-space, at or near the speed limit, for dozens of miles at a time. The landscape was becoming familiar, with lush trees and bushes on both sides of the road, instead of cornfields, and I was feeling a bit giddy at returning to my home of origin. I pulled over at one of the toll-booths to call cousin Trudy and let her know I wouldn’t make it in time for dinner, and texted a couple times with distance updates.  When I finally got to the city, I was a little hungry, so before finishing my day’s ride at Trudy’s house, I took a familiar detour up Clark Street, the path I used to take, every day on my way from my apartment on Glenwood, next to St. Boniface Cemetery,  to school at UIC, and stopped at Clark Street Dog. It was late, but they are open till 4:00 a.m. serving the drunks and partiers from around Boys Town . I got off the bike, in all my leather and the first words that anyone in Chicago had to say to me, was a pleasantly intoxicated black fellow, as he approached while I removed my helmet, and he said “Darn, I bet you’re a hetero-sexual”. Sorry to say, his Gay-dar was working well that night.

One tasty hot dog and  a handful of fries later, I jumped back on the bike and covered the couple miles to Trudy’s place, near Sheridan at the lakefront. We spent some time talking about the road, and my travels, as well as some of my gear. She was pretty excited about the prospect of getting a ride the next day, and then she went off to bed. I spent some time catching up with e-mail, and just sorting myself out. Tomorrow would be Monday, my first day that I woke up in the same place that I would go to bed, since I left Seattle, the Tuesday before.