RECAP OF MY BIRTHDAY WEEKEND ROAD TRIPMind you, my birthday was 5 months ago, but judging by the lack of responses to the Andy Kaufman poll question, it seems hardly anyone is reading this blog these days anyway, so I figure I won't get any complaints about the tardiness of this recap.
The first leg was Toledo to South Bend to pick up my longtime pal Willie. Gave him a minor metrosexual makeover with a haircut and some new threads. I couldn't take him to the spy bar in Milwaukee with long gray hair and beard and overalls, looking like a homeless farmer. Went to a big & tall store in SB, found myself some nice new threads as well. Dark shirts with vertical stripes in my size. Hell yeah.
Next it was off to a traffic jam thru Chicago, then to the Red Dot for my second helping of poutine, which frankly wasn't quite as good as the first. Then to the spy-themed bar, the Safe House, in Milwaukee. Finally got to see the ejector seat in action, but had to wait an hour.
Then we checked out Milwaukee's karaoke scene. There doesn't seem to be much of one. Hit 2 very different bars, both stunk (Wisconsin isn't smoke-free yet) and both had hardly any decent singers. If they had been holding contests I would have won by a country mile. The first show was clearly a cheap startup operation run by amateurs, the second was clearly a legit pro operation. Amongst the dozen or so of my aces that I sang that night was "The Dance", which Willie associates with his late grandmother. I'm proud to say I nailed it so well that I made him cry.
Stayed at a motel outside of Milwaukee, then went to the Adler Planetarium in Chicago on Sunday. Paid $50 for the two of us to spend the afternoon checking out most of the featured shows, one of which was supposed to be in 3-D but was horribly out of sync. Complained to no avail. They could have at least given me a $10 refund. Fucking bastards. I will never go back. Wish we had gone to the Science & Industry Museum instead.
We were going to head home after that, but I just couldn't end my birthday on such a sour note. So I figured, since we were already in Chicago, why not head south and take care of some unfinished business from a few years ago?
Back in October 2002, I had to drive 7 hours to find clear, dark skies for the fantastic Leonid meteor storm. Wound up, oddly enough, near Toledo, Illinois. Afterwards I headed north to Chicago, but if I had gone about 60-90 minutes due west, I could have gone to Jack In The Box to see if their tacos were really similar to the BK tacos that came along that same year. I always regretted not doing that.
So here was my chance to right that wrong. It was a long drive through a stiff cross wind, but it was worth it. We arrived at the JITB in Litchfield at around 10pm CST, just in time for me to have JITB tacos for my birthday dinner. But I also had to try a few other things on the menu, because when am I going to get back to JITB again? So I fell way short of the 30 tacos needed to match the total from their "Stoner" ad.
There was only one thing to do: Get a motel room nearby, and go back for breakfast the next morning, combining our efforts to reach the magic number, which we did, and I brought back the 30 used paper sleeves as everlasting proof.
BTW, my final verdict: yes indeed, JITB tacos are almost exactly like the late great BK tacos. And they were worth the trip. But they're still not as good as El Tipico, so the results of the 2002 Taco War still stand. Although Del Taco is pretty damn good too. And cheap.
Spent most of Monday driving home, kept awake by gallons of McDonald's iced coffee and by my fear of wrecking my new wheels. The Bus performed magnificently throughout the entire trip, did everything I asked. He's such a good boy. Who's the Bus?!
On the other hand, my Magellan GPS unit, which I call Jelly for short, is a crazy bitch. She tried to kill me on the way home from South Bend. I asked her for the fastest route home avoiding toll roads, figuring she would send me along Route 20. Instead she kept sending me farther and farther north. Eventually I realized she was sending me to I-94 in Michigan!
About halfway to 94, I cancelled that route and instead asked for the shortest route home. She then sent me on a zigzag route through a maze of back roads in northeast Indiana. It was during this insane excursion in the middle of nowhere that my low fuel light came on! Fearing death at the hands of some insane backwoods redneck Hicksville Indiana rejected-extra-from-the-set-of-Deliverance farmer, I asked her for the nearest gas station. It was only 1.8 miles away to the east. Whew!
No, wait. That's 1.8 miles as the crow flies. In actual driving distance, it's about 6 miles west to the nearest I-80 entrance, then another 8 miles back east. I can only hope for a good time in the sack with the aforementioned psycho-farmer's daughter before he kills me.
Fortunately The Bus gets very good mileage and makes it the 6 miles west where I find a different but more expensive gas station where I get just enough to get to the cheaper one on I-80. From there I stay on the Turnpike and just barely manage to stay awake the rest of the way home.
