Riders Block XII

DAY 12

Grand Forks, ND to Yankton, SD

400 miles

 

Morning in North Dakota is cold but the sky is clear of clouds so I get in my car and cross back over into Minnesota in order to take US 75 instead of interstate 29.  The road is flat and straight and every once in a while I pass a flatbed truck or a slow-moving farm vehicle that has to take the highway to get to the other side of his farm, a mile or so down the road.  Route 75 is apparently the King of Roads, or so says the signs that I pass warning me of upcoming towns with populations in the two hundreds.

I stop in Fargo, passing back over the Red River of the North into the Dakotas and have breakfast at Denny’s.  It is certainly not my first choice but I am hungry and I want to eat and get back on the road.  When I emerge from the restaurant, the blue sky has complete disappeared under a dark gray cloud and I marvel at how in thirty minutes the weather can shift so dramatically.  I drive for most of the day under a black cloud that seems to be stretched across the sky in southeasterly manner but every time I think I am going to get out from under it, the wind shifts and the cloud continues to sit over my car, dumping heavy rain on me at thirty minute intervals. 

The hills of North and South Dakota look like a poorly maintained golf course.  They are brown and craggy with old fence posts and tenuous-looking wire guarding their property or keeping cattle contained.  At one farm, a lone barn with no foundation looks as if it dates from the late nineteenth century.  It sits at an angle amongst freshly rolled bales of hay on a landscape that looks like the waves of a rough sea.  Cattle dots the hills, which roll with rockiness in some places and then are without a single rise or fall all the way to the horizon in another.

The majority of towns in North and South Dakota seem to be built along the major route through the town, whether it be 75 or 81.  As you approach the town, you see the skyscraping industrial buildings, either dealing in feed or seed or sand or gravel and then after you pass the ugly, steel gray building, you see a few businesses and houses and then the corn fields and ranches return.  This routine happened without fail the entire way south through the two states, almost like the same person was the town planner for every hamlet in the Dakotas.

In the evening, the sky becomes blue and the air warms and I stop at dusk by Silver Lake, which is so small it is not even on my map.  The lake sits off route 81 and actually looks metallic in the fading light.  I stay the night in Yankton, SD.  The town sits on the Missouri River, which creates the border of South Dakota and Nebraska.  The old woman at the desk is slow and it takes her more than twenty minutes to complete my transaction.  When I tell her about my travels, she tells me about her own and how she drove to Iowa with her niece to find her brother’s grave and couldn’t find it.  After this exhausting encounter I retire to my room and fall asleep. 

Riders Block XI

DAY 11

Land O’ Lakes, WI to Grand Forks, ND

430 miles

 

I wake up and immediately can tell that I am sick.  I use the bathroom a few times and fall back to sleep in between before my alarm clock goes off at eight thirty.  Chris and Dave and I eat a big breakfast together and I am holding it together, using the bathroom at fifteen-minute intervals at this point.  Dave lets me drive his ATV down their road and out onto the snowmobile trails and I go about twenty-five to thirty miles an hour down the gravel path.  The ride is exhilarating and I begin to understand why someone would want to drive cross-country on a motorcycle.

I say goodbye to Chris and Dave, who have a six hour drive of their own back to their place in Ingleside, and head off west on route 2.  The road brings me back up into the UP because of the sloping border between the two states and it is over an hour again before I am back in Wisconsin, this time by the far northern coast of the state.  The northern woods is nothing but wilderness with a few dipping hills and when I look in my side mirror and see no cars at all I suddenly become aware of how alone I am.  As I drive through thick forests and tiny houses I see signs for oncoming towns with names like Birch, Odana, Ino, Iron River and Maple and underneath each name, the welcoming signs say Unincorporated.  A couple of the towns are on an Indian Reservation, so this makes sense, but others are outside of it and still the towns are not officially a part of the union.  I am not sure what this means for their credibility when it comes to wanting something from the government or what it means when it comes time to pay the tax man, but I had never seen signs before explicitly telling a traveler that they were not in an officially-sanction township.

Lake Superior in Wisconsin is dark blue and this probably has something to do with the storm clouds overhead.  It rains on and off and I stop at the lake near Asheville but the water is cold and the temperature outside is colder so I give up on swimming in the world’s largest fresh water lake one last time.  Near Superior, WI and Duluth, MN, which are on the lake, separated by the St. Louis Bay and connected by the Bong Memorial Bridge, the view of the water is beautiful but the coast is covered with smoke stacks and coal chutes.  After I pass into the land of ten thousand lakes, the clouds break apart and the scorching heat returns and I have to pull over and quickly put sunscreen all over the left side of my body.

Northern Minnesota looks like what I assume Siberia looks like.  The road is flat and straight and is surrounded by dense, forests of gnarled pine trees.  In some areas where it looks as if the forest has been cleared for timber, there are small seedlings climbing their way towards the sky, interspersed with gray, dead skeletons.  In the air above the woods eagles and hawks circle the road looking for something to eat.  I stop in Grand Rapids after having stopped many other times just to use local bathrooms, coming out of each one feeling sicker and more drained than before.  I pass over the Mississippi, which is merely a tiny, marshy-looking river at this point, winding through boggy wetlands, and know that it is only a few miles from here where the headwaters of the great river have their origin.  I find a nice café called Brewed Awakenings and have espresso and a sandwich.  I feel enormously better after the caffeine and food intake and hit the road with a renewed sense of adventure.  

There is roadwork all over route 2 and I am convinced that every major road (and by major I mean any state and county route you can think of) in the country is being Obama-ed as part of the stimulus package.  I spend endless amounts of time driving down one lane highway or taking ridiculous detours through the woods that I curse the ARRA and everything that it stands for (but not really).  Most of the towns I pass are built entirely on route 2 and surrounded by woods.  I pass through dense forests of white birch trees and eventually come to Cass Lake.  I walk down by the water and over a pedestrian bridge that sits over the calm waters that are filled with lily pads and long green reeds.  I watch an eagle swoop down into the lake and pluck a fish out of the water like he was grabbing a potato chip out of a bag and then fly away.  The sun moves in and out of the clouds and the breeze gusts and dies accordingly.  After Bemidji, the forests begin to disappear and if there are trees, they are in small clusters miles away or in a single file line, used to mark the edge of someone’s property.  Farms begin to dominate the landscape, growing mostly hay and soy.  A field of sunflowers is dazzling in the sunlight, looking like a field of gold nuggets, as if they can by grown by farmers instead of extracted by miners.

The long flat road finally leads me to Grand Forks just over the border in North Dakota.  I drive around downtown Grand Forks and even East Grand Forks, MN for thirty minutes and fail to find a place to stay.  Finally I come to a hotel whose lobby looks like someone’s living room because the caretakers are folding towels and watching television.  One of their children has drawn all over his face with markers.  I drive downtown and walk through the park and over the bridge and have a quick meal then return to the hotel room, exhausted from the long drive and the myriad of stomach issues I have been facing all day.  I watch soon-to-be-MLB-superstar Bryce Harper strike out in the All American High School Baseball Tournament (which ends in a tie after only ten innings!) and then go to bed. 

Riders Block X

DAY 10

Petoskey, MI to Land O’ Lakes, WI

330 miles

 

Most of my days on the road have started out the same: the day looks gray and cloudy, as if the sky will open up at any moment and unleash on me, but then the clouds leave and the sun comes out and it is brutally hot.  Today is no exception.  After the downpour last night, I am hesitant about the weather and leave at a quarter ‘til eight in order to get a good jump on my long ride, and I start to head up the coast towards the Upper Peninsula.  After about forty minutes I reach the six-mile-long Mackinac Bridge that connects the two Michigan peninsulas, which are separated by Lake Michigan and Lake Huron.  The bridge rises so far above sea level that looking down on the water can give you acrophobia.  The sky is dark and cloudy but there are a few breaks in the seemingly endless cloud cover, and the sun shines brightly through them.  On the Lake Huron side, the light breaking through the clouds shimmers in a perfect circle on the dark blue water and looks as if heaven is casting its brilliant light down on the earth.

Route 2, which starts in the UP and runs all the way to Washington state, runs mostly along the shore and at some points the water is so close it looks like the waves will crash right up on the road.  Along the road there are several places to pull over and swim, but the weather is still grey so I continue up 77 to 28 through the interior.  The roads through the center of the UP pass through national and state forests and government protected wetlands.  The road is flat and straight and pine trees seem to lean in over the pavement. Several huge skeletons of  burned-out train cars sit along the train tracks that run parallel with the road.  After Munsing, the road joins the northern shore and the clouds evaporate and the sun begins its relentless assault on my skin.  At a deserted public beach just off the road, I stop and I sit on the sand for a while, getting as hot as I can.  The waters of Lake Superior are clear blue but prove to be freezing once I jump in.  I can only swim for a minute or two before the water temperature drives me to the shore.

I stop again to swim in Harvey but the beach is rockier than I anticipate and I almost spill onto the slippery rocks while trying to get in the water.  I force myself to stay down in the chilly liquid, knowing it will help me stay cool on this hot day, and I manage to stay submerged for almost five minutes.  I stop in Marquette, which is built on the hills overlooking the lake, and have lunch at an Irish pub called the Wild Rover.  I eat a cup of cabbage soup and an entire chicken potpie while sitting outside in the sun.  I get some coffee before I skip out of town and then continue down route 28 into the Ottawa State Forest.  I spend the rest of my trip driving on long stretches of road through forest only to see the trees break for a bit as I pass through what passes for a town, a collection of a gas station and a few businesses, and then am plunged back into the wilderness.

I hit central time about an hour before I cross the border into Wisconsin and when I arrive at my cousin’s place in Land O’ Lakes, it is only two thirty.  My cousin Chris and her husband Dave have a cabin in the northern woods of Wisconsin.  As the name of the town would suggest, the area is an enormous collection of lakes, all linked by small channels, rivers and other waterways.  The area is called Sand Country because the soil there so devoid of nutrients that nothing grows except wild grasses and trees and if you want a garden or grass in your yard, you have to ship in topsoil.  The area is also the snowmobile capital of the world and the trails run through the woods for miles up into the UP and all over northern Wisconsin.  Chris and Dave’s house is a beautiful mahogany color and built entirely out of the trees that were cut down to make room for the house.  Their yard is mostly sand with weeds poking up but they have a deck and a fire pit with benches crafted out of logs and stumps.

We meet up with the gentleman who built the house and his wife and go with his kids out in a pontoon boat on Mamie Lake.  We cruise around the lake for a while, drinking and hanging out.  Bald eagles fly over the trees on the river’s edge and we see an enormous, one-thousand pound nest with a young eagle sitting on a branch below it, his head still brown, not yet bald.  I jump in at the middle of the lake and am pleasantly surprised that the water is about twenty degrees warmer than Lake Superior.  Al Weber, the homebuilder and captain, is very friendly and he and his whole family likes to drink and just hang out.  Every time we stopped at their house or at a bar they wanted us to come and have a drink and everyone in their family speaks with the delightful Minnesota accent.  After a three hour cruise we finally go back to the cabin and start dinner.  Chris has a new recipe for Beer Can chicken where you put a whole chicken on the grill and still a half-full can of beer up his ass and let the beer steam the chicken from the inside.  The chicken takes about two hours to cook but is very tender and delicious when it is done.

We stay up late, sitting around a fire and drinking.  Dave smokes cigarette after cigarette and tends to the fire.  I eventually crash around one as it has been a long day and sleep soundly until morning.   

Riders Block IX

DAY 9

Buchanan, MI to Petoskey, MI

363 miles

 

When I get up the next morning, I honestly consider blowing off the rest of the trip to stay in Buchanan.  I know that Maureen and Joe don’t live the total life of luxury that I have been treated to over the past three days, but anything even close to that sounds appealing to me.  Maureen will take Austin to the beach and as much as I’d like to go, I have to get on the road.  After a quick breakfast of peaches, zucchini bread and espresso I hit the road.

I take US 31, which hugs the coast for most of the drive.  The landscape in western Michigan is all over the place; in some spots it looks like a typical Midwestern town with flat fields of corn and soy and lone barns, pale in color and sinking slowly into the vegetation as moss spreads over the asphalt shingles and trees and shrubs wrap their arms around the sides, reaching all the way up to the rafters.  In other spots the road dips through thick, green forests and actually heads up an incline or two and off in the distance I can see rolling hills.  A billboard touts that Healthy Michigan Families Promote Breastfeeding and I think this a rather weird slogan for a roadside sign.  In Onekama, about halfway up the coast, I stop for lunch at what is called a Chop Shop.  The food is bland and the service is slow even though I am the only customer.  The best part about lunch is the homemade potato chips, made with red potatoes.  The waiter is awkward and I contemplate stiffing him on the tip but he comes by at the end of my meal and acts friendly so I give him his due eighteen percent.

After Manistee, I take route 22 which runs up to a small peninsula on the northwestern side of the mitten.  Groves of peach trees run along the sides of hills and I begin to ascend an enormous mountain through thick forest and after I reach the summit and begin the descent, the trees clear and the first view of the lake appears.  The water is endless and is absolutely shimmering in the afternoon sun.  It is so clear and stretches on forever in a mix of blues and greens.  I stop at a scenic turnout near Arcadia and look at the endless expanse of fresh water.  The coastline is rugged and beautiful and the view looks as if they could beat anything the Mediterranean or California coasts had to offer.  I can’t even pretend I can see Wisconsin across the lake it is so massive and the view of the coast stretches on for miles.

The sparkling water becomes too much for me and when I reach a turnoff in Glen Haven I park at a public beach and jump in the water.  The beach is simple with a few rolling sand hills with long grasses poking out between the sand.  The water is feels as beautiful as it looks and up close it is a brilliant, translucent blue color and is absolutely reinvigorating after six hours in the car.  From the shore I can see South Manitou Island, home to the Sleeping Bear Dunes.  The face of a steep, sandy hill is surrounded on all sides by thick, black trees, forming a hood with a widows peak around the dune and from the shore it looks like the face of a bear with the remaining tree-covered island resembling like his massive, hibernating body.    The island is miles off shore and a popular spot for vacationers but I don’t have nearly enough time to travel there.  I get out of the water and wrap a towel around myself, remove my wet suit and drive simply with the towel around my waist.  The sun begins to beat in on me and I can feel my left arm and the side of my face getting hotter and hotter.

I skip back to US 31 and head towards the northern most tip of the state.  In Norwood I jump in the water again and put on real clothes since I plan to stop in Petoskey for dinner.  I eat at a little resort community right on the water.  Route 31 runs along the side of a hill and the little resort area is cut right into the side of that hill, the whole side of it is sheered right off, leaving a sharp drop off that looms over the area like a fortress.  All the houses and buildings have been constructed within the past twenty years and it looks as if a giant doll village has been placed along the beautiful bay.  I walk over to an overpriced restaurant and sit awkwardly at the bar between two groups of drunk couples in order to avoid the hour wait for a table.  The food turns out to be quite good; I have a Caesar salad with fresh anchovies and a ten-piece California roll.  The two couples on either side of me insist on talking to me so I tell them about my travels and they are very impressed as drunk people easily are.

When I emerge from the restaurant it is pouring and the wind is whipping the rain sideways and I am immediately soaked.  The idea of camping in the Upper Peninsula in the pouring rain suddenly seems like a bad idea so, soaking wet, I stop at a Super 8, nary a mile down the road, but still a rough drive in the brutal weather.  Luckily, they have a hot tub, as I have become accustomed to using one daily at this point, and that helps me return to my normal body temperature.  I get to bed early to try and get a jump on the next day’s journey, hoping to be in Wisconsin by tomorrow evening.

Riders Block VIII

DAY 8

Buchanan, MI

 

On Thursday, Maureen heads to Chicago to take my cousin, Austin, to the dentist to get his braces removed.  She is gone most of the day so Joe and I head off on our own.  He has found a small espresso machine in his basement and I attempt to use it, failing the first time but getting a pretty decent cup of coffee out of the second.  For breakfast I eat some of Joe’s freshly baked zucchini bread and have some sliced, Michigan peaches that he has precut and stored in the refrigerator.  Soon after we head for Warren Dunes, a place I went with my aunt nine years ago when I was sixteen.  Other then climbing the massive dunes I remember that she got attacked by greenhead horseflies on the way back to the car when a black cloud of them swarmed her and she was very upset at her brother, my dad, for showing no signs of sympathy.

Warren Dunes are just a few massive piles of sand that are blown farther and farther from the lakeshore every year by the wind.  They slowly take over the forests just beyond them, swallowing up huge swaths of woods and leaving the trees to die and rot just where they stand.  The hike up is brutal because not only is the climb straight up hill but it is also through shifting sand which makes the climb even harder.  At the top, there is some shade from trees that have not yet died or have learned to survive with their root structures buried underneath ten feet of sand.  The top of the dune is really just a massive ridge, which is only about twenty feet wide, dropping off on the other side into dense forest.  It is one of the highest points along the Lake Michigan coast and Joe tells me on a clear day you can see the Chicago skyline.  The incredible heat and haze of the afternoon make this impossible on this particular day so we settle for taking in the spectacular view of the lake and coast.  What we can see is miles of endless water, all different shades of blue, stretching off and then blending into the blue horizon.

After hiking along the desert-like landscape, we head down to the public beach to cool off.  The beach is absolutely trashed with plastic water bottles and empty food wrappers and every inch of it that isn’t covered with trash is covered with people.  An enormous family sets up in front of us; actually there are several families, mothers and children only, and they begin to swallow up every centimeter of sand around us.  They have two beach umbrellas, both that tout advertisements for beer.  This family moment brought to you by: Bud Lite.

The water is cold but feels great after climbing the dunes.  We hang out for a while but since neither Joe nor I are interested in tanning, we change and leave after swimming.  Joe takes me to Redamaks in New Buffalo, a popular vacation spot for citizens of Chicago, to feast on supposedly famous hamburgers.  We gorge ourselves on burgers and fried clam strips and onion rings and it is fantastic.    I have tried to avoid food like this the whole trip, knowing that devouring grease and then digesting it while sitting in a car is not optimal for my health, but this fare is nothing short of opulent comfort food.  It is not too greasy and when I leave I don’t have the feeling like my stomach is going to explode.  Instead I feel fully satisfied.  Joe is very funny and always has something interesting to say, especially about food, and treats me to everything so I have a great time.

After a few stops we return home and I shower and jump in the hot tub to complete the experience of being in a resort.  When I emerge cleaned off, Joe announces that he’s having a cocktail and I make myself one.  Joe and Maureen have a fully stocked bar set up in their kitchen and I can really make any kind of drink I want so I decide to take the opportunity to try a Cuervo Black and coke with a lime, which is quite good.  Joe and I head out for a walk on a trail that curves along the bog through the woods and he points out all the old oak trees that his neighbor plans to harvest for the lumber.  The mosquitoes are out in numbers so we head back for more drinks.  Maureen arrives home around six thirty with Austin, whom she didn’t want to drive all the way back to his house an hour and a half away after having brought him to the city and sat all day in horrendous traffic.  We have dinner together in the dining room; Joe’s latest concoction is grilled salmon and fresh vegetables and for Austin he heats up some fried chicken strips he had earlier at McDonalds and makes some homemade mashed potatoes.  Austin is ten and very entertaining.  When I ask if he wants to go in the hot tub with me he says: “No thanks, I’m straight.”  The later he says God invented football and when Maureen asks him why he thinks that he replied: “Well, how do you think he beat the Romans?”

We watch the movie Traitor after dinner and it is just good enough not to walk away from in the middle.  We hang out for a while after the movie, watching an interview with Paul McCartney on Letterman and then the subsequent performance on top of the Late Show marquee on Broadway and 53^rd.  I have the first fitful night of sleep, perhaps nervous about embarking the next day, but I eventually fall asleep.

Riders Block VI-VII

DAY 6 - 7

Chicago, IL to Buchanan, MI

Anyone who knows their geography (or if anyone actually reads this) will realize that Michigan is actually east of Chicago and therefore my grand plan of heading west has gone horribly wrong.  But there is some logic to this madness, so bare with me.  I wake up several times on Tuesday morning, due to the heat and also to Chris, Jack’s roommate, gathering his luggage and getting ready to head off to Colorado.  Jack’s other roommate, Mike, was charged with bringing Chris to O’Hare so they both left before five in the morning.  Jack was up at seven and we both left at quarter to eight.  I stay in the city for another two hours, drinking coffee, writing and eating a breakfast burrito.

My drive out of Chicago is nothing special; there is some traffic in the immediate vicinity but otherwise the highway moves smoothly.  Interstate 94 wraps its way along the southern shore of Lake Michigan through Illinois, Indiana and then shoots up into Michigan.  Through Indiana the sky turns grey and starts to rain on the flat, green landscape.  Southern Michigan is hillier than I remember it being when I drove with my parents from Detroit to Jackson to see my grandfather several times during my childhood.  But the area near the lake rolls and undulates like a Pennsylvania farm and is covered with old barns, corn, cows and soybeans.  A barn near US route 12 has completely collapsed in on itself but still remains alongside its twin, this one in perfect condition.  We drive past the same two barns a few days later and the one has collapsed even more.

The drive is a little over an hour and a half and when I arrive in Buchanan the clouds have mostly disappeared and it is hot and sunny.  My aunt Maureen and her husband Joe live in a beautiful house on four and a half acres that includes a five bedroom home woods, a bog and their own vegetable garden.  The house itself is enormous with three full bathrooms, an incredible kitchen, a finished basement with wine cellar, a deck and a sun porch, the latter with an indoor coy pond and hot tub.  In their immediate back yard they have over an acre of wetlands.  The bog is completely full of wild growth and is filled with a variety of birds, including humming birds, hawks and great blue herons, one of which flies back and forth repeatedly while we are having lunch.  There are also deer, coyotes and other smaller cats plus rodents like mice and groundhogs.  There is also an assortment of reptiles like snakes and lizards and the usual fish and amphibians as well.  At night, when I stand outside looking up at the stars, all I can hear is a deafening call from frogs and crickets and other insects that create a harmony of sounds and vibrations that drown out any other noise.  The natural and wild surroundings are very overwhelming but it is great to be so near them in such comfort.

Joe has lunch ready when I arrive and we eat flatbread sandwiches on the deck in the sun.  The road by their house is not so busy so the sounds of the bog cover all other man-made noises.  After lunch we drive out to a vineyard called the Round Barn to taste some authentic Michigan wine.  The area around the lake provides a better climate for certain crops that will not in other places in Michigan like cherries, peaches and grapes.  The Round Barn has surprisingly good wine, especially the Chianti and Sauvignon Blanc.  They also make vodka from distilled grapes and have their own brewery as well.   The seven total samples of wine, vodka and beer have me feeling a little dizzy but we head to a public garden where a designer has place a working model train that runs along a track carved out of logs and runs along bridges crafted out of tree branches.  The garden is beautiful but I have to stand in the shade the whole time, afraid that the combination of sun and alcohol will give me heat stroke.

The country roads through Berrien County are winding and hilly and quite pretty.  The residential areas have small, modest houses on flat plots of land and most of them are surround by huge fields of golden corn stalks or dark green soy plants.  When we return from the garden we have cocktails while Joe makes dinner.  The results of his labor is roasted chicken, stuffed zucchini picked that day from his garden, baked potato and salad.   We finish two bottles of red wine at dinner and most of the food and hang out and talk while Maureen smokes cigarettes in the dining room.

The next day we get a late start as no one wants to get up before nine thirty and around noon we head for St. Joseph’s which is a small beach town just northwest of Buchanan.   The road there follows a massively winding river of the same name and we soon come upon the quintessential beach community of small antique shops and little restaurants.  We eat outside in the shade and it is actually cold as the building blocks our exposure to the sun and the breeze from the lake makes it even colder.  Afterwards we head for the beach, which is busy and crowded, but we find a thinly populated area and set up camp.  The water of the St Joseph’s river, which flows into Lake Michigan, is dark and murky, pulling down soil as it runs past farms that sit on its banks.  When it mixes with the clear blue-green fresh water of the lake, the colors stay separate and you can see a trail of silt running southeast with the current.  At first we think it is a sandbar in the middle of the water but soon discover it is just the contrasting water sources.

When we get home I hop in the hot tub to ease the pain of a stressful day of lying on the beach.  The lake water is freezing and the hot tub, although it is eighty degrees outside, feels great, especially with the jets rumbling.  After a dinner of poached haddock and vegetables and lots of wine we watch the movie Elegy with Ben Kingsley and Penelope Cruz.  The film is extremely intense and well acted, about a literature professor who falls for one of his students, and the atmosphere borders on tense and suspenseful although it is merely a drama.  It is sad and very poetic and I am ultimately left with an uncomfortable, but satisfied, feeling.  Afterwards we wander off to bed to try and sleep the alcohol off.

Riders Block V

DAY 5

Chicago, IL

 

The night is hotter than I can handle and at seven thirty when Jack leaves for work the sun is streaming through the window onto me.  I manage to fall back to sleep after Jack wakes me up to give me his apartment keys and explain to me which each one does, and I wake up around nine thirty, sweating and thirsty beyond belief.  I have some water and then walk to get some coffee at the cake bakery where I have been going for the past few days.  When I decide to head downtown it is almost twelve o’clock and the sun and heat are back to make it another unbearably hot day in the Midwest. 

I take the blue line El downtown to the Loop and get off near the Chicago Institute of Art.  Jack told me they had just opened a new Modern Wing and that he had yet to check it out.  I had previously been to the science museum and one other museum in Chicago and they had all been great so I was looking forward to this one as well.  The grand marble building was very crowded and expensive but walking around in the air conditioning for a few hours was worth every penny of the eighteen dollars.  At first I started to wander around aimlessly, soon realizing that if I didn’t eat something I wasn’t going to be able to appreciate the art at all, no matter what it was.

In the surprisingly low-priced museum café I buy and sandwich and roll and pasta salad and get only one bite deep into the sandwich and realize I can’t eat it.  The mustard that I instructed the sandwich maker to put on the bread, which looked like regular yellow mustard, must have been flavored with horseradish because when I bite into it the unmistakable taste of wasabi fills my mouth.  Since real wasabi is a swamp root native only to Japan, when we make it in this and ever other country in the world, we use horseradish as a substitute.  Wasabi being one of my least favorite tastes in the world, I deem the sandwich inedible, but manage to peal off the bread that has the mustard on it and it enjoy the rest as an open face sandwich.

I return to the museum and walk around some more, heading to the Modern Wing after a long trip through the labyrinthine trip to the café.  The new wing is three stories tall and the exhibits get better the higher up one goes.  The bottom floor is filled eyesores trying to pass as contemporary art and I immediately begin to doubt the validity of this new addition to the museum.  On the second floor there are more interesting works: one of the most memorable is sections of the New York Times from September 12 and 13 of 2001, right after the world trade center attacks, that have been framed and drawings of a man and woman in sexual embrace have been colored over the articles.  Another memorable exhibit is called Clown Torture and is a video loop of a screaming man in full clown costume, which, needless to say, is highly disturbing.  The third floor has even more interesting photographs and paintings so overall the new wing is certainly worth seeing.

I mill around through the main museum exhibits; one on Japanese screen paintings the other on paintings and artifacts having to do with wine over the past thousand or so years, and leave around two o’clock.  I take the red line subway to Addison and walk to Wrigley Field to see if there is a tour of the park.  The Cubs are in Colorado and since my plans to see baseball in Chicago had been thwarted, I settled for taking a walk around the second oldest ballpark in the country.  The tour started at two thirty and we sit at the beginning in the bleachers above the right field ivy, the sun beating down on us.  I watch a cloud shaped like the island of Great Britain make its way towards the sun and for a blissful three minutes we are cooled by shade, only to see the cloud finally pass and heat resume.  The stadium is impressive, not in the shrine-like sense that the tour guides would have you believe, but is still a work of art.  We travel around the inside up to the press box and the suites and then down to the team’s clubhouse and out into their dugout and onto the field.  It was the first time I had walked on the field of a major league park and it is quite a unique experience.

The Cubs play the fewest number of night games at home than any other team in the majors.  They only play twenty or so games in the evening in Chicago and the first game to start at Wrigley after three in the afternoon was in 1988.  To put this in perspective, the first major league game under the lights was played in Iowa in 1930 and now almost every game is played at seven o’clock.  The reason the Cubs play so early is because the outfield wall is so low that houses built before the stadium look into the ballpark and the occupants did not want late games being played when they had to sleep or wanted to put their children to bed.  This is also why most of these houses have built bleachers on the roofs of their buildings so they can sit and watch any game they want for free (or sell tickets for a profit, a percentage of which goes to Cubs management).

I take the bus back to Jack’s place around four thirty and get off at the wrong stop and end up having to walk over a mile to his apartment.  When he gets home, his roommates and I and one of their sisters go out to eat a block away from their place.  It is Jack’s roommate Chris’s last night in town so his sister and the three of us have wings to celebrate.  My streak of hot waitresses continues that evening and so the legend grows even more.  After dinner we hang out with Chris for a while but then we all go to bed pretty early.  This night has the same unmistakably hot qualities as the previous evenings but I am so tired from walking in the sun all day that I fall asleep quickly.