*NOTE: On this day exactly five years ago I began a journey across the country with Thiel, a dear friend of mine. I was moving from Chicago to Long Beach, California, and she agreed to make the drive with me. Over the next several days I will present my journal of that journey on the corresponding day that it was recorded five years ago. Enjoy reliving this adventure with me!
January 3, 2014
This move/road trip suddenly became “Escape from Chicago.” On the day we were supposed to leave, besides the fact that I still wasn’t completely packed and had a ton of errands to run, the weather decided to dump a foot of snow on top of what was already on the ground. We delayed ourselves for a day waiting for that to end, and the next day finally finished packing and loading the car. I had to leave some more things behind, and purge a few things, which is hard for me to do—I have, apparently, slight hoarding qualities about myself. There were a couple of things we put in the alley for garbage pickup that quickly disappeared as someone swooped by and took them. Thankfully a couple of friends allowed me to leave a few boxes and one prized possession in their house until I can retrieve them later.
While we were packing up the car the weather started its next attempt at reminding me of one of the biggest reasons I’m leaving Chicago: The temperature dropped and the wind kicked up, hurling the plentitude of snow around into new piles and drifts. The forecast called for blizzardlike conditions, although there were clear skies and no precipitation. There were moments in which the snow blowing off roofs did make it appear as if we were driving through a blizzard, and the streets were once again coated with the stuff.
We went to the very beginning point of Route 66 and started finding our way out of Chicago. I still didn’t feel as if this was all a real thing, and I was very tired, but we soldiered through the evening hours. Finally the city gave way to countryside. Our packed-to-the-roof SUV was being buffeted by the wind significantly, and at points the road was covered in a layer of snow that had been blown back onto it from the fields alongside. It seemed that this only happened in places where there was a stop or a curve, like something was trying to hold us back at every chance it could get.
I had brought a bunch of stuff from my pantry for snacks, which Thiel decided to munch as we were driving along. She found an already-open pack of dried apricots and opened it.
“Are apricots supposed to be black?” she said, causing me to glance over and see said black apricot in her hand as it disappeared into her mouth. All this in the space of three seconds. I told her that I didn’t think that they were, but she’d already eaten it. The look on her face told me that, no, they indeed are not supposed to be black. This led her to explore the package more closely, and we discovered that the “Best By” date was in 2010. Many of the other things in the bag of snacks shared the same year of should-have-been-thrown-outness. Oops. So far she has not become sick.
We are keeping to the original Route 66 as much as we can, and as much as it still exists. So far there has been a stretch of about seven miles that we had to take the interstate because the road was absorbed into it, but thankfully the signage in Illinois to this point has been very good. (Route 66 officially no longer exists, so the signs were removed several years ago, but there are “Historic Route 66” signs letting you know where to go.) There are roadside attractions such as old-fashioned, restored filling stations, and it seems that every town has a Route 66 museum.
We drove about 100 miles and decided to settle in for the night in Pontiac, IL, as I want to check out their museum. The first motel we approached didn’t vibe well with us so we went to the next one, the Fiesta Motel. It was pretty cheap, but clean and the beds were comfy. By the time we arrived the only food to be found was a Taco Bell drive-through, so that was dinner. The wind howling outside coupled with the rumbling and sounding of train whistles from the nearby tracks lent it an eerie or lonesome feeling, but we cranked up the heat and read our books about the journey to figure out more things to see and do along the way.
I checked tomorrow’s weather forecast for our location and also for St. Louis and found that we’re looking at more snow starting in the morning with two to four inches expected. Hopefully we can resume our journey early enough that we can start to drive out of this soon.