South Bend Trip

My trip to South Bend went well.

I left Thursday around noon-thirty. It was a slow start; I had been hoping to be on the road closer to 11. It didn’t take long to get into Wisconsin. It’s just on the far east side of Saint Paul, so it only took like 30 mins to get into WI. I knew I wanted to fill up with gas before I got into Chicago. So after traveling about 4 and a half hours and 260 miles, I stopped in Madison WI to fill up even though I could have gone another hundred miles. But I figured, if I filled up there, I’d have more than enough to go the other 240 miles to South Bend. While in Madison, I also stopped at the local Chipotle, of course. (No, the cheese didn’t taste any better.)

From Madison, I continued toward Chicago. I don’t know how much I paid in tolls on the way to Chicago, probably about $5 or so at different toll booths along the way. Though they get annoying to stop at, it kept the drive interesting. I ended up taking the route yahoo gave, which included taking 90 from Madison, through Chicago and down to the Indiana Toll Freeway. Now, I’m betting Lily is laughing her head off right now, thinking how foolish of me to do such a thing. I should have probably consulted her because 90 practically goes through the heart of down town Chicago! Even at 7:30 I was in bumper to bumper traffic!

Around 8:30 as the sun was nearly done setting, I made it to Gary, Indiana. It wasn’t any worst than Orange Mound in Memphis. (And for the Sacramento people out there, Oak Park would be considered “nice” compared to Orange Mound.) Police had streets around 2300 Jackson partially blocked off. I parked about three blocks away and prayed my car would still be there when I got back. Approaching the house, there seemed to be more of a festive feeling to it than a sorrowful vigil feeling. Across from the house on the other side of the street they had booths set up with videos, selling tshirts, etc. It is a simple house but it has a large yard that seems to take up two lots. There were a lot of posters, flowers, stuffed animals, and all sorts of things laid down there. I brought white carnations myself to leave there. I had to call a few friends from that hallowed ground. Br. Allen was one of those lucky people. JP and Chris also got calls.

I arrived in South Bend at 11pm. It took a while to figure out my way to find where Br. Dat was staying since he wasn’t too familiar with the campus, but after asking enough people, we figured it out. While he was in class Friday, I did some homework myself and walk around campus. When he got out of class, he showed me around the campus and did quite a bit of walking. After dinner, we went to the South Bend mall, the only other highlight of the town apparently. And well, this mall make Sunrise Mall look great!

Saturday morning, we went back to Chicago. Br. Dat was flying out of Ohare to go visit family in France for a couple weeks. After I dropped him off, I decided to continue driving back to St Paul. It had crossed my mind to stay in Chicago for their Obon festival that night, but decided I’d rather drive home since I wasn’t sure if my friend from CBU would be around later that night or not.

This week I’m off to Memphis. I’ll leave early Wednesday morning and drive for 14 hours. Im attending a friend’s wedding there Friday night. Sunday I’ll head to visit some friend in Martin, TN which is a couple hours north of Memphis. Monday I’ll go from Martin to St. Louis to see another friend and stay the night there. From there I’ll only have 9 hours back north on Tuesday.

Tidbit by Thomas: I don’t know if it’s because I feel like I’m busy studying and worried about a job; or if im just getting old; or what…but all this traveling doesn’t seem as much fun as it used to be. Seem like more work than what it used to be…