The first lesson was that the Ohio River is like nothing we have out here. In L.A., Rivers are basically cement canals with a trickle of water flowing through them. After a rain storm, they might fill up a quarter of the way. But there's little more to them than a dry creekbed. The levies are virtually pointless and just there for the event of like a 100 year flood event or something like that.
The second lesson was that Dayton didn't have much night life. Other than $1 burgers on Tuesday nights, you had to create your own fun, which might explain why so many people in my training class were fucking each others' brains out.
But the most important thing I think I learned in my trip to Ohio was that the State of Indiana is pretty much useless.
There are about 250 miles of Indiana separating Dayton, Ohio from Chicago, Illinois. I know this because I drove those 250 miles. They were pretty horrifying.
First, I need to make a point about Interstate 70 in Ohio between Dayton and the Ohio/Indiana line. This stretch of freeway looks like it has its own personal gardener that tends to it every day. The grass is green and beautiful and there isn't a dry patch or high stretch to be found. The trees are brilliantly colored. The sun shines down on I-70 in Ohio as if God Himself is blessing it each and every day, as if to say "I realize there's problems in the world, so I'm going to give unto Ohio a blessing in a well-maintained I-70."
Then you go through an archway thing, cross over a small river, and you're in Indiana, and it's like instantly you've found the land that God forgot. The grass is dry and patchy and overgrown in some areas. And the closer I got to Indianapolis, the darker the sky got until about 15 miles out I found myself in a fierce Midwestern thunderstorm.
This isn't your mother's thunderstorm. You think you've seen bad rain in L.A.? L.A.'s worst deluge is a drizzle compared to what I drove through. The water came down so hard and fast that it was nearly a solid sheet. Windshield wipers weren't designed to increase visibility so much as to make loud whooshing sounds that confirmed you were still alive. Traffic slowed to about 15 miles an hour as everyone chose a designated position on the road and maintained it. Even people who were native to Indiana seemed scared...in fact, they seemed more scared than I was. I didn't have a frame of reference. I was actually confused. I thought maybe a dam had broken somewhere and that any minute I was going to get hit by the surge and there was nothing I could do about it. So I just stuck to my lane and braced myself to the wheel in my little Pontiac G5 I'd rented.
Then signs started telling me that I couldn't go to Chicago the way I wanted to go. I called my friend Macaire and said "umm...these signs say there's flooding on 80." Macaire advised me to drive to Gary (which is where the flooding was) and see if the Skyway was open. Thankfully, it was, and for $3, I saved a few miles and got around the floods, not to mention hit Metro Chicago much further up along the highways than I would have taking the free route. But back to Indiana...
I slowly got used to this downpour. By the time I hit I-65 on the Northwest corner of Indianapolis (a town that claims to have hundreds of thousands of people but looks more hicktown than Dayton, and probably is...) I realized I was in some deep shit. Right as the ramp turned to start me Northwest toward Chicago, a bolt of lightning hit across the fields that lit up the sky for a full 5 seconds. I think everyone on the road was temporarily blinded. And we were all going about 60-65 by this point, because now nobody cared that the rain was a near-solid sheet...
So I get out on I-65 and head Northwest. Somewhere along the way, I discovered that Purdue University is actually out in the fields near Lafayette. "Oh...well, now I know where that is," I said to myself. And I upped my speed. 65 to 70. 70 to 75. 75 to 80. My thought was "I don't want to be out here, why would a cop want to be out here?" So I went 80-85 miles an hour through the rain holding on for dear life and hoping nobody was blacked out on the road. Every couple of minutes another bolt of lightning would flash somewhere across the sky.
The worst part of all is that there were no landmarks, no frame of references, except for West Lafayette, between Indianapolis and Gary. I mean NONE. I'm convinced that the land around I-65 disappeared that night and had I driven off the road I would have fallen into an endless abyss and never been found or heard from again...or re-emerged in Japan or something. I know the time between Indianapolis and Gary was only about 2 hours, but it felt like an eternity. By the time I reached the Indiana Toll Road to the Chicago Skyway, I was just grateful to be back in an urbanized area.
My return trip after a pretty awesome weekend in Chicago in which I had drinks in good bars, hung out with my friend Macaire and her cousin Courtney and varous other people, and stayed in the cheapest motel room I've ever stayed in (the ceiling in the bathroom had a huge bulge in it and leaked, and the drawers next to the bed had no bottoms in them,) was much less eventful. Which actually made it seem LONGER than the drive to Chicago. With the sunshine, I realized that Indiana was nothing but fields. NOTHING BUT FIELDS. And Indianapolis and Purdue University. I don't think there's anything else there. Even the fact that Interstate 69 enters Indianapolis isn't reassuring...it just stops there. The highway most likely to be turned into a sexual reference gets to the outskirts of Indianapolis and just ends there! No 69 in Indy! (They're planning on continuing it further South, but that'll take years...)
So to my friends who live in Indiana....no offense, but your state sucks. Chicago is an awesome town and Ohio's an okay state. Why couldn't you guys get it right?
Hmmm...so next posting? I don't know yet...maybe I'll tell you more about the Midwest, maybe something else :-) I have a ghost story to put in here some time...
-Eric
1 comment:
Sounds scurry. You're brave!
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