Great Lakes 2018 Day 1 - Getting Around Chicago

I woke up to a humid morning, going through an almost normal weekend routine.  This was after a Saturday and Sunday spent wrapping things up while also wishing I had found a reason to leave on Sunday.  Best made plans and all that.
I wasted spent time doing some final preparations.  In the back of the cupboard I found the leftover Pop Tarts from the Yellowknife travel; finishing these off as breakfast in preparation for a new adventure seemed appropriate.  Dogs had to be dropped off at beagle-jail.  Final packing and we were on the road.

Home to Grayslake, IL:  340.7 miles
We started out on 2-lane roads for a while.  It was a nice way to start with cool temperatures, especially in the valleys and warming East-facing slopes.

There was one detour that I made my own shortened detour for - only to end up behind the construction which was now open for light traffic.  Thankfully even the GL1800 is considered light enough I guess.
Shortly after the detour, we superslabbed it for the rest of the day.  Traffic around Indianapolis was tolerable as rush hour was pretty much over.  Onto I-65 toward Chicago, the traffic wasn't too bad.  At some point the Google StreetView car went roaring past.  This isn't the first time I've seen it, but it is the first time I've been so close to it for so long - so maybe my 15 minutes of fame will be on StreetView?  Or not.

I saw many signs for Fair Oaks Farm which is something I think I want to do sometime even though it appears to be geared toward kids.  This could have been the reason to leave Sunday.  Oh well - it wasn't something I REALLY wanted to do.

After a too early gas stop (given the rate of fuel consumption, I question the gas quality from my local hardware store), the skies started to look more ominous.  We thought about putting on rain gear, but ultimately decided not to.  With as warm and sticky as it was, water would probably be a relief - at least initially.

But the rain held off as we headed into both construction and the traffic that plagues Gary to Chicago.
I very often question the routing on the Garmin as it took me off of I-94, then immediately back on and onto I-294.  I've learned that the GPS must be accompanied by some common sense and a bit of innate directional sense.
Once on I-294, traffic absolutely evaporated.  It was eerie, almost like 405 The Movie.

But the Toll Road all to myself didn't last.  And I must admit that the traffic, while aggressive, wasn't that bad.  A coworker had recently gone to the Chicago area for a wedding and he talked about hours stuck in stop and go traffic on I-294.  Maybe I was lucky, but it was only a little slow and only came to a stop briefly a few times.  Still, pretty heinous compared to the rural roads around home.

Any real Chicagoite will scream that I didn't go into Chicago and I'm not even staying in Chicago - both right, but I was close enough to ponder Chicago:
At home I don't have any kind of pay TV.  But it wasn't always that way.  In his bid to rid the US from the scourge of free Over-The-Air TV, Michael Powell pushed analog TV to digital.  While this was a natural progression, it wasn't all good.  Those of us who live at the margins could watch a slightly fuzzy analog signal.  Those of us at the margins could not watch anything on an over-pixelated jerky digital TV signal.
For a few years I succumbed to the allure of satellite TV.  I learned to hate the cost and the over-repetitive nature of it.  But there were bright spots.  One of them was The Travel Channel's No Reservations.  Anthony Bourdain came across as obnoxiously brash and, dare I say, even slightly authentic.  But food-as-travel was an interesting way to represent the world (PBS' Globe Trekker might actually do this better).  The show often had an ethos of everywhere is better than the US, unless it was New York or Chicago.  I have to admit I avoid Chicago.  Chicago defines Midwest Sprawl; it tries to paint itself as the only worthwhile location in "flyover country."  Big city traffic plus big city corruption (ahem, "I've got this thing and it's fucking golden" Blagojevich) plus big city tolls are a special kind of hell.  Still, I did see something in Bourdain's Chicago.

I no longer pay for any kind of TV, but saw a few episodes of  Parts Unknown some time ago - likely in another soulless hotel similar to this one in Northern Chicago.  Sadly, Bourdain came across as somewhere between over-scripted and a sanctimonious jerk:  the Bourdain way is right and everyone else is an idiot.  Parts Unkown looked as authentic as an 80's sitcom.
And yet, Anthony Bourdain's suicide earlier in the year has troubled me for two reasons.  First, the people around him in the days and weeks leading up to it reported no clue about his mental state.  But more importantly, he was an individual who could have stopped at any time; said I'm done with the forced travel, the scripted TV; I'm done with portraying this part of me on TV and am going to change now.  Most of us don't have the financial ability to make acute angle changes in our lives.  It also shows what absolute bull-shit his TV machismo really was.
Do not speak ill of the dead, and that is not my intent.  Given the entertainment choices on TV I do believe the world was a better place with him.  Few of us really knows what is going on behind the closed doors of the people living next door.  None of us knows what is really going on inside the craniums of even our closest friends.
“We know, for instance, that there is a direct, inverse relationship between frequency of family meals and social problems. Bluntly stated, members of families who eat together regularly are statistically less likely to stick up liquor stores, blow up meth labs, give birth to crack babies, commit suicide, or make donkey porn. If Little Timmy had just had more meatloaf, he might not have grown up to fill chest freezers with Cub Scout parts.” 
― Anthony Bourdain

We checked into our hotel early, maybe too early.  But getting around Chicago wasn't too bad, which was the point to leave early.  And we also managed to avoid most of the precipitation while on the road.

Dinner was burgers at Bakes, but we forgot to get our discount for staying at the hotel (grumble grumble grumble).  If there was any consolation, it was that the food was excellent.