June 29th, 2001

Arrival in the Windy City...

Left from St. Louis early today... the goal was to get to Chicago by 1pm or so we could safely get lost while looking for the place to drop the car off without being late in dropping it off, thereby summoning the wrath of AutoDriveAway upon us.

Getting to Chicago wasn't any real big deal, we manuevered around the St. Louis Interstate system until we found I-55... which we took north until it ran smack into Chicago. Of course, this wouldn't have been a REAL excursion on the highway if we didn't run into some kind of construction while en route to our destination. It appears as though I-55 is all sorts of torn up between St. Louis and Chicago... so we spent a good amount of time driving slowly upon one laned interstates.

Southern Illinois looks like Iowa, btw. We're talking DEAD ringer here. This is how I remember it from when I first moved up here though.... so... it's not really a surprise, more of a re-affirmation.

Arriving in Chicago is no picnic. Traffic, to be blunt, sucks. I guess this is a known fact in Chicago, judging from what people who live here have told me. Actually, driving through downtown Chicago and the traffic we encoutered is pretty much what I pictured Los Angeles to be like if you ever got off the Interstates and tried navigating the city streets.

Getting to the general vicinity of the car's dropoff point isn't all that difficult. On the negative side, it's in South Chicago. For those who don't know, South Chicago is a bit... rough. Of course, we don't know that... so here we are... la dee da... driving around an area of town that looks like a bombed out warehouse district from World War 2.

The place we're supposed to drop the car off at isn't visible from the street. Consequently, we end up driving past it 3 or 4 times before we pull into a large parking area in front of one of the burnt out warehouses. We find upon closer inspection that it has the address we are looking for. So we get out and start poking around. We're hoping that, ya know, maybe the buildings look rough on the outside, but maybe they'll be cleaned up inside.

Nope.

I can't think of an adequate way to describe them, so I'll leave you with these images: sort of a combination of the set that Michael Jackson did his "Bad" video on and something from a grade B horror movie.

We wander around a while inside the building, trying to find someone who's alive and preferably knows something about what the hell is going on around here. I've got my knife in easy reach, just in case.

We finally find this one guy who speaks the same kind of broken english that the lady calling out flights in Dallas/Ft Worth had when I got left behind from a flight. That's another story though. I can understand about 1/5 of what comes out of this guy's mouth... I can't tell if he's trying to speak arabic or spanish. He more or less gesticulates for us to go and speak to some other fellows who look like they've just broken out of the local jail. They're nice enough though and inform us that the place we're looking for is in another building.

So we wander over there and ring a bell on the door of this other burnt out looking warehouse. We stand there a while, and no answer. I ring the bell again and am particularly persistent about it the second time.

Some skinny scary looking old guy appears down at the other end of the building and asks us what we want. We tell him we're dropping off a 2000 Honda Accord. He motions for us to drive it down to him.

This guy is even scarier up close. Again, a nice guy... but scary.

He goes over the car, almost literally, with white gloves.

After checking it out and filling out a report over what new nicks and scratches appeared over the course of the trip, he checks out the mileage.

It appears we went about... oh... 500 miles over the allotted mileage. Heh.

So after dealing with all that he offers to take us into downtown Chicago for when he goes to the main office for AutoDriveAway so we can catch a cab there to take to the airport. So we wait around for a couple of hours for the last driver of the day to arrive so we can leave. Blef.

We get driven into the main city to the main office. We end up sitting there for an hour while they cut us a check for our initial deposit. For some crazy ass reason they decide not to take out any money for the extra miles. Heh.. their loss.

And we never did find out what was in the damn trunk.

So Alie and I lug our luggage out onto Michigan Ave and flag down a cab to take us to the O'hare airport to pick up our rental car. The cab ride takes about an hour and costs about $40. As you can imagine, traffic was evil. Shee-it man. Bumper to bumper parking lot all the way to the airport.

Once there getting the car is pretty easy. Wait in line a while, talk to the agent, get the keys. I had rented an economy car, but he talks me into taking a Kia Sportage for the same price. Oh sure, why not.

Once we pick up the car and load it up it's off to the North Chicago suburbs... Libertyville specifically. Once again, traffic is evil. It takes us about an hour and a half to reach the Libertyville exit. By this time it's nearly 7pm.

We arrive in Libertyville and spend about 1/2 an hour trying to track down a public phone to call Pam and Jock(my aunt and uncle) from... find one, call them and get directions to their house. They seem rather impressed that we've managed to find our way up as far as we have.

With somewhat less than a week's notice, Pam and Jock have graciously let us stay with them for a few days. I haven't seen either of them in over 5 years... maybe more. It would've been on one of the last of their visits down to FL... so... 6 years maybe. Their kids, my cousins, are Molly, Mike and Jami. Molly's got her own place about 25 minutes away and when we arrive is in Milwaukee at a music festival. Mike and Jami go to school at University of Iowa and are home working for the summer. Everyone but Molly is here when we arrive. She'll be arriving from Milwaukee sometime early on Sunday morning.

It's good to see them all again.