Good evening everyone.
I have been in the middle of a lot of travel and business and it's creating havoc with my blogging. This will be my fifth interlude since the last time I put out a proper post. And that doesn't even take into account the couple weeks of no posts at all.
I'm a failure and ask your forgiveness.
I am as of this sentence, sitting in a hotel room in Springfield, IL. The state capitol. The land of Lincoln.
I have been here only once previous to this since the times I came her as a child. The last time I didn't get a chance to drive through it. This time I did. As a result, I noticed something I hadn't really considered before.
Springfield is tiny.
Now, I know that comparing to Chicago, the place where I reside, is not a great way to compare city sizes. But this is the state capital. I was expecting... more.
On the plus side, it is actually very nice. The downtown was clean and well kept. Plus, there is a number of historical buildings and sites to see.
But, it has been an odd trip.
It started this morning after I finished teaching my class as we packed up and jumped in the car. I google app'd the route here, and, usually, my app is super good with letting me know construction and traffic problems.
I take the way anyone would take to get to Springfield and manage to make all the way out of the city with virtually no traffic. As we get just south of Joliet, which is the beginnings of nowhere, traffic just stops. Over the next 1.5 hours or more, we manage to travel about 1.5 miles.
I live in Chicago. I'm used to traffic. It's never like that.
As it turned out, there was a bridge that has been under construction since forever, but it didn't register on my construction finder until we were already in the traffic. This functionally ruined any chance we had of actually visiting historical sites in springfield while they were open.
Speaking of Springfield, once we drove into downtown Springfield, we decided to drive past the historical places.
It took all of five minutes. Maybe 10. It's so tiny. Did I mention that already?
When we left Chicago, we decided to grab some food on the way because we wanted to get to Springfield early enough to actually visit the historical sites. (I think I've covered the futility of that decision.) My wife and I have been vegetarian now for almost a year and half. We've learned to find our way around menu's pretty good. We try hard not to be those people who just nitpick the menu apart and give the waiter or waitress or drive through person a terrible run around.
I figured to make it simple, I'd just stop at Burger King and get their veggie burger. It's ok, but not amazing. Probably not overly healthy, but you do what you can. What you don't understand is that when I start getting hungry, I start getting grumpy. There is a direct proportion to my level of hunger and grumpiness. I figured I'd wait till we got out of the main Chicago area traffic before we found a place.
However, by then, I was really getting desperate. Not because I was going to die of starvation, but because my wife was afraid I might accidentally murder her. (this may be an exaggeration.) So, I see the BK of my desires, pull in, and find out they are out of veggie burgers.
The one place I stop at, and they don't have what I need. Go figure.
So, we had to find some other place that had veggie options that were more than just fries, so that we could make to Springfield. (Again, not realizing it wouldn't matter because google and construction killed us.)
We finally find a place with food, and once the ingestion process begins, my wife decides to put her bladed weapons of defense away.
Once we arrived at Springfield, got checked in to our hotel, managed a quick tour of downtown, all was right with the world again.
It turns out that our problems really weren't problems at all.
We walked across the parking lot to the Mexican Restaurant next door to have dinner and giggled about our day and how sometimes things just don't go the way you want them to.
Oh, did I mention how I ran over an entire truck tire? Ok, not the entire tire. But the entire circle of treads from a truck tire. I was in the process of changing lanes when the car in front of me swerved and all I had to do was definitely NOT shout profanities... um...
But, no harm, no foul. Our little buggy is tough.
We finished our food, and walked of the restaurant and headed across the other parking lot toward Target to grab some bottles of water. As we past the Mexican restaurants sign, they had their special on the sign. Salmon in the style of "Conzumel."
For those of you who may be wondering, "Cozumel" is a Mexican island. "Conzumel" is apparently what happens when someone doesn't use spell check before hanging a sign.
We had a good laugh about that, especially as we had just come back from Cozumel a couple weeks ago. We commented about how, apparently, Mexico has been spelling it wrong all these years. (ahem...)
Sometimes, things just don't go they way you hoped they would.
And you know what? That's ok.
Sometimes that just makes the stories all that much better.
Have a great night.
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