South Bend, IN to Chicago, IL (September 10)

Distance covered today: 111 miles

Distance covered total: 1,175 miles

Estimated mileage remaining: 2,325 miles (66% left to go)

My overnight charade as Henry David Thoreau was a very comfortable one, indeed.  While it was unfortunate that my visit to South Bend would be so abbreviated, I had a lot to look forward to in the next couple days.  For one, this was only going to be a half-day of scooting, as there were only about 100 miles separating the backyard cabin and my next stop in Chicago, where I planned on spending my first day off since Syracuse.

After spending many of my days racing against the setting sun and the occasional rainstorm, today’s shorter distance was going to allow me to adopt a more leisurely pace.  In fact my day would be made even “shorter” since I’d be crossing into the Central Time Zone somewhere out there (though I’m not sure anyone really knows exactly where… Time in Indiana has a dizzyingly complex and convoluted history, and even has its own looooooong Wikipedia page if you’re ever desperate for something to read.  It’s actually more interesting than it sounds.)

Another reason for slowing my roll was that the scooter guys from last night had said it was in the best interests of the engine to ease up on the gas a bit, instead of running the motor at full tilt all of the time.  I had asked if the engine could sustain day after day of white-knuckle action, and they said that it’s actually happiest when it’s running at 85-90% strength, noting that most wear occurs either at rest or when its starting up.  This was another piece of encouraging news, since I had feared that I been inviting disaster by piling 200 more miles onto the odometer each day.  Obviously the downside was that now I’d try my best to scoot along at 30 mph instead of 33, but if sacrificing 3 mph of speed would help to preserve the long-term health of the engine, then it would be well worth it.  One of those “one step back, two steps forward” kinda things.  Plus, I was well aware of the fact that I was fast approaching the sparsely populated, lonely stretches of the Midwest and the Great Plains where a breakdown could be potentially disastrous, and was trying to care for the Metro accordingly.

With this heightened sense of scooter-care in mind, I had a precautionary pit stop to make before leaving South Bend.  I went over to Michael’s house (one of the guys I had met last night) to pick up some emergency tire spray for motorcycle tires that he had generously offered to give me.  That fix-a-flat stuff is notoriously hit-or-miss, but as Michael pointed out, if I’ve got a flat in the middle of nowhere, it’s better to have a 60% chance of limping away from it than the 0% alternative.

Michael was the source of not only tire spray, but also interesting conversation.  He loved hearing about my scooting experiences and gushed about his own love of hitting the road on his motorcycle, saying how he finds strangers to be much more conversational and friendly with him than they’d ever be if he were just another motorist in a car.  He explained that obviously motorcycles have a lot of drawbacks and tradeoffs compared to the luxuries offered by a car, but even in the comfort of a car, there’s no substitute for the friendliness of other curious motorists who want to know about life on two wheels.  Michael and the other guys I had met were living proof of this, as I certainly wouldn’t have met such a colorful and helpful crowd in South Bend had I driven a more conventional vehicle.  One more reason why my love of scooting was growing steadily with each leg of the trip.

Tossing the tire spray under the seat, I resumed the push to Chicago.  After driving for a ways, I ate lunch at a park in Michigan City, IN, and then shortly thereafter came to Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore.  I was tempted to stop, but not for your typical beach visit.  Legend has it that a long-lost stash of Al Capone’s Prohibition era whiskey is hidden somewhere near the Dunes and remains undiscovered, reportedly worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.  While some treasure hunters are drawn to the call of “there’s gold in them hills” others respond to “there’s whiskey in them dunes”, and though I count myself among the latter, I wasn’t feeling quite adventurous enough to go for it.  Maybe next time, I told myself.

Boarded up homes. A familiar sight throughout the Rust Belt in general.

The pleasant, forested dunes abruptly gave way to the industrial wasteland of Gary, IN, home of several floundering steel mills, and Michael Jackson, who (like Steve Martin) was “born a poor black child” here back in 1958.  Dominated by heavy industry and boarded up buildings, Gary is about as blighted an eyesore as cities come.  My drive-by tour of the Rust Belt certainly wouldn’t have been complete without hitting Gary, one of its most corroded nodes of all.

Since my time in the Rust Belt is drawing to a close and I’ve spent so much time talking about it, here are a couple concluding thoughts on the place.  Buffalo, Cleveland, Toledo, South Bend, and Gary (among other towns) might not be the most glamorous parts of the country, but it’s important to see them nonetheless.  You can’t just sweep ugly and depressing places under the rug.  It’s important to see that America isn’t all shuttered houses with white picket fences (which, come to think of it, aren’t really anywhere) and to use your exposure to the hard-knock Garys of the world as inspiration to reduce the number of Garys in the world, if that makes sense.  I don’t have any brilliant cure-all solutions for Gary’s plight, other than the modest proposal of donating 0.5% of all future proceeds from Thriller to the cash-strapped city.  I think Michael Jackson would be proud to posthumously help resuscitate the city in which he was born, and if the best-selling album of all-time can’t help Gary moonwalk its way to a brighter future, then I don’t know what can.  Just a thought.

Even though it’s practically on the beaches of Lake Michigan, I don’t think the twenty miles of road from Gary to Chicago will ever be listed as a scenic route on any map.  There isn’t a blade of grass along the way, only barren shipyards, chemical plants, and rough, rundown neighborhoods.  This corridor is also characterized by insanely dense traffic, which made me feel like a guppy in a billowing school of fish.  That is, a school of crazy fish with wanton disregard for traffic law that liked to flip me off occasionally.

So, clearly this wasn’t the most enjoyable stretch of road.  Matters were made worse when Illinois had no official state welcome sign proudly demarcating the transition from Lincoln’s Boyhood Home to his Land!  While disappointed in Illinois for their lack of a sign (which broke my streak of taking pictures at each state border along the way), the Chicago skyline visible in the distance didn’t make for a bad consolation prize.

Took this on a Sunday in the park, but was reminded of the song "Saturdays in the Park" by Chicago.

Chicago is one of my favorite major cities.  It’s clean, on a Great Lake, offers good public transportation, home to a lot of my friends and relatives… the list goes on.  But before I could get to those good parts, I was a little unsure of how to weave my way through the city’s infamous South Side.  I had a hunch that scooting might not be the most optimal means of transit through the ‘hood, but by sticking to arterial roads I was fine, though the traffic was inescapable and probably more dangerous.

There were only a couple saving graces of my slog through city traffic.  First, while stopped at a light by Midway airport, I had a true Wayne’s World moment as planes came roaring onto the runway, seemingly just feet overhead.  The drive’s other highlight was being serenaded by the salsa music of surrounding Latino neighborhoods and passing cars.  With only the wind between my helmet’s earflaps to listen to out on the open road, a little musica made for a welcome change of background noise.

After methodically inching my way northward through Chicago’s numbered grid of streets, I finally pulled into the back alley of my cousins’ place in the Logan Square neighborhood, capping a hugely successful week on the road.

So there you have it- a pretty ordinary and uneventful day of travel, but one that carried a lot of gravitas in terms of milestones and geographical significance.  I was in a new state, and a new time zone, but most importantly, the Windy City almost exactly marked the completion of one-third of my trip, and I’d done it in only a week!  Not to count my proverbial poultry prior to hatching, but at this rate of travel I was on pace to reach California in 2.5 or 3 more weeks (safely assuming that the Rockies will slow me down a bit).

But making it to Chicago also meant that my journey had passed the threshold to true respectability.  Scooting from Boston to South Bend is crazy and all, but Boston to Chicago just has a superior air of accomplishment to it.  Even if the Metro were to blow up the next day, with my dying gasp I’d be proud to say that I made it this far.

Good times awaited in Chicago, home of Bubble Guy.

This feeling of having attained respectability was further supported when my cousins told me that there were bets circulating within the family regarding how far I’d make it.  Evidently some people had wagered that Chicago would be the end of the road and that I wouldn’t make it any farther.  Others said my last hurrah would come in my attempt to scale the Rockies.  It didn’t sound like anyone expected me to get to California.

And I can’t really blame ‘em, ‘cause honestly, I’m not sure I thought I’d make it that far, either.  There was just no way of knowing how my engine would respond with a couple thousand miles and a couple formidable mountain ranges left to tackle.  But one thing I was sure about by this point was that after 1,200 miles, I knew that my own resolve would not be my undoing.  Just the way that Ahab went down with the Pequod, I was in this for the long haul, for better or worse.

Shout-Outs:

-Once again, I need to thank Michael (whom I’d met at the scooter shindig) for the fix-a-flat emergency tire spray.  Hopefully what they say is true- “60% of the time it works every time.”

-My kin, Brian and Kevin in Chicago.  Fantastic hosts as always.

-Carleton chums David and Rachel for meeting up with me during my stay in The Chi.

-Girl on South 95^th street who was part of a group asking cars for change as a fundraiser for their cheerleading squad or whatever.  Approaching me, she tried to be all business at first, but soon broke into laughter at my ridiculous appearance.  I guess I looked a little out of place riding my scooter on the South Side.

Town(s) of the Day: Chicago, IL