The Trip to Chicagoland

Today is Wednesday. Late last Friday I got an email from my sister, who lives a bit south of me, telling me she decided to make a whirlwind trip to go see our dad and asked if I wanted to go. She wanted to leave on Sunday and come back Tuesday. I declined. I have had an issue with this sister that is not a resolvable one. Also, traveling in a car might be do-able now but it is hardly heaven. Not to mention, with my current intestinal design requires I do not wander too far from "facilities." My father called early Saturday morning requesting I come. What was I supposed to do?  I went. It was probably a good thing too, I am not sure my sister would have arrived alive.

My sister showed up on Sunday and we headed out with me driving because I am much more familiar with my local roads and highways and, admittedly, they are a trial if one is not familiar with them. She said she could drive when we got to Illinois. I cannot recall exactly where or when she did drive but it was about a half an hour before she said she was getting drowsy so we switched again. She did not do anymore driving. It was a good thing I was driving when the tire threw it's tread on the interstate between Sullivan and St. Clair MO. It was a very scary situation when it happened, 75-80 MPH on a busy/crowded interstate, chunks of rubber and other things flying at the windshield and hitting the bottom of the vehicle, steering wheel trying to pull me into the left lane. At the time I thought the tire had blown, thankfully, for the rim, it was just the tread that blew. I got the rig pulled over to the side, I honestly do not think my sister could have managed this without an accident. (I have been known to be a good driver even if I have hardly gotten into a vehicle in the last couple years and a bit longer doing any driving.) The mud flap had gotten twisted around and was rubbing on the rim causing the sound that made me think we were on the rim; that was a relief and I was able to pull the rig even further off the road so we stood less of a chance of dying from all the high-speed traffic. Aside from the damage to the tire and the mud-flap, the entire lens assembly for the turn signal/running light on the driver side was shattered and just gone, the drivers side of the grill was a bit broken and had pieces of tread in it, the front of the driver's side running board got messed up, and one of the oddest things--somehow the tread had caught the cable for popping the hood open and pulled it out from where it connects to the inside of the where a person pulls it to pop the hood; the plastic puller lever broke and had hit me in the leg when it all happened and I thought something was coming up through the floorboard--it happens and it can kill, but it didn't this time. Now, I can change a tire, done it hundreds of times, not an exaggeration, I really have; they were not all mine. But with my somewhat recent surgery and my seeming refusal to let it heal completely from the last time I did something stupid before I do something stupid again, I was a bit concerned with heaving the large tire around. A couple of guys stopped and were willing to help but then it turned out my sister did not have the crank handle to get the tire lowered from under the vehicle (I hate that design of spare carrier.) But, we discovered her spare was not in fact any good anyway. They didn't want to leave us on the side of the road even thought we did, by now, have a tow truck coming. Very nice guys. We did manage to send them on their way and waited by the side of the road  for about 45 more minutes when the tow guy showed up.

The trip continues with four new tires and a spare tire that is actually a spare tire and not a hunk of bad rubber. The episode set us back about 2 hours.

Oh, I forgot to mention she did not have an atlas, or even a simple map, with her and I did not find out until a half hour after we had left when she asked if I knew how to get there. Crap! I can get us to Chicago but I didn't know how to get to the house (our other sister's house, whom Dad lives with). She said she could get us to the house if we were in the area. I lived up to my half she had to call the sister to when we got to the neighborhood. But, we are not there yet.

We cross the Mississippi and I'll tell you, no matter how much I have driven and been driven and places where I have lived and visited that bridges are an everyday, multiple times daily, occurrence, I hate crossing bridges, and so does my sister. We were both born along the Mississippi; bridge accidents are the worst. At least I knew our tires were good, hoped everyone else's were.

We stop for gas about a half hour into Illinois and I go in the store while she gasses up. They were playing a song from the 80's. So when my sister walks in I say loud enough for the guy behind the counter to hear, "You know, I haven't been to Illinois in years and I thought all sorts of things would have changed, but they haven't even changed the record." I got a good chuckle out of both of them. But then the next few places we stopped were all playing 80's rock too.

This might have been when she took over driving. She was driving kind of slow, especially considering we already were going to be getting to our destination kind of late before the tire issue, let alone after the tire. She was driving within the legal limits, not below the minimum, but not always the posted limit either, and on I-55 most people do 10 to 15 above said upper limit. I took over driving again at the next stop which I asked for to go potty even though it was not a true necessity. By the time we got to Springfield it was obvious that we would not get to the Chicago area until probably 1:00 in the morning and that is way late for my Chicagoland sister's family so we opted for a motel rather than disturb them in the middle of their night. So we drove around in a town both of us knew very well, at a different point in our lives, looking for a motel, totally lost because of the changes. The odd thing is I noticed that Springfield IL had not grown all that much since I last lived there based on the population figure posted on the city sign but it sure did sprawl out. When I finally found an intersection I knew (it would have been easier to find myself if we had gone downtown but the motels there are not anyplace we would want to stay and the hotels there are way out of price range) I decided we needed to stop and ask someone because the last time I had been at that intersection is was corn fields on 3 sides and a large vacant lot on the forth; now it was in the middle of a small city. We got the directions to a inexpensive hotel and a grocery store and settled in for the night.

The next day, we are on the road and it is starting to get hot already even though it is just around 9 am. I switch lanes and as I am signaling the lane change the turn signal stops working. The driver's side only worked in the back since the tire incident but now there was nothing. At the same time my sister is noticing that the AC blower is not working--then we discovered that the GDMF power windows would not go down. I have always hated having power windows--ALWAYS hated them. Why? Because if they do not have electricity going to them they will not work. I have over the years come up with gobs of scenarios that one would need to get their window down and yet there is no power to do that. I like crank windows. I might have mentioned this in a previous blog when I got my last vehicle-it has power windows and good luck finding a non-antique car with a window crank. So anyway, we are in the middle of nowhere with no AC and not able to get the windows down, it is already 90 degrees out and I was stupid enough to wear a black t-shirt that day. The next couple of exits had no services, a nice way of saying the little town that the exit led to had a grain elevator and a couple of residences. A bit later we got to Bloomington and pulled into a parts store. I start to check the fuses and could not get them out, my hands were too wet from being soaked in sweat. I decide I am just going to go in the store and play dumb female. The guy hem-hawed a bit and told me they are not supposed to pull fuses--which seemed strange to me for a place that advertises on the window that it will check electrical systems, and I have seen employees of the same company doing just that for customers elsewhere even though I think technically they mean the battery, alternator, and regulator. He does however give me a pair of needle-nose pliers to pull the fuses. All of the associated fuses to the things that had failed were fine. I pulled a couple relays that might have been the problem and my sister took them in to be tested, they were fine. The only thing the part store guys were helpful on was suggesting a place that did electrical work and gave us directions to find it. We get there and the place is closed, no one there. She starts calling around to find another place to keep me from breaking out her windows out--seriously, people and animals die in closed up cars in that kind of heat. But just as she finds another place the guy shows up. He is a bit slow about getting his test light but when he does he finds the problem almost immediately. It was the fuse for the brake lights according to the fuse legend. The brake lights were working, we checked, the legend on the fuse box was wrong. He replaced that fuse with one of my sisters fuses and everything worked fine. The phone in his office rang, he left us in the driveway with his nice Snap-On test light still on the floorboard for 15 minutes--he sure was trusting. When he came back out he said we were good to go. I commented that he sure was nice to give us his Snap-On test light. "Oh no! I better get that" he said. He didn't charge any money because it only took him 20 seconds to find it and it wasn't even his fuse that fixed it. He also had four rescued cats at his shop. My sister gave him $10 for him and the cats she said. And we were on our way again.

We finally made it to the Chicagoland twn we needed but she could not remember how to get to the house so we pulled into the library and called other sister. I told the one to tell the other to give us directions from the library but instead she gave the streets, she got instructions that made no sense because of a misunderstanding of where on said streets we were; we were to cross over/go past the street we were driving and go a couple more blocks--meaning I had to turn off that street obviously but didn't know which direction--we did find the right street eventually.

We had a short but pleasant visit with Dad and sister and sister's kids but bro-in-law was out of town. I was assigned my neice's bed which is about 8 to 10 inches higher than mine. I was afraid I would forget in the middle of the night and fall out of it when I get up to go to the bathroom. I only had to get up once and I remembered. The next morning however I almost landed on my face because I forgot. We visited with Dad and sister a bit more and left.

The trip home for me was a lot less eventful. About 20-25 minutes before getting to the Mississippi, just as I was thinking of asking her to drive because I feeling a tad dozy, she tells me she is going to kick her seat back and nap. Okay, I would be fine until the other side of St. Louis where we would gas up. Then I missed the 270 by-pass around the city and wound up going through downtown St. Louis. I didn't want to do that. I have done that, there used to be no choice but to do that. Driving around St. Louis is bad enough, driving through if you don't have to is crazy. I have driven in a few big cities, St. Louis has been the worst. I have not driven in NY, NY it is probably similar but I have heard other drivers bemoan St. Louis over other cities. I do not know how my sister slept through it but she did. I had such a burst of adrenaline I was no longer anywhere close to dozy. So, even after stopping I continued to drive since she wanted to get home before dark and by the time I would get dropped off she would barely be making it and she drives slower. Uneventful for me from here on out. But after checking her directions home and pulling out of my driveway she got lost. About an hour and a half later, just about the time she should be getting home, she calls and has no clue where she is and wants me to find her and direct her home. By asking a few questions she didn't understand why I was asking her, she was a bit stressed, I did indeed find where she was and gave her new directions to get home. She called again an hour or so later and thanked me, she had stopped at the store but was in her neighborhood and almost home.

One of my step-daughters called me once to find her once after her GPS got her totally lost. I don't remember what state she was in but I found her and got her back on track. She told me that she called me because she knew if anyone could do it it was me. Gosh. Maps are my friends.

I am exhausted, a little sore, behind in chores, and have had digestive tract upset since Sunday. But I did get to see my dad one last time. He is not dying per se but he will not last much longer. But then the last 5 times I saw him I figured it would be the last time. Especially the last time when I thanked my aunt for bringing him to see me because I figured I wouldn't see him again. She hugged me and told me it wouldn't be the last time, she would bring him back; but then she died a few months later. Didn't expect that. And I should have had this finished hours ago but kept getting interrupted. Oh well, it is done now.