vacation

miles covered: 388.6
cities visited: Chicago, Illinois

I’m on vacation this week.  What does a person who travels for work do when they go on vacation?  Most sane individuals lock themselves in their homes and don’t leave the house (or their beds even) for the whole time they are on vacation.  Sanity, however, isn’t something I’ve ever made claims to.  So, I decided to pack myself and my kid brother up and travel to Chicago for the week.  We drove from home in Northern Michigan through Grand Rapids, MI and around the end of Lake Michigan through Gary, IN (the smelliest town outside of Jersey) and finally pulled into the Windy City.

It was the first time my kid brother had been outside of the state, and the first time in recent memory that he’d been to a town with a building taller than four stories.  It’s been a couple of days full of firsts.  First state line, first sky scraper, first elevator and escalator, first traffic jam, first time trying to sleep in a hotel room that faces not only a highway but also a frieght train line.  It blew his mind when he realized the traffic would continue through the entire night, as cities are places that don’t sleep.  It blew his mind that someone would come into the hotel room every day and make his bed and replace the dirty towels. 

It’s been refreshing to spend some time with a non-traveler.  Things I take for granted, things I have become so accustomed to that they’ve become invisible to me, these are the simple things that my travel partner has noticed and called back to my attention.  Today we spent the day at the Museum of Science and Industry.  Tomorrow we attack the Shedd Aquarium and a double decker bus tour.  The day after?  We’re flying by the seat of our pants here and will figure that out as it comes

miles to date: 6,518.8

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