Riders Block III

DAY 3

Chicago and Ingleside, IL

I wake up on Jack’s couch and the apartment is pleasantly cool despite the humidity outside.  After dressing, the five of us go to brunch at a breakfast place with a Latin twist.  I have eggs scrambled with tomatoes and scallions and jalapenos with a side of beans and potatoes and some soft corn tortillas.  It was one of the best breakfasts I have had in a while and I surprised I have room for it after all the macaroni and cheese I ate the night before.

We arrive back at Jack’s place, escaping the sweltering heat of outside, and I decide to make the hour or so journey north west to visit my cousin Chris is Ingleside.  On Division Street in Chicago I miss the turn for the interstate entrance and end up driving around the city in circles.  Finally I get on 90-94 and cruise north of the city, watching the southbound traffic piling up.  I begin to get nervous thinking about my return trip to the city the next morning and how I will most likely be stuck in the road work/Lollapalooza/every day nightmare traffic that Chicago has to offer.

Interstate 94, which branches off 90 and heads towards Milwaukee is being Obama-ed: that is, it is being ripped to shit by construction crews eager to spend the billions of dollars the government had allotted to them.  The traffic is horrid and the northbound road is split into two different sections, express and local.  I cruise up the express lane, which is only one lane wide and the traffic crawls until I get to Grand Avenue outside of Ingleside.  The heat inside my slowly moving car is unbearable and I am sweating profusely.  I have put sunscreen on to keep myself from frying like an egg in my car because the sun beats in perfectly through the driver’s side window, so I become sweaty and greasy and it is unbearable.

When I arrive I shower before speaking to anyone to wipe the filth off me and I immediately feel better.  My two cousins and their kids are all there and we spend most of the day drinking beer and sangria, which helps me get drunk fast.  My cousin’s husband Dave cooks three different kinds of meat and I eat all of it greedily to help soak up the alcohol.  Inside their house, the AC is blasting at 74 degrees and it is pleasant every time I go to use the bathroom.  Upon reemerging outside, the heat hits me like a wall and I am instantly wet with humidity.  A nice breeze comes through their back yard making the day bearable, but even at one o’clock in the morning it is still 80 degrees out.

My cousin has a seven-month-old British bulldog named Keira who is so ugly that she is adorable.  Three times in the evening someone spills a drink on my bare feet and I use the house to wash them off and hose down the deck so it isn’t sticky.  When I start to spray the deck, Keira run over and sticks her face right in the way of the hose and begins to violently lap up the water as quickly as she possibly can.  This escalates to me spraying her right in the face at close range while she tries to drink the water.  She gives up, after not being able to breathe, walks away to catch her breath, then comes back for more.  Their other dog Guinness is pound for pound the largest black lab ever.  His neck and head are twice the size of mine but he is so lumbering and friendly that he poses no threat to anyone.

My cousin Mike, who is plastered by nine thirty, wants me to come to the bar with him, but I decline because he is already so drunk, and try to convince him to stay at the house.  About an hour later his dad makes fun of him for texting his girlfriend and he storms out of the house and drives to a bar to meet his friends.  I still haven’t heard from him but I’m sure he is okay.

I go to bed around one in my cousin Nikki’s room.  She had arrived late, chugged a few glasses of sangria and then thrown up and spent most of the evening lying down in the grass outside, before moving to her room.  By one o’clock she was totally rehabilitated and when she left and I went to sleep in her room, I found twigs and grass in her bed from when she was lying in the yard.  It was the best example of boot and rally I have ever seen.