Placeholder Post 2: Placehold Harder

I didn't have any inclination to actually do work last night when I got into Cleveland, so I'll do the real post of the last couple days' travels when I get in to Ithaca tonight. And by tonight I mean I'll do it tomorrow morning. And by tomorrow morning I mean sometime tomorrow.

DID YOU KNOW THAT YESTERDAY:

 - Left Lansing around 11:30
 - Made it to Fort Wayne in time to see Adrius before he left for work
 - Had a fantastic lunch and hangout with Kam, who was nice enough to drive me around town and point out cool things (I love seeing friends more often than the usual once a year)
 - Got back on the road around 3
 - Made it to Cleveland in time for dinner with Ian and Mel
 - OMG DINNER WAS SO GOOD
 - LIKE SERIOUSLY
 - Hung out, had a really nice walk around Mel's neighborhood (which seems to be 80% bars)
 - Visited a couple of said bars
 - Played music with Ian /geeked out about music for a while
 - Mel was very tolerant of our hijinks and shenanigans
 - Eventually went to sleep
 - Got up
 - Showered
 - Had tasty foods Ian got at a nearby food-type place
 - Got back on the road
 - Found a Starbucks to post this from
 - Aiming for a long-ish drive to Ithaca

NOW YOU KNOW

(And tomorrow you will know more.)

From A Starbucks . . .
Julia

Placeholder Post

I'll delete this bit tomorrow when I make the actual Petoskey-Sault Ste. Marie-Lansing post, but for now:

 - Made it out of Petoskey by 11:30
 - lovely drive over the Mackinac Bridge
 - 3 separate arguments with myself over pronunciation of "Mackinac"
 - Awesome lunch at a restaurant roughly a block south of Canada
 - back on the road by 2:30
 - Basically straight south to Lansing
 - Checked into the Ramada
 - Talked web design with Chelsea for a while
 - Am now going to sleep because DRIVING IS HARD YOU GUYS

I'll make a real post in the morning.

G'night from Lansing . . .
Julia

Chapter 3: Milwaukee, Michigan Coastline, Petoskey

Look at this, two posts today. Woohoo!

Where was I . . .

Oh yes, Milwaukee.

My original plan from Milwaukee was to take the ferry across Lake Michigan from Milwaukee, WI to Muskegon, MI. I figured, it's a two-and-a-half-hour trip, that should give me time to work on this blog and also maybe read or something.

I failed to take into account, though, the fact that Normal People take the ferry to commute, every day. So when I went into the ticket office at 8:45 (four hours before the ferry) thinking naïvely, "Oh yes, this will be lovely!" the lady very nicely informed me that there was no more room for vehicles on that ferry, and there was no other ferry that day.

Which meant that I had to drive back through Chicago, around the bottom end of the lake, and back up the whole dang Michigan coast.

Fine, I thought. I'll drive through Chicago again.

Urgh.

But this time, I got some nice pictures of the skyline!

 . . . Or, as nice as they can be considering I was taking them while driving SHUSH MOM I'M FINE I WON'T DO IT AGAIN GOSH

Then I just sort of drove for a few hours.

Here's some pictures and videos of Indiana! The sky was really beautiful.

Eventually, Indiana gave way to Michigan, and the trees got even prettier. 

I spent the next several hours driving up the coast of Lake Michigan on I-31, during which time three exciting things happened. One was the afore-posted AC/DC incident, which was seriously really really cool. 

The second exciting thing wasn't really all that exciting, but I thought it was cool. Specifically, it was driving past this sign:

Dear citizens of Covert: a large road sign isn't.

After I passed it, I started thinking of a bunch of stories of the spies that work in Covert, and how they're all really bad at actually being spies. 

And then the third exciting thing was much further up the coast, after passing lovely trees:

 . . . and lovely highway.

When suddenly, on the left of the road, I saw that one of the trees had started to grow something other than leaves. I found someplace to turn around and come back, and I took pictures.

So . . . yeah. Shoe tree. 

At lunch today, I asked Stellaria about it, and she says it's been that way as long as she can remember. In fact, the tree used to be bigger, and have branches that went over the highway, also covered in shoes. Someone would come by every once in a while to clear away the shoes, but people (mostly kids, I think) would pretty swiftly put 'em back. Weird and cool, right? I really wish they'd have a Supernatural episode centered around this tree. It creeped me out, and I was really glad it was full daylight when I saw it. 

And that was the drive up to Petoskey! I was in the car for about 8 hours straight, which was pretty rough. But on the other hand, today was a nice day of hanging out with wonderful people, so it was a good tradeoff!

On that note, I'll write more tomorrow about how I spent the day in Petoskey. For now, I have been commandeered by Stellaria's two youngest sons to play video games. 

From Petoskey, MI . . . 

Julia

Chapter 2: Chicago, Milwaukee

Okay, let's see if I can't get back on a linear timeline . . .

Having spent a lovely Sunday night hanging out with Luna and Wolfgang and a digital representation of Gabriel Iglesias, and having had a lovely Monday morning eating french toast and talking about life with Luna, I got back on the road toward Chicago.

Anyone who didn't grow up in the Chicago area (like me), can we just have a moment of solidarity for the people who have to make that commute every day?

Okay now let's have a longer moment of solidarity for the people who have to make that commute once in a while, who aren't from the area, and don't drive like maniacs out of force of habit. Because that was me on Monday. (And again Tuesday, but that wasn't really supposed to happen.)

I really like Chicago, though, every aspect but the car traffic. The buildings are gorgeous and awesome, and Millennium Park is super super cool.

There was really only one reason I stopped by Chicago on Monday, instead of doing the straight diagonal from Rockford to Milwaukee, and that was the Chicago Cultural Center. If you are ever in that part of Chicago, go into that building.

It's probably one of the most ornate and beautiful buildings I've ever been in, and that was only for 10 minutes this one time when Aaron and I were wandering around Millennium Park before a Great Big Sea concert. Just from a few minutes of looking around in wonderment and realizing that every inch of this place is beautiful I knew I wanted to come back and actually spend some time in there with a camera.

I didn't quite plan to be there on Labor Day, when (as all city/government buildings) the Cultural Center would be closed, but there you go.

Here's a picture of the arch over the front door, which was all I could get to.

(That pigeon, incidentally, was completely awesome.)

"Screw you guys I'm a pigeon." - that pigeon

Also, speaking of beautiful government buildings, have some pictures of the side of the Chicago Public Library.

Yes, that's the side. I didn't even go around the front, but I assume it's more of the same: awesome ironwork owls holding books over your head like avenging angels.

And speaking of Millennium Park . . .

I wandered around the park for a while, enjoying the oppressive humidity and nice enough temperature. There were some really neat street performers around – two women played Bach violin doubles twenty feet from a man playing the Meditation from Thaïs, while across the street a group of young men sat on cartons and played bucket-drums like fireworks.

They were really good, it was like listening to a professional drum corps except there were only five of them making all the sound. They got asked to move be some passing police officers because they were good enough that their audience was huge and blocking the sidewalk. (Which sucked because they were super cool performers, but I thought it was fair because they weren't in the park, they were on the sidewalk across from it, in front of businesses and such.)

Elsewhere in the park, one of the largest single-plume fountains I've ever seen was doing its thing, spreading a message of hope and joy and BY THE WAY YOU'RE WET NOW to passers-by.

It was huge.

Oh and I forgot to mention I had my cello with me on this walkabout, so after getting a "real Chicago dog" from a vendor (as soon as I can figure how to get pictures off my phone, you can see it!) I went and found a place to sit down and play music for a bit!

I played my way through most of Bach's first solo suite (G major), realized I didn't have it memorized nearly as well as I thought I did, and switched to Julie-O and celtic music.

And I made $2.01 in 15 minutes*. PROFESSIONAL MUSICIAN WHAT

*Which I promptly spent on the next two street performers I came across. Oh well.

There was also a lot of really neat sculptures in Millennium Park. Some neat statue-type things:

Lincoln gazing out onto the lettuce garden

 . . . and some neat installation pieces . . .

The staring contest of the century

and also a really pretty whatever-this-is in the median of one of the streets (Van Buren? Maybe?):

Lots of beautiful things. I think I'd like to go back to that park again sometime and explore some more; I'm sure there's more art and more music than the small bit I saw.

And that was Chicago! Had a neat conversation with a guy who's also traveling across the country, only he's hitching rides on freight trains instead of driving. And I also found out as I was leaving that although the Millennium Park Garage is super convenient if you're going to be there for a while, it's also godsdamned expensive ($25 flat rate) so I didn't really get my money's worth out of it . . . oh well. 

It's just over an hour drive to Milwaukee out of Chicago, so I made it there with plenty of energy. Went over to my friend Phil's apartment, got him, went to Denny's for dinner, and went and hung out with Chelsea for a while. 

Now's probably a good time to reiterate: This blog will be moving locations sometime in the next few days! Chelsea's awesome and is going to be helping me with the move, and I'll make sure everyone gets told when it happens. 

Okay, so that was Monday! Later today I'll post about the Milwaukee-Petoskey leg of The Journey. If you want to get a feel for that drive, though, check out the mini-post from last night.

From Petoskey, MI . . . 

Julia

INTERLUDE (Michigan Coast)

Well, three days into the tour and I'm already behind with keeping posts updated. Eh, screw it.

I'm currently in Petoskey, MI, hanging out with my good friend Stellaria before we both collapse into sleep for the night.

I'll do the Chicago/Milwaukee post tomorrow, as well as the rest of today's post, but I wanted to share this with you guys first.

Play this video. All the way through. And while you're listening, read the following few paragraphs, and try and put yourself into that space. Because that's how I spent my day. Booyeah.

Imagine, if you will, that you are in a car, on a highway.

Imagine, if you will, that the car is a brand-new, bright red Dodge Dart.

Imagine that the highway runs through a mix of low prairie grasses and thick maple forests with stands of aspen.

Imagine that it is 5:30 in the afternoon, and the sun is warm as it sinks down toward the horizon.

You have been driving for five hours and it's still a long ways before you stop, but you're getting there, and right now you don't even feel tired.

Because AC/DC is on the radio, and you've rolled the windows down, and cranked up the volume, and stuck your left hand out of the car to surf on the air currents as you barrel down the highway.

Well, you're not really barreling down the highway (the speed limit is 70), your hair is whipping you in the face every time it gets caught in the draft from the window, and the shadows the trees are casting are a bit cold . . .

 . . . But the sun is glinting off the brass rims of your Aviators as you drive, and the wind is strong around you, and the road is loud under your tires, and Brian Johnson is, well, Brian Johnson, and your car is red and it goes vroom . . .

 . . . and right now you are the coolest person on the planet.

Let there be rock, indeed.




From Petoskey, MI . . .
Julia

Chapter 1.5: Madison, Rockford cont'd (with pictures!)

Before I get to the body of this post, just an FYI for those who are reading: my wonderful friend Chelsea is going to be helping me move this blog to a WordPress location sometime in the next few days, so I can do cooler things with it than Blogger has in its capabilities. I'll be transferring the posts from here to the new site when it goes live, and then this site will just have a redirect link. I'll also post the new website on my Facebook, and email it to my mother to send to our friends, so you guys will be informed of the changeover, never fear!

Now for the fun stuff!

*ahem*

So I ate chocolate-covered-bacon-on-a-stick on Sunday.

It was delicious.

As I mentioned, Taste of Madison was going on this past weekend, and I was happy to be driving through the capitol area on Sunday because it meant there was lots of tasty foods available.

Like, tons.

Like, this is a picture of the stage-right area around the Capitol:

And this is a picture of stage-left.

All those stalls you see, continuing into the horizon? Yeah those are full of food (and beer. Lots of beer) from around the Madison area.

And all those people you see? There's more of them. The entire Capitol "square" was completely full up of happy people eating lovely food and drinking rather a lot of what I assume was good beer; unfortunately, I had to drive so I couldn't partake :(

Look at all the people!

Although I didn't spend much time in Madison, it was really nice to be there on Labor Day Weekend. After having lived in Wisconsin for four years, through one gubernatorial election and one presidential election, the politics of the region have become, if not all-important to me, at least very much noticeable as a part of my life. And Madison is, really, an epicenter of today's politics and social issues, so it was a thoughtful kind of day for me.

Very short digression into politics – skip if you want, I won't by any means be offended.

Some of you may be aware that I hate politics. Even more than Rosendale, even more than people who don't use correct grammar in emails, I hate politics.

I recognize their importance in the country and world which I inhabit, and it's not that I wish they didn't exist. I just wish that people could interact in reasonable ways, and have reasonable discussions, without hating each other for stupid things like party affiliation.

And if you try and tell me that politics in America isn't about stupid things like party affiliation, I'm sorry but you're just mistaken.

I have seen friendships strained because of politics, not because of who each person voted for, but because one person was a self-labeled Republican and the other was a self-labeled Democrat. Their differences didn't have to do with policy (in fact, had they sat down and discussed it, they would have realized that they had fairly similar views on some large issues), they were just uncomfortable around each other because of the words which they used to describe themselves. And that discomfort meant that they never wanted to mention politics around each other, never mind actually sit down and discuss their thoughts.

Maybe I look at things differently than most people, but it seems to me that having a government with a party system should be about sitting down and discussing things. It shouldn't be inherently us-versus-them, where people look first to the color of their uniform and only afterwards to the rules of the game. It should be "Hey, our group has a different idea of this issue than your group does. Can you explain your thought process to us, so we can explain yours, so we can debate them?"

I know that such mature and logical discussions do exist, but they seem far too few and far too infrequent when compared to the plain meanness I see arising between people just based on whether they vote red or blue – again, not based on what they voted for in terms of policy, but only based on the label of the vote. Not, "I don't agree with you because you think that X law should be resolved in X way," but "I don't agree with you because you voted for the *** party."

Anyway, I don't want to fill up this post with politics, because like I said I really don't like them, but I wanted to give you a slightly better sense of my beef with the political system in our country, so you understand that I don't hate Democrats or Republicans, I hate people affiliated with any party who use their civil right to express their opinion in a meaningful manner to proliferate an unthinking, un-discussing We're Right Because You're Wrong.

END RANT. (If anyone would like to further discuss this, please let me know!)

Now, back to your regularly-scheduled program!

Madison was lovely. I stopped by my dear friend Aaron's apartment, but he wasn't home so I took a creepy picture of his window.

I know where you live . . . 

And while I was in the Capitol area, I spent a few minutes with the statue for the Women's Movement, which is in front of some random building that apparently has some kind of significance to the state. 

The Capitol photo-bombing my picture of the statue.

Last week, my mom sent me a care package for my trip, which included a couple of handfuls of pebbles from our garden. I picked one out to leave at the statue's feet – sort of a, "Hey, I was here!" kind of thing. I'll be doing that at all the points on this trip that feel "significant" to me in whatever way. 

Then I headed back to my car to get back on the road to Rockford, stopping only to appreciate some architecture:

. . . and to buy a copy of Madison's Street Pulse from a very nice guy outside said architecture. It was really hot out and he'd been standing in direct sun all day, so I bought an extra bottle of cold water at one of the stands and left it with him. 

Then I drove to Rockford! I didn't end up stopping in Janesville, since I wanted to get to Luna and Wolfgang's by dinner. Luna took me to her parents' place, where we had delicious BBQ and a fun game of Settlers of Catan with her sister and sister's friend. 

Then we went back to Luna's place, where Wolfgang was de-stressing from a long day of work by watching Comedy Central. (Their other roommate and another good friend of mine, Sirilay, was unfortunately gone for the weekend, but fortunately she was having a great time with people elsewhere!)

So we watched Gabriel Iglesias say funny things in front of an audience for a while, I knitted some, and then we went to sleep.

Wolfgang had to get to work by 6 AM, so he woke me up on his way out the door for a hug, and I promptly face-planted back into the couch and slept until about 10.

Luna made delicious french toast for breakfast, we had tea and chats, and by about 11:30 AM I was heading to Starbucks to get some noms for the road, and update this'a here blog. 

 . . . Argh, I really want to continue this post and tell you guys about the incredibly fun afternoon I had in Chicago, but my computer's running super low on battery and I really should get on the road to Petoskey.

Suffice to say, yesterday was another 180 miles, at about 37 MPG, I made it to Milwaukee in time for dinner with Phil and hangouts with Chelsea, and this morning I found out there was no more car space on the ferry to Michigan today so I'll be driving back through Chicago anyway! (Dang.)

From Milwaukee, about to leave for Points East and North . . . 

Julia

Chapter 1: Appleton, Madison, Rockford

So much to do, so much to see, so what's wrong with taking the backstreets?
You'll never know if you don't go.
You'll never shine if you don't glow.
(Smash Mouth, "All-Star")

As if it had somehow sensed my purpose, the iPod shuffled through a series of uplifting travel songs as I made my way out of Appleton. "Here I Go Again" by Whitesnake was followed by Journey's "Don't Stop Believing," and Led Zepplin's "Ramble On" took me out onto the highway over Little Lake Butte des Morts.

(Source: Wikipedia)

Rather placid-looking, considering that it's named for an Indian burial mound. 

After "Ramble On," Smash Mouth's "All-Star" started playing, and I got a little suspicious. It seemed wayyyy too perfect of a set list for the beginning of my saga; could the iPod somehow have become conscious? Was this the beginning of the robot rebellion? 

Nope, turns out I had just made a "Driving" playlist a couple months back and didn't realize that it was what was cued up to play. GOOD JOB JULIA!

Anyway, once I figured that out I was significantly relieved and felt like I could keep driving without having to call up the government and warn them. 

My route that day took me from Appleton to Madison via US 41 S, WI 26 S, and US 151 S. 

Astute observers with a knowledge of the area will realize that this took me through Rosendale. 

I hate Rosendale.

I don't really have a reason to hate Rosendale; even with the village's over-zealous traffic police, I'm careful never to stray more than a mile over the speed limit when driving through. But for some reason, the place just gives me the creeps.

Maybe it's the fact that although I've seen people driving through Rosendale every time I'm there, and a couple stragglers inside the gas station, there never seems to be anybody on the street. And me being me, that immediately makes me think of every horror movie or episode of the X-Files I've seen, and the many ways I'm clearly DOOMED for being in this ghost-town. 

(Edit: I should mention, Rosendale is not a ghost town; it is home to just over a thousand residents and Sisson's Peony Garden, a nationally-recognized Historical Landmark. I just have a weird feeling about the place, is all.)

I do, however, have good and friendly feelings towards some of the places in Rosendale. There's one church I drove past yesterday whose sign read:

SIGN MAKER ON VACATION. 

COME INSIDE FOR MESSAGE.

Maybe it's just me, but I laughed about it all the way out of town. 

And the gas station is pretty nice. The place has a nice little market attached, where local food-makers and farmers send their stock, so instead of the usual gas-station "food," you can actually find real sandwiches and other tasty things! 

Like, say, the 3-pound smoked chicken that I bought earlier this spring. From a gas station. What?! 

That thing fed me for about a week and a half. I made delicious delicious soup and tons of sammiches. 

So I guess maybe Rosendale isn't that bad after all. 

I'd write some more about the rest of my trip yesterday, but the pictures from Madison are still on my camera so I'll wait until I can get those onto here. 

Summary of yesterday's travels: 

 - Roughly 180 miles

 - In roughly 3 hours

 - Averaging 36 MPG

 - Great food in Madison and Rockford

 - Great hanging-out-with-friends in Rockford

So yeah! As I type this, I'm in a Starbucks just outside Rockford, finishing up my lunch and getting ready to head out on the road. I'll be going straight to Chicago next, because I want to check out this building, and from there I'll head back north to Milwaukee.

Once I get settled for the evening, I'll see about getting the Madison photos onto my computer, and I'll make another post for that. 

From Rockford . . . 

Julia