Chicago, IL to LA

The drive from DC to Chicago was long and full of local radio. I found some good stations near Cleveland, OH, but I think I've had my fill of Led Zeppelin and Country Music, not to mention Christian Radio.

Chicago was a blast, Ian took me out Friday night with his girlfriend and 6 other ladies to Simon's, who have one of the best jukeboxes I've ever listened to. Katherine and I walked back to Ian's after the bar while Ian ran to get us veggie burritos from Quijote's. The. Best. Burrito. Ever.

Ian and Katherine had tickets to the Cubs game on Saturday, so I rode the train into downtown with them and headed to the Apple store to get my replacement ipod. Success! They had it in stock. After trading out my ipod I wandered aimlessly through downtown until I happened across the Museum of Contemporary Art. They had an amazing exhibit there called "Universal Experience: Art, Life, and the Tourist's Eye." It was a multi-media collection that focused on the perspective of a traveler and how what we encounter affects us. Perfect. After strolling through the exhibit I walked down to the end of Chicago Avenue to the shore of Lake Michigan. Sort of surreal to stand at the shore of a Lake and not see the shore on the other side. Later that afternoon I find that my replacement ipod isn't working properly, and after a very frustrating hour on the phone with Apple support I am told it has a defective drive and will have to be replaced. Utter frustration and disappointment. I met up with Ian shortly after and we grabbed Sophie and headed to Huey's where I had my first Chicago-style hot dog complete with a pickle spear, tomatoes and cheese. I don't care what my friend Alison says about them being weird toppings for hot dogs, it was awesome. It just so happened that our friend Mike from Raleigh was visiting Chicago that weekend, so we met up with him at the Empty Bottle where we saw Del Rey play. They were really really awesome.

The next day Ian and Laura and I had lunch with Mike, then I hit the road for my short (4 hours, I guess it's all relative) drive to St. Louis. I ate dinner with Arik and his family, walked around St. Louis a bit, then called it a day.

Arik and I got a bit of a late start on Monday due to a mild delay at the Genius Bar in the Apple Store in St. Louis. But hey, they had a working replacement ipod so it was worth the wait. We hit the road at 3:30pm and drove until I couldn't see straight, which landed us in Sepulpa, OK.

From Sepulpa on it was down to serious driving business. We drove through Oklahoma, Texas, and then to the New Mexico/Arizona border where we stopped and had a fine Mexican meal. Arik and I were taking pictures of the town when a Navajo and his wife stopped Arik and asked him to take their picture and mail it to them. We talked to them for a bit, he taught me how to say "thank you" in Navajo, blessed us and my car, and wished us a safe journey.

So yeah. The last day we drove from New Mexico to Los Angeles and it was insanely windy. I'm talking 35mph winds and a speed limit of 75. Thank god I had so much stuff weighing my car down or we'd have been flipped over off the side of the road somewhere. By the time I hit the LA freeway the numbness in my body and my brain had me operating on auto-pilot. I arrived at my new home exhausted, hungry, disoriented and extremely emotional. Nothing a chicken burrito and a good night's sleep didn't cure.

So, here I am.