Flint has gotten himself a pattern. Early in the morning, he is a huge pain, crying and clawing Daniel's lap in a desperate attempt to get down to his feet. Then, later in the afternoon, he quiets down and hangs out in the backseat in total silence, looking like this:
He's decided that his carrier is stupid, but being immediately next to it is totes awesome, so whatever.
Today, we drove through four states and part of a province: Wisconson, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Ontario. We discovered that we like some states better than others, based solely on their interstates. North Dakota has the fastest interstate speeds at 75 mph (120 km/h), while Wisconsin has the slowest at 65 (100 km/h).
We also discovered that interstates seem to be constantly under construction, all the time. We also discovered that in Illinois, you can be fined $10000 for hitting a worker during construction, which is good, because up until that point, we had been playing a fun game called "Graze a Worker." But THEN, we found out that it's only $7500 if you hit a worker in Michigan, so if you plan to hit a construction worker, make sure to do it in Michigan, although you will be jailed for an additional year there.
Speaking of interstates, in Illinois, they make you pay to drive on them (sometimes). And you might think that once you are on a paid interstate that you are golden like Pony Boy, but you do not stay gold. No, in fact you must pay repeatedly. We paid $1.90 to get on the interstate, then $3.00 later on for some reason, and then another $1.50 just for kicks. On the next paid interstate, paid $3.50 to get on, then $1.50 after that. Now you might think that you could just leave the tollway if you don't want to pay anymore. But that is stupid of you, because you have to pay to get off the tollway. Idiot.
We are so persnickity about this money because at the time we started on the toll highway, we had exactly $7 in american bills. Those of you with keen math skills will see that we spent much more than that. So, we had to stop at an "Oasis" (fancy tollway reststop) to take money out of an ATM with a $3.50 surcharge. On the other hand, the highways were pretty nice.
Driving in Chicago was pretty crazy, with billions of lanes of traffic and terrifying buildings rising out of the smog
So, Chicago has some pretty bits. We took a "skyway" so as to avoid as much of it as possible. The Skyway, of course, was a toll highway.
Eventually we made it back to Canada, which Darcy was pretty excited about:
But, it turns out that the land of the free doesn't have a monopoly on charging for use of their roads, as we had to spend $3.00 CAD to cross that bridge into Sarnia. We got into London too late to have dinner with Darcy's cousin, which we had planned to do, but we should be on track from here. We have much less driving to do over the next few days, so we should be able to see some things from more than just the car.
We would have finished The Outsiders today, but we had a navigation crisis in the middle of the last chapter, and didn't get to finish it. MAYBE tomorow.
The joke of the day: Why is money called dough? Because everyone kneads it! ROFLCOPTER.
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