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August 10, 2007
Holy Toledo, I Hate Chicago Traffic
[On location in Toledo, Ohio]
Ugh, I'm rather exhausted. I got up at 5.15am CT this morning, with the goal of leaving by 6am. Of course, as I mentioned to one of my friends last night, that meant that I wouldn't actually leave until 6.30 or 7am. And sure enough, I didn't hit the road from Cumberland until 6.50am. I was pretty tired for the first four hours before I stopped in Madison at a Valvoline place to get an oil change (I was at nearly 3000 miles at that point, with about 700 miles until PA). I sure got a wake-up call when the guy was doing a standard fluid check in my engine, and all of a sudden the coolant from my radiator shot up in the air like a geyser for a few seconds. 
I've certainly never seen that before! It turns out that my radiator fluid was boiling, even though the temp sensor didn't indicate anything abnormal, so it was very good that I happened to pull over then (or you could say it was lucky, my odometer ended in 777 when I pulled over, haha). So I had them completely flush out my radiator/coolant system, which hadn't been done at least in the almost 55,000 miles that I've owned the car, so it was definitely time. If that had blown while I was on the freeway, that really wouldn't have been good.
So while the coolant geyser set me back another 15-30 minutes, I thought I was still in decent shape for making it through Chicago before rush hour got really bad. Wrong. Oh why, oh why did I take Interstate 90 through Chicago, instead of dropping down Interstate 39 from Rockford to La Salle, then taking Interstate 80 over from there, a route that's 50 miles longer yet avoids all but the southern suburbs of Chicago? Sigh. The Kennedy (I-90) was actually a fine choice, or so it seemed, until I got to the Eisenhower (I-294) interchange at around 2.20pm. That's when the traffic suddenly slowed to a crawl. How slow was the going? Well, on the outbound "express" lane south of downtown on the still-under-construction Dan Ryan (I-90/I-94), for example, I was going about 5 mph most of the time. Ugh. It was almost 5pm before I got to the Illinois/Indiana state line on the Bishop Ford (I-80/I-94). And then there was more road construction right at the start of the Indiana Toll Road (I-80/I-90)!
So basically, while I thought I was leaving early enough to give me an outside chance at being able to do the entire drive to State College in one day if I wasn't feeling too tired through Ohio, everything conspired against that potential. When I got here to Toledo finally at 10pm ET (14 hrs after I started), I figured I'd call it a night and relax a bit. About 625 miles down, only 325 miles or so (~6 hrs) to go! Oh, and by the way, my car turned 220,000 miles on the Indiana Toll Road this evening, and it's still going strong!
Posted by Jared at August 10, 2007 11:50 PM
Comments
Taking a picture while driving at 78 mph? That can't be safe...
Posted by: Walter at August 12, 2007 02:27 AM
Don't worry, Walter, my speedometer reads a little fast, so I was only going about 73-74 or so in reality. ;-) Haha, but in any case, I was being safe about it, turning my viewfinder so that all I had to do was glance down at the screen once for a fraction of a second to make sure the camera was pointing where I wanted it to. That, and I got lots of practice taking photos while driving (either out the side window or looking through the windshield) when I was touring around Australia & New Zealand. I'd rate how I take photos on a par safety-wise with talking on a cell phone while driving. If I feel traffic or the road is such that I can't afford any of those distractions, I don't do either. So all in all, it's maybe not the safest driving distraction, but I'm smart/safe about it. :-)
Posted by: Jared at August 12, 2007 12:33 PM