We’ve been spending a few days in the Chicago area mostly to reacquaint ourselves with family and friends. This has provided a bit of rest from all of the driving we have been doing up to now. We will be leaving this area in a day and starting our drive to reach the east coast.
In the meantime, it’s been rather eye-opening to be in Chicago. Driving around Chicago is taking your life in your own hands with all of the construction on the roads that narrow down the lanes. There are numerous trucks delivering things all over the city. So, of course, they are sharing the road with you. It is nerve wracking to be so close to the trucks in a densely packed freeway. No one seems to be obeying the speed limits. Normally, that would be an awesome situation for me, but I’ve been very careful to continue following the speed limits after the previous incident with the law.
Chicago is a dense city. There are lots of high rise buildings in the core of the city and as a consequence, there are a lot of people living there. That isn’t as amazing as the fact that in order to get into the city and/or out of it, you have to pay tolls on various highways. They have been upgrading the toll infrastructure by replacing them with stations that work with transponders. If you don’t have a transponder, you have to go to a website to pay the tolls. Unfortunately, you need to remember that particular toll arch that you pass through in order to pay it on the website. We have found out that even the website hasn’t been able to keep up with the changeover. The consequence of that is that you end up paying double the amount that you owe for the toll. I have calculated that we have paid about $10 to get in and out of Chicago each day. That is an expense on top of everything else that you need to pay for in Chicago—most notably, parking.
We went into a sketchy neighborhood in the South side of Chicago to visit a person that played a significant role in my husband’s life—a stepfather that served as his mentor. Because of him, my husband developed a love of cars and went into mechanical engineering as a degree. While we were talking to him on the street, I cast a wary eye all around to make sure that nothing crazy would happen. Cars were speeding through there like it was a freeway. You never know what will happen in situations like this.
It has been a journey of memories for my husband as he continued to meet up with family and friends here. I was introduced for the first time to many of those people. I loved meeting all of them and finding out what roles they all played in my husband's life. What is definitive in these visits is that everyone is getting older and some have health issues. I’m glad that we are seeing them now since we are not sure when we will be back this way again.
Life seems so fleeting as we drive through the country.
I have never seen anything like this in California. Here it is in the south side of Chicago.