Today was a long day. It was my first long drive in the trip and it was supposed to be 14hrs long! Turns out I did it in 13hrs (take that mapquest!) and I made it to Chicago around 6:20pm. I got up at 4:30am and was on the road by 5am since I knew that by tonight I would be overly exhausted. Turns out that I didn't get much sleep last night and driving this morning proved to be very difficult between 6 and 7 am. But that's nothing a Mountain Dew couldn't fix.
The ride really wasn't bad at all, flat and boring, but I was able to listen to the mix CDs my sister made me and play the licence plate game with myself. It is fun driving by yourself sometimes though because I just sang to myself most of the ride. I sang to Jennifer Lopez, Celine Dion, Halestorm, Matchbox 20, Backstreet Boys (oh, yes I did!), and a whole bunch of others without a care in the world. I am pretty sure that this was the longest drive in my whole trip too so that's a good thing! I hate to drive so sometimes I really have to look at my decision to do this trip by myself as a little crazy but I did make it through today! :)
Left NY @ 5am (so long! almost half the trip in NY!)
in PA @ 9am
in OH @ 10am (I really didn't think this state was going to let me out)
in IN @ 2:15pm
in IL @ 4:30pm (rained the rest of the trip)
Once I made it to IL and got to my exit I ended up on the wrong side of town and quickly learned my way around a pretty shady area of town. All I kept thinking was "I HOPE James doesn't live here". I did have a fear of the area and staying there but luckily as I followed the directions I made my way to a better part of town. I did a good job at psyching myself out so when I actually got to James' I was a little on edge. I quickly regained my ability to parallel park and found his apartment. James is currently a Law student at the University of Chicago so I am staying in a graduate student apartment around campus. The area is actually very pretty. When we walked down to my car he took one look at my back seat (full of stuff) and said that it had to go. So we moved most of my stuff into the already full truck and prayed it would close. I can understand the concern after driving through other areas of this city. Let's just hope my car leaves in the same condition it arrived.
I was very amused by the trucks with 3 trailers...road was so flat they could pull all that weight. Never saw this before. It's the little things when you are on the road for so long :) Once I cleared my backseat and brought things up to the apt we met the gf for dinner at a cute little Italian place. Good food and good company. I don't get to see James much so it's nice to just have time to sit and catch up on life. We did this for pretty much the rest of the night talking about family, future jobs for both of us, and travel. Tomorrow I have decided to spend the day on this side of town and just relax. I even brought my book up to start reading it (Thanks Nicole!). I think after today sleeping in is a GREAT idea and then I can be ready to go explore Chicago on Friday.
"To travel is better then to arrive."
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