Weather weary

Ack. Long-ass day, and now I'm in a hotel room in Louisville, Kentucky, desperate for sleep.

Louisville?

Yes. Louisville.

Why Louisville? you ask.

Because it's the gosh-darned state fair this weekend, that's why! Eeeee! (squeal of glee) Get me some deep-fried Twinkies and some prize-winnin' hogs, I say!

But man, it's been a long road here. Last I wrote, we were in South Dakota and loving it. But we had to move on. Unfortunately, there's nothing much between Sioux Falls, SD and Chicago, where we were headed next, except 600 miles of range lands and farms. But we managed to amuse ourselves by having lunch in Winona, MN, and stopping in Lacrosse, WI to buy University of Wisconsin at Lacrosse paraphernalia. For some reason, I'm loving the obscure university wear. Joiner mused out loud that it would be kinda cool to buy a lacrosse t-shirt at Lacrosse, so of course we had to do that. (C'mon, you think it's cool too.)

Now. Let's talk about weather. If you recall, we entered South Dakota under a black, lightning-filled sky, as thunderstorms rolled across the unending plains. We had good weather while exploring the Badlands and Mount Rushmore, though, and all the way through Minnesota and Wisconsin.

But. We crossed into Illinois on Route 90 sometime in the evening, and we could see a darkening sky in front of us. By the time we were about an hour away from Chicago, the storm broke.

It was the worst weather I have ever had the misfortune to drive in. I turned on my brights to see if it would help with visibility -- it only revealed that the rain was coming in sideways, hammering on the windshield with such ferocity I thought the glass might break. I could only follow the red tail lights of the car in front of me, hoping that they were within the lines of the lane and the road. When the trucks passed us, their wheels kicked up so much water, the windshield was a blur.

This lasted for about an hour of tense driving, and then we were through, and finally in Chicago.

Chicago! The lights! The height of the buildings! The size! After being in towns with populations numbering in the hundreds, Chicago seemed impossibly big and unnavigable, overly dazzling, dizzying in scope. So many cars! So many people! We felt like hicks coming into the big city.

After our initial shock, and after a good night's sleep, I went to have breakfast with Double M, whose first day as a professor at a local school was that day; it was wonderful to see her. And then Joiner and I toured Chicago. We walked the Magnificent Mile, admiring the shops. We walked along Lake Michigan, which looked like it had been sliced out of the islands and dropped incongruously in the midwest:














Note, if you will, the way the palm tree is swaying. There was a strong wind that kept the heat almost bearable. Here's another indicator of how strong the wind was blowing, taken as we strolled down the length of Millenium Park -- see the position of the tall fronds in the middle?















Joiner reminded me that Chicago is the Windy City, after all. But, as we soon learned, it was not a mere summer wind blowing. There was, in fact, a tornado watch that we were unaware of that afternoon, as we strolled through the park. We of course could see the dark clouds rolling toward us, but it was not until Joiner's mother called and asked if we had been watching the news that we learned it was no mere rainstorm.

You can see the storm clouds behind Joiner, who is on the phone with her mother. Not two minutes after I took this photo, Joiner gasped and said, "The building is coming apart!" Construction material from a building that was under construction across the street was being blown into the air -- foot-long pieces of wood, plastic, styrofoam.


And then the rain came. Sudden, violent, frightening. We were almost to the Field Museum, and we sprinted the rest of the way, battling the winds that slowed us down, battered by the pelting rain. It was a little bit like Twister. From the entrance of the Field Museum, I took these photos during the storm:
















For comparison, look at all the buildings and cars that were visible after the storm passed.










So suffice it to say, it was a stormy day and night (weirdly, there were a few hours of calm between the first storm system and the next, which hit later that night). On the news the next day, there were reports of lost power, flooded streets, and delays.

Oh yes. The delays. The next morning, we set out for the south, but spent an hour on the freeway moving about 2 miles, because all traffic was being diverted due to a flooded section of the freeway. Ack.

We got off the freeway, navigated our way through some surface streets, and successfully got ourselves back on track, on the way to Indianapolis, which was kind of creepy. The town, I mean. Anyway, we got out of there, but just 30 miles outside of town, we had a boo boo. Or rather, the car experienced a boo boo. We unavoidably ran over tread from a truck tire on the freeway, and after verifying that there was an odd sound from the right of the car when we went over a bump, we pulled over to the side, where I began a series of firsts:

- my first time checking a car for damage on the side of a freeway
- my first time detaching part of a car for safekeeping (the tread had torn away part of the plastic undercarriage right under the passenger-side headlights, causing the brights headlight on that side to hang by its wiring -- I detached the light so it wouldn't get broken)
- my first time reporting an insurance claim to the rental car company and the credit card company
- my first time realizing that hey, maybe just getting the collision/damage insurance is worth it, since it's going to be a mighty hassle getting the credit card company to cover it
- my first time literally taping a car together









- my first time driving a freakin' Mustang, which is huge and a gas-guzzling behemoth and NOT a car I wanted, but it's the freakin' south, and there's a freakin' fair going on, and the rental car company didn't have anything smaller (and I think the rep thought she was doing us a favor by giving us this massive beast)
- my first time eating White Castle, because there was nothing else open at midnight

Yeah.

It's been a tornado-escapin', hands-dirtyin', wearyin' kinda day. And I seem to have adopted a fake southern accent. But I'm still lookin' forward to fried Snickers tomorrow.