Click below to see each completed day in the journey.
—Next destination: Chicago, Illinois to Indianapolis, Indiana, USA
6 AM
I woke up on this Saturday morning and lay there still in bed, still in the dark.
Feeling the usual, creeping, glum dismay deep within me: did I REALLY know what I was doing, here? Was I sure?
And at best: I’m here, but… with everything else so far… surely it’ll be just another skim-and-go. Why am I doing this?
As if somehow, everything I’d recognized I’d been learning so far didn’t exist… it all just evaporated in this next day’s pool of darker, clouded thoughts.
Then I received an image in my mind’s eye of what ((I)) was receiving back home, first thing that morning as well.
((No matter what anyone else may say or uphold, me? You’re *doing this.* You NEED to collect the gems of value here.
Yes, you heard me, |me|: gems.))
6:10 AM
I got out of bed and retrieved my phone from its charger. Another mind’s eye image came to me as I opened my memo app:
So… let’s do it.
What things can I see here?
- Lake Michigan… I can’t not.
- Famous statue thing… plus some nice enough parks… high rises… squirrels!!! 😀
- I can’t believe this, but if Universe really did just give me this as a hint… then…
The food Chicago is really known for:
Deep dish pizzas after all.
6:14 AM
Striving to hone my trust in myself AND Universe combined, I stuck only to the three deep dish pizza restaurants nearest me that I could *feel* were correct. I pinned them each in my GPS, and then finally got up and stretched.
Hmm… to get breakfast here at this hotel, or not?
Then I laughed at my own tongue-in-cheek joke to myself.
At least the hotel in Inverness had mushrooms and tomatoes with their breakfast plates, I noted, skimming this hotel’s in-service menu. If granted, I had to correct myself– there actually were a few more vegetable choices on the side here. Easily thanks to the higher prices I’m paying for sure… I thought to myself… If still, nothing changed with anyone’s fat-sugar-dairy-starch additions. There was not a higher-priced salad I could order that wasn’t tossed in cheeses and starched breads and condiments; not a ‘fancier’ vegetable I could ask for that wasn’t caramelized in a sugary syrup. And I’ll be dipped, I told myself, if I’m having ANOTHER remove-the-bun burger patty over some lettuce so soon in the morning.
I grabbed a still-cold bottle of green juice from my cooler and the last of my mixed nuts: as I still needed to balance the sugars from the sweet potato fries from the night before, no dried fruits this time. Zipping up my coat and lacing up my shoes, I grabbed my keys and walked out of the hotel door, turning around only a few times in lostness until I found my way downstairs and out of the main lobby.
7:17 AM
With the day’s first soft rays of sunlight and a gradated, periwinkle sky growing an ever-deeper, brilliant blue above me, I was glad I’d chosen to walk and just see some local sights for myself first.
There’d be no Oprah-spotting or anything like that, but the ‘famous statue thing’ was just about a mile’s walk from me in the local Millennial Park, and very near Lake Michigan’s edge at that. (“Cloud gate” was apparently known locally as “The Bean.”) I looked forward to seeing it all as I walked along… and I was smiling, I noticed, in the peaceful Saturday morning energy. Less pressure; a chance to walk a little slowly for a bit.
Fellow early rising pedestrians walked past me, and we silently nodded. If… I didn’t have far to walk before I felt my first painful clash to my heart of the day— spotting the “Polish Chicago Hot Dog” cart.
One of many I’d find continuing down South Michigan Street alone, I soon realized.
|Zirconia|…
Amongst others dear to me that I can never not be reminded of, for anything Eastern-European I ever come across.
But I shook my head. In my mind’s eye, more *familiar faces* reminded me: stay with what’s really real here. Don’t get lost. As ever, ever, ever: this was nothing different than any other fat-dairy-sugar-starch combination, filled with preservatives and additives at that. Who cared if it was now “Chicagoan” OR “Polish?”
I carried on… bypassing hot dog cart after hot dog cart until I made it through.
7:22 AM
Keeping onward towards Cloud Gate, I said a silent hello to all the flowers, trees, and other plants I saw along the way.
I did indeed see squirrels, and pigeons. <3 (Though, I was sad I hadn’t thought to save any of my nuts to give them… at least not this time.)
And as I approached Cloud Gate itself, it was very… curvy. : |
To be honest… while I respected that it was a feat of art in its own right, I really, truly was more invested in seeing my reflection of *myself* in it.
Not least because for what I was getting to have of such nicer, happier things, I saw that I was happy in that moment.
Perhaps tired still, but genuinely enjoying what I was.
I could feel a gentle, cool breeze… smell morning air and dew. People who continued to pass by me were still genial; walking their dogs– equally enjoying the morning. The flower gardens, the fountains, the amphitheater…all was beautiful art to behold. Things were ambient.
I wasn’t blinding myself either. I knew that so much of this comparative niceness was, in fact, literally afforded only by relative wealth in this area. Chicago had violence, otherwise. I thought of my friends from here, who’d lost their brothers to gun violence; who came from something broken in their homes, and never quite healed. I thought of the communities that existed here just as they did anywhere else, trying to help improve situations for people in need of aid… drug addiction. Mental health.
It’s just lucky I can take a break with what’s here, I told myself.
7:50AM
Lake Michigan itself was a beautiful pool of blue waters– glimmering, rippling, shining and stretching out to the horizon… inspiring awe in me as such bodies of water always do. There were boats on the harbor… sunlight… the skyscrapers behind me… and pollution I could see floating in the waters as well.
Grounded and sober, I knew I’d get what I’d get, and I wouldn’t get what I wouldn’t.
I turned back towards the hotel to begin packing.
11:02 AM
Back in my hotel room, I quickly practiced my guitar in soft strums, showered, and listened to a little bit of a drum-lesson video on YouTube while I packed. I had asked the worker at the front desk if, were I to check out a little early, I could still leave my car in the hotel’s garage until noon… and thankfully, they were quite kind about it: it was alright for me to do. Once I transferred my things to the rental car in the garage, I pulled up my GPS once more and began to walk towards the first of my chosen deep-dish pizza destinations.
Really saying something, I thought to myself, that if you want a deep-dish pizza, you can find no LESS than three places to do it all within walking distance on the same street... Just LIKE the ‘Polish hot dogs.’
Still, I had bigger concerns— if I was going to make it back to the garage by noon, I’d really need to cram in all three of my restaurant visits. However, my worries quickly abated. I realized I wasn’t actually going into any one of the restaurants themselves, after all; much less to order anything that I definitely couldn’t eat in the first place. Just passing by for a quick glance was all I really needed to get a true scope of what the deep-dish pizza itself could teach me— an idea of layers as a structure. A nice presentation, and perhaps with all kinds of fresh, hardy vegetables within. In fact…
What if instead of just the standard meat, sauce, and cheese galore, it utilized mushrooms as THE protein-source? Mushrooms were already a common “Chicago Classic” deep dish component, and one that I recognized I could definitely begin to study and utilize more as a protein-packed meat alternative. Heck, maybe I could even use some of the pumpkins that Iowa’s energies highlighted for me as a crust-base too, what with their colors certainly matching the orange-crust of an average pizza! Maybe with some blanched almonds and egg to help such a pumpkin-based dough have greater sturdiness, since pumpkins naturally hold a lot of moisture— watery-prime squashes that they are.
I could tell ((I)) was already feeling excited about this back at home… and that it wouldn’t be long before ((I’d)) try making this for sure.
Within the hour, my mission for Chicago’s produce-collection was complete, and I couldn’t not be pleased with that.
12:48 PM
I sang part of Willie Nelson’s “On the Road Again” to myself as I made my way down IH 65. My on-the-road cooler stocked up as ever with fruits, nuts, salad, water, and green juice I had bought before leaving… it was goodbye, Chicago.
At least for now. I couldn’t help but ponder if… given the chance… would I want to come back again, any time soon, under these circumstances?
…If I could see my friends here in a better state than they are now, with something DIFFERENT than the same old pain ongoing… sure, I thought.
I switched on my radio as I drove.
3PM
After a good few hours on the road, I took my last, longer pitstop in Frankfort, Indiana. It seemed to me a quaint, quiet town with an easy enough energy…
…Though I soon saw two very contradicting signs as I drove through the main street… “Welcome to Frankfort: a great place to work, play, live…” right above the county’s probation office for offending criminals. Another example of getting what I would get, and not getting what I wouldn’t… I’d noted wryly to myself.
Thus, what I did get: a decent enough place to park across from the town’s main public library.
I stepped outside and stretched, thinking about what I’d heard on the radio on my way here: more NPR, courtesy my rental car’s Sirius XM. This time… two more young musicians. How THEY each, a girl at 14-years-old and a boy at 15, had fought to play their music as musicians in a world that was slanted against them… and it reminded me as ever of the two other teenage boys, 14 and 15-years-old respectively, who most recently shot and killed people at their schools.
And… I sadly began to understand why these were the stories I kept especially receiving right now. I pulled out my guitar and quietly strummed for a bit, strapped and leaning slightly against the car for support.
We need better for our kids… no?
I thought further… working mentally to piece things together.
Earlier, my mom had warned me on the phone to ‘stay safe while driving through white towns’… but after all, I’d noted that things objectively weren’t AS bad as they had legitimately been in her time. Here I was, literally parked in front of a public library of a so-called ‘small white town’ in Indiana, stretching my legs whilst eating snacks out of a cooler and quietly strumming a guitar… and no one was stopping me— no one cared, whatever the color of my skin. Whatever the fact, furthermore, of me being a woman alone at this time, in jeans, a hoodie, hair ever-flying from the top of my head instead of prim, proper, and with makeup and a dress on, for instance, accompanied by someone else and certainly not playing a guitar. This thankfully wasn’t the 1950s, 60s, OR 70s in this country.
But…
As I thought to myself…
…’Less bad than it was before’ still doesn’t mean it’s ACTUALLY OKAY. Racism in this country alone is far from dead… I know this… and sexism, even farther.
I thought about what I heard about these teenagers.
… Too many deaths are STILL happening. Too many STILL aren’t getting to see their stars shine before they burn out… or else, they burn others in rage— whatever improvement we’ve kind of since made.
I zipped my guitar back into its case.
Because, after all… NPR just said as much— 21 people in South Sudan were just killed in an airstrike, weren’t they? And that’s when they aren’t starving in a country that’s typically food-impoverished.
I closed the door and buckled my seatbelt against my chest.
And too many people in the world still need clean water… and there’s effin’ WAR still going on in every other place… not to mention Ukraine… and that’s right BY where *I’m* going to be…
I pressed the ignition, upset and not really wanting to think too deeply about the very real dangers of where I’d be traveling soon enough.
Then one of my dear friends called me, right on *linked time*, I knew, to pull me out of those thoughts that would only distract me. I put them on speakerphone as I pulled out of the lot: once again, without much room to listen to my trip for the chaos they were as ever dealing with (i.e. this time yet another emergency they’d just barely survived) … they all the same linked to me what I needed to hear after talking for a bit.
“You can try to go for a bougie hot dog,” they told me, “But at the end of the day, it’s still just a hot dog— you’re not really getting anything different no matter what anyone calls it. Like… sure… maybe just some ‘deluxe veggies’ like peppers or artichokes or something for a higher cost. Not even necessarily no additives like they might SAY they don’t put… but, can you REALLY trust them?”
Their would-be ironic, unknowing confirmation to me of what I had just experienced earlier this very same day with the ‘Polish Chicagoan hot dogs’ of it all…
…that what I’d seen with my own two eyes was so…
Gave me confidence to, as ever myself, just keep driving. Not letting any fears get in my way.
6:30PM
By the time I reached Indianapolis… an equally standard enough town from what I could see about it…
… It was odd, but right away, I knew I wasn’t enamored. I couldn’t yet place my finger on why. However, I knew I couldn’t spare much thought to it just then either: instead, I had to find the best dinner I could before it got too late for me to be out. (If thankfully once again, my MUCH cheaper hotel this time was right by another airport for easy locating.)
And… I found a certain common Americana chain that was easy enough, familiar enough, staid enough for me to go to. Known for its modestly-priced Americana fare across the country… which of course, could at least sell me… sighhhhh… the expected burger as ever…
Never again, I promised myself. That burger patty— with as much of the soggy-bread bits I could pull off— was the worst I’d had on this trip so far, even WITH my seasonings doing the best they could. It was so disgusting that I had to force myself to eat as much as I could of it just to be full, before giving up the rest and downing it all with the last of my bottled green juice.
AND they didn’t even have sweet potato fries B( , I grumbled to myself in my hotel room.
10PM
After finishing up my notes, checking in with everyone, and practicing my languages… i.e. my daily routine at this point… I finally got to bed and just thought some more as I could.
It’s true that I was tired after all of my driving; I’d gotten here at nighttime, and that burger from a known cheaper Americana spot wouldn’t try for such a thing as quality, healthier meat, so of course it had soured me at the moment. Otherwise… this was my first time being in Indianapolis, ever. Surely, I was too biased at this moment to really see things here so far… give this city the same fair chance that I had every other major stop on my roster? But no… I just couldn’t shake the fact that I felt no *pull* to seeing anything here.
Determined to understand why, (no matter how exhausted I was,) I got up once more and went to my phone to research while it continued to charge.
Why, then, NOT Indianapolis?
I first scoped its produce:
As perhaps a quintessential “ordinary” U.S. state, does Indiana even HAVE a state produce of any kind???? Answer: nope. Not even an official fruit, though apparently, they really love their popcorn here... yup… Indiana boasts corn and soy as its leading crops… 60% of its agriculture… state food is a carbon copy of Iowa’s: fried and breaded giant slab of pork in between two slices of starch-bread.
Then I tried scoping Indianapolis’s major attractions via a city-analysis video on YouTube. Apart from racing-sports (which I personally had no interest in), and Indianapolis itself originally being designed for conducting business in this country, i.e. when it was still growing and railroads were expanding (which I seriously had no interest in)… I saw the only thing the video mentioned that could even partially interest me:
There are canals here… might be worth seeing them in the morning before I leave… at least some nice buildings and architecture. Wait… “The canals are less impressive than SAN ANTONIO’S River Walk??? The city skyline is less impressive than that of COLUMBUS AND CLEVELAND, OHIO?????”
I knew… knew… that however personal my reasons for it, I hated the city of San Antonio, Texas. I could never think of it as anything but the depressing, mediocre, sad place where I had once lived as an adolescent. And I’d seen the River Walk while I lived there too—to me, it was dark, uninspiring, and grimy with polluted waters, even if the layout was a nice thought.
If this YouTuber was thus telling me that Indianapolis’s canals were less impressive than that… I knew Indianapolis had nothing it could sell to me. As, after all… I knew it was no coincidence that I should then hear of both Columbus and Cleveland being “more impressive instead”, since those were each literally the next two cities I would be travelling to on my list.
It was decided. I would leave Indianapolis as soon as I could, first thing in the morning. I thought my last thoughts before finally getting back to bed, approaching midnight:
No offense to you, Indianapolis… but if I’ve learned anything from this… you’re a town that was literally DESIGNED to be a standardized *norm* in this country. I need NOT the standard norm anymore.
I knew it was what it was, that that was what Indianapolis could pointedly teach me.
-Day 5: End-