Chicago:
We stayed at the nicest Holiday Inn Express I’ve ever seen. The most expensive, too. Room service, one block from Michigan Avenue, two blocks from Lake Michigan, one block from the ritziest fashion area I’ve ever seen. We payed 50 dollars for valet parking (ridiculous, I know), but the self-park option was 45, so why not? Lech was having bathroom troubles, meanwhile I let a cigarette, opened a beer, and got on my computer. We relaxed for about 30 minutes, then went walking. Walked past Tiffany’s, got lost, then tried to walk to the university, but just ran into a lot of elegant frat boy bars. I now the words elegant and frat don’t really go together, but they somehow did here. It’s like all the frat boys in the area just put on button down shirts and founded fancy clubs. This lasted for about 3 hours, then we took a cab back to the hotel.
Minneapolis/St. Paul:
On the way we noticed a strange grinding sound coming from under my car. How funny, the underbelly was coming off. We stopped at a Home Depot and zip-tied it, then ate a 50 dollar meal at Uno. This was in Madison, WI. When we got to Minneapolis, all the hotels were booked for some stupid football game or something. We chat it up with the concierge at another Holiday Inn. He was nice. He was gay, and wouldn’t stop going on about how gay friendly Minneapolis was. He pointed us in the direction of a hotel that might be open. We drove to St. Paul and crashed at a Holiday Inn Express again, but only after drinking lots of beer and eating free breakfast (we arrived at about 6 in the morning). We hit the road around 7 PM.
Fargo:
We were planning on staying in Fargo, but by the time we got there we still had tons of energy. The roads on the way there were sketchy—complete empty black as far as the eye could see, very very few rest stops, and no other cars on the road except for the occasional truck. We pulled into a truck stop and bought some gadgets and energy drinks, then stopped in an IHOP where we ate a quick bite and called Jay. Jay told Highlands that we were in Fargo, and everyone cheered. That was funny. We hit the road again after a couple hours. We drove and drove and drove and drove and drove and drove. About 13 hours or so. We drove through the Badlands while the sun was coming up. That was fucking epic. It was like the Grand Canyon’s retarded sun baby.
Billings: About an hour after we got out of Badlands, we came into Billings, MT. Just a little mountain town, and the only skyscraper they had was a hotel. That was funny. We stayed up for another 12 hours, watching CSI and drinking more beer. We bought Polish beer in Chicago, and couldn’t stop drinking it. We finally crashed, then hit the road at about 11 pm. This next drive was insane. We drove through the Rocky Mountains first. That was sketchy. My car started stalling when we got up to 9000 ft above sea level. At about 5 in the morning we stopped at a Wal-mart so I could buy a beanie. It was cold and I wanted a beanie. The mountains kind of didn’t stop. After they became just foot hills, we got into the Cascade mountains. Those were even more epic—at least they seemed that way with the sun up and everything. Speed limits were 75 through the mountains, with every turn having a recommended speed of 15 or 35. That was fucking sketchy. I had to slam on the brakes a few times because I wasn’t paying attention. We emerged out of the cascades at Spokane, which was kinda cool. Now we were in WA officially. The rest of the drive was kind of like a weird desert-plateau area. Then the Olympic mountains, then Seattle.
I don’t know. It was fun.
