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In the end: life is too short to stay sane all the time

Not having a job to return to definitely helped making the transition back to “regular life” easier and beating the jetlag (or possibly made it worse, since the argument “I don’t have much to do tomorrow anyway” made it easy to stay up until 3am and then sleep until 11am).

To be honest, I have actually quite enjoyed my new lifestyle in the last 2 months, so I have seriously considered investing my last savings in lottery tickets hoping to reach the financial independence required to keep travelling carefree around the world. For good measure I have however also started putting together a plan B where a few consulting gigs in the short term will help me bridge the gap until I hit the jackpot.

Nevertheless, I have now been home for over a week, so I think it is about time to draw a final balance of my American adventure in one last post on this blog,  before it just becomes really pathetic to still be talking about my last vacation 🙂 .

When I set off on my journey across America, the main objective was to binge on art and experience a side of America that I never had the occasion or the time to see during my previous business trips. All in all, I am very happy I took the time to make this trip, and while it is always very difficult to pick favourites and make an honest balance, there are certainly a number of things that made the trip memorable.

1) The Art

As I mentioned at the beginning of the trip, I am not an art critic nor much of an expert and I have no interest in expressing a “professional” view on what I see. Quite simply, I enjoy looking at art and I am happy to share the feelings that certain combinations of colours and shape inspire in me.

From this perspective, the trip has been a smashing success, and the visit to places like the Art Institute of Chicago or the National Gallery in Washington certainly belong to the happiest moments of my life.

And while it was certainly amazing to see so many masterpieces of European superstars like Monet, Van Gogh or Picasso, what made the experience really special was getting to learn so much more about American art, which is typically under-represented in the collections of European museums. Ironically, though, as I write I am reminded that the reason I did not actually get to see the famous “American Gothic” painting in Chicago is that it is currently touring Europe with an exhibition called “American Painting in the 1930’s” which just closed in London but will open again in Paris in October.

Hopping from museum to museum in rapid succession was a great way to really get a very thorough introduction to American art, following its progression from mere variations of European originals of the early days to the development of its own voice, true expression of a country that in the same period was finding its place at the helm of the world and a mirror of the way society was developing on that side of the Atlantic.

From that perspective,  the tags that usually indicate the author and title of the paintings also offered another interesting perspective on American history and society. In these times of “Mexican walls” and “selective travel bans”, I found the labels identifying a large majority of the artists as “American, born in Italy” (or Russia, Ukraine, France, Germany, China, Japan…) a particularly relevant reminder of what really made America great in the first place, the ability to make “from many, one”.

Another thing I find particularly fascinating when visiting Art museums is looking at how similar themes are being treated differently depending on the local conditions. For instance, while the near Orient with its harems and Bedouins riding in the desert was exerting its allure on European artists like Delacroix or Ingres, American artists were finding their own exotic themes in the Wild West, depicting canyons, deserts and Native American tribes (often with the same mannerist, stereotypical romanticism of their European counterparts). Similarly, many paintings I have had the chance to see in St. Petersburg and Moscow witness how Russian artists in the late XIX/ early XX century were travelling to Central Asia to find their own share of unspoiled, exotic scenes and landscapes to immortalize on canvas. And the pattern presented itself over and over again in the scenes of life in cafés, factories, cities and fields, often unique and original and yet familiar at the same time.

Finally, besides more “mainstream” masters like Sargent, Warhol or Hopper, this trip also gave me a great chance to discover many interesting African-American artists like Motley and Lawrence, as well as many talented women artists (I still can’t believe the “National Museum of Women in Art” isn’t packed all the time).

If I had to pick just a few favourites that inspired me the most among the many amazing artworks I have seen this month, these would probably be at the top of that list.

2) The train

Ok, while I do really enjoy travelling by train I still have to admit that riding a train in the US for over 2 days is not exactly the most comfortable experience in the world (granted, it still beats an average economy seat on an airplane, but one typically does not spend more than 12 hours in a row in one).

Nevertheless, I would definitely say it was still totally worth it and I am so happy I took the train. Not being much of an outdoors person (although I have had my moments), I typically like to travel comfortably and the train offered a very civilized way to experience some truly incredible places (and I think I am slowly developing a soft spot for the desert 🙂 ).

I also think that the slow pace really gave me a chance to get the best out of this experience. And particularly after driving from DC to Chicago I understand even less the point of the “American roadtrip”: if the scenery around you is great, you will probably want to stick your nose to the window. If it’s boring, why not take a nap or read a book? Going slow in this case is not a bug, it’s a feature… Assuming obviously you choose Amtrak for the trip itself and not because you need to get to a specific destination by a certain time.

As a matter of fact, I loved it so much that while I was still sitting there I was already looking at what routes to take the next time I get a chance to do another trip like this (the Texas Eagle from Chicago to LA via San Antonio or the Sunset Limited from New Orleans to LA are two clear favourites here 🙂 ).

3) The unexpected

When it comes to travelling I am typically a very accurate planner, spending a lot of time plotting routes, finding the best hotels and flights, selecting things to see and do and where to go for food and drinks (a quality that has served me very well in my professional life 🙂 ).

While there is certainly a big chunk of borderline unhealthy FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) involved in this, to be honest I also see the planning as part of the trip, and I certainly enjoy looking at opportunities and options and anticipating what the actual experience will be once I get there.

Nevertheless, I must admit (and maybe draw a few lessons for the future) that some of the most amazing experiences of these trip were either not part of the original plan or complete spur-of-the-moment decisions.

This category includes for instance Pittsburgh and Detroit, which were added as quick, secondary, technical stops to make the drive to Cleveland and then on to Chicago more manageable, and ended up outshining the original destination of this chunk of the trip.

I also definitely include here the many cool gigs I had the chance to see on the road, and while I might have mixed feelings about Portland, its Japanese Gardens have made it solidly into my “Happy Places” list and are one of the reasons why I definitely want to go back and visit again soon.

And as far as impulsive decisions go, the ride on the Seaplane to Victoria, BC was one of the most exhilarating experiences of this trip… Not to mention that then Victoria itself was quite a nice surprise too 🙂 .

The other side of the medal…

So was it all hunky-dory then? Am I now hopelessly in love with America?

Ahem… not quite. While there are certainly many things that make this a great country, there are still a number of issues that bothered me and reinforced my conviction that while I do like to visit I have no desire to ever move here (last famous words? 😀 ).

There were small things, like having to add a tip to every check or the showers with fixed head and a single mixing valve that you need to turn all the way to get hot water.

But most importantly, there were also some pretty big things that really bothered me. One example for all, the large number of homeless people.

While this is certainly a problem we face in Europe as well, the idea that in one of the richest countries in the world people regularly end up on the street because they lost their job or got sick and could not pay their medical bills is just too absurd for me to grasp. What makes it even harder to accept is the fact that, judging from the political debate about things like minimum wage and affordable healthcare, for a sizeable portion of the population this is a perfectly acceptable occurrence and not a problem that the government should try to address.

This is obviously a much bigger and complex issue and it is not with intention to try to make a cheap political point that I bring it up here. It has however been a recurring theme in the cities I have passed and something I felt deserves a mention nevertheless.

In conclusion

When a couple of months ago I told people I was leaving .Cloud, that I did not have another job already lined up and that I was going travelling around the US by train instead, reactions varied from “you’re lying and you just don’t want to tell me you are going to work for X” to “you’re crazy”.

A low mortgage and no kids clearly helped making this decision a lot easier, and I don’t regret it one bit.

Blogging about the trip has also been an excellent way to make sure I did not simply run from one thing to see to the other. Saving time also to stop, sit down and reflect about what I saw and did ultimately helped me enjoy and experience these things at a much deeper level. It has however also been very time-consuming: each post has typically taken at least 2-3 hours of work. Some of the longer, more complex ones (like this very last one) have sucked up hour after hour stretched over several days… Clearly as I go back to a more regular life with actual work to do this pace and effort is no longer sustainable. Yet, I feel there is more “writing” left in me that will eventually have to come out.

This month away on my own has been relaxing and challenging at the same time. It definitely helped me get some perspective, but to say it with The White Stripes, “I still don’ t know what to do with myself” (at least professionally 🙂 ).

And to be honest, this does not bother me much. While I figure out what I want to do when I grow up, there are still plenty of cool projects to work on and adventures to get lost in.

Many of those that called me “crazy” admitted (with words or just with their eyes) in the very next moment that they were a bit jealous too, that they wished they could also just take off. To all of them my sincere wish is that they can find their own little share of “crazy” in their life, whatever that might be.

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Travel is fatal to prejudice

“My brain hurt like a warehouse, it had no room to spare
I had to cram so many things to store everything in there
And all the fat-skinny people, and all the tall-short people
And all the nobody people, and all the somebody people
I never thought I’d need so many people” (David Bowie)

I have a confession to make that might sound strange to some of the people that met me through work: I typically find it hard to strike up a conversation with people I don’t know.  This kind of sucks, because as The Smiths explained so well “Shyness can stop you / From doing all the things in life / You’d like to”.

So while the main, “official” motivation for my trip might have been to visit cities and art museums that had long been on my to-do, spending a month on the road on my own was also a way to challenge myself and get out of my (dis)comfort zone as well.

Luckily, Americans are in general more social than the average European and I feel that as the time on the road passed things became slightly less difficult (or maybe it just gets easier as you go West?). In the end, all the serendipitous encounters, the stories I picked up along the way and the unexpected, random acts of kindness ended up making for some of the best memories from this trip.

Like the 3 friendly guys that started chatting with me at the Radkey concert in Chicago and that quickly made me feel like one of the gang (and kept feeding me beer too 🙂 ).

On the other hand,  I wonder what kind of impression did I make on the girl that was sitting with her friends next to me in a bar in Portland. Did I look particularly sad and lonely as I sat there on my own boringly playing with my phone? Neither she nor her friends spoke to me, so I was quite surprised when the bartender told me – after they had left – that she quietly paid for my Old Fashion too.

In Chicago, I was looking for the closest dry cleaner to get some shirts washed, and Google pointed me to a place 2 blocks away from my hotel. After going around the block twice without finding it, I ended up entering the fancy apartment building and asking the concierge if Google had got it wrong. Turns out, Google was right after all: the building had an in-house dry cleaner which was however also open to external customers. He sent me up to the 9th floor, where the old Greek owner ended up not only doing an excellent (and cheap) job with my shirts, but when I told him I was Italian he also had quite a few good stories to share about his best friend, an Italian immigrant who became a very successful businessman and who had recently passed due to complications after catching a pretty nasty flu.. They had quite a few crazy adventures together in their younger days, often in rough neighbourhoods in old Chicago, occasionally rubbing shoulders with people that may or may not have been mobsters.

While I can’t claim that my ride on the train was as eventful as that of Gene Wilder in “Silver Streak“,  my time on the California Zephyr definitely provided some great material in this department.

Most people ride the California Zephyr for the experience of the trip itself, rather than to simply get to a destination. The humanity that populates the train is so diverse and peculiar, and the combination of being confined in a close space (without showering) for 2 and a half days mixed with the anticipation and the emotion of being all part of an epic journey certainly generates a special sense of camaraderie among the passengers that makes the trip even more enjoyable.

Rich British tourists who have been all over the world share a table with the college graduate on a budget that is travelling West for the first time in his life. A girl who moved from Siberia to Mississippi to study chats with the guy who fell from the roof when he was a child and has been afraid of flying ever since.

I have a great time chatting over lunch with the writer following along on a “mystery trip” to Utah that her best friend has planned, while in the other car Lance, the “redneck from East LA” (as he introduces himself), has cornered yet another of his fellow passengers with his story about the truck he has to pick up in Sacramento because the driver walked out on him. Lance is one of those characters that – unlike me – will talk to anyone anytime, and after a short while he has made friends with pretty much everybody on this train.  The constant chatter can be quite annoying, but when you stop and listen, he does have some pretty amusing stories from his time in the military travelling around the world to his current life on a farm in Wyoming running a freight company.

Wild horses on the hill

He definitely has the Amish guys on their way to pick up their parents in Mexico  under his spell, and they can’t seem to get enough of his stories. He also has the eye of the hunter and easily spots wild horses on the top of the mountain. To me those just look like bushes far away in the distance, but I point the camera in that direction and take a shot anyway… Later on when I look at the picture I zoom in and “I’ll be damned!”, there they are, 4 mustangs on top of that hill.

Another thing that makes the California Zephyr experience memorable is seeing the passion and pride that the staff take in their work and all the effort they put into making sure we enjoy our ride to the maximum. Andre has spent the last 6 years working in the restaurant on this line. He takes me on a private tour of the sleeping cars and it’s great to chat about the differences between trains in the US and in Europe with him. His genuine friendliness is contagious and I love the familiarity with which he yells “Francescoo” every time he passes by my seat in the observation deck, giving me a high five with a big smile on his face.

Sitting up in a corner of the empty observation deck car at night somewhere in the middle of Nebraska I enjoy listening to the conductors sharing their best stories. My favourite is the one about “The Russian”, a man who regularly boards the first available train that passes by (without a ticket). A few days ago he was spotted in Lafayette, Louisiana. Someone else had reported seeing him in Omaha. Before that he had made it all the way to Denver before getting caught and gently asked to get off the train. He sometimes tries to disguise himself or hide, but he has become such a well-known character among the conductors, who think he does it mostly for the kick he gets from “breaking the law”. I can’t help but sensing a hint of affectionate amusement in the way the conductors talk about this modern day freight-hopper, a somewhat welcomed distraction from the monotony of going up and down the Midwestern plains on a train day in and day out.

The vibe on the Coast Starlight is certainly different, a bit weirder and certainly less “social” than on the Zephyr. The only “friendly” type is the “Snoop Doggie Dogg” wannabe, high as a kite and giggling constantly in a very high pitched voice: his friendliness is however mostly reserved for the female passengers on the train, who get to hear over and over again how beautiful they are, and how he’s now getting his life back on track after a few years in jail. He is starting his own business and dreams of a good woman to love. The ladies are not that impressed by all his sweet talk, but he seems harmless enough and I move to the observation deck to see the sunrise over the Cascades.

The table behind me is occupied by a young girl in her 20s who is having a raw onion and ginger root for breakfast. The 60 years old man sleeping next to her turns out to be her husband, as she points out – visibly annoyed by what is obviously a recurring question – to the group of middle-aged women with whom she was previously discussing the benefits of her diet. The ladies for their part are mostly eagerly waiting for the cafe downstairs to open, so that they can start their day in the best way with some cocktails.

I end up sitting between a group of middle-aged men from different parts of the country intent in sharing their respective experiences and opinions on the importance of making one’s kids get a taste of the belt every now and then to keep them from making bad life choices. The most progressive one is strongly against hitting them on the face, as that’s apparently bad for their self-esteem.

At this point, as it is not even 7am and Portland is still 8 hours away I decide that meeting new people is great, but sometimes hiding behind a pair of giant headphones is not such a bad idea after all.

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Waking up in my own bed

I love the deep, dreamless sleep that takes over after the exhaustion and confusion of a long flight. Jetlag is probably just lurking there ready to hit soon, but for now all I have done since I arrived yesterday is sleeping.

My knees hurt and my head feels light and dizzy, which certainly contributes to the surreal sensation of disbelief that hit me as I woke up in my own bed this morning. “Have I really been gone for a month? Or was all that just a dream?”

What from the outset looked like a very long trip (the longest time I have ever been away from home) has flown by so incredibly quickly. I am happy not only to have been crazy enough to hit the road, but even more to have forced myself to keep this online diary.

Trusted travel companions

30 days, 7000 km travelled across America, 5 transit passes and a pair of worn out shoes, 28 posts, 740 pictures, 3 extra kilos mostly around my belly (it could have been worse 🙂 ).

While the travelling itself might be over, there is still so much brewing in my head and a few good stories left to tell, so you can certainly expect a few more posts to pop up here over the coming days.

hanging out with Jothan before my flight

Travelling solo for such a long time can feel lonely and hard at times, so the love and support of the many friends following my steps from all over the world meant a lot to me. I am also extremely grateful for all the good friends that took the time to come out and hang out with me along the road, and it was a great privilege to get to share the last hours of this adventure with my good friend Jothan and his beautiful family.

Sitting on the plane taking me back to Europe,  watching the Columbia river flowing through the Rocky Mountains below felt like a majestic send-off, and an open invitation for more great adventures in the not-so-distant future.

 

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Day 25 – Breaking the rules (again)

So… Remember when I said this was going to be a train trip across America?

While that was certainly the original intention, Amtrak’s stupid timetables have again come in the way like once before, so I had to get creative to make my way from Seattle to Vancouver.

The obvious alternative would have been to take the bus…

Instead I decided to celebrate the last leg of this trip by doing something completely crazy.

I flew.

On a Seaplane.

There are however no seaplanes flying directly from Seattle to Vancouver.

So I went to Victoria (on Vancouver Island) and then connected on to an Helicopter. Makes perfect sense, doesn’t it? 😀

This was my first time on both a seaplane and an helicopter, and thanks also to the amazing weather it made for a day to remember for sure. My only mistake was to sit on the wrong side on both rides (pro tip: if you do the same trip, sit on the left side behind the pilot, the view is better from there 🙂 ).

I must say I enjoyed the ride on the Seaplane best, probably because although this was clearly not Patagonia, we had no storm chasing us and we eventually made it into port safely it still made me think of a book I really loved, Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s “Night flight“.

What added an additional twist of suspense to the the trip was that I had totally missed the fact that Canada now has an ESTA-like system. I applied yesterday morning 2 hours before my flight and kept my fingers crossed… And luckily the confirmation email arrived right as I was checking in for my seaplane ride.

Victoria itself is quite a cute town. Had I planned the trip a bit better I could have probably spent my few hours there going whale-watching, but even strolling around the city and checking out the very impressive exhibit at the Royal British Columbia Museum was very enjoyable. This museum does an incredible job at telling the history of BC, starting from the Native Americans that were here before the Europeans arrived to the first explorations of the area and its colonization and development in the last 200 years.

Fishhook

Another pleasant surprise was the incredible tikka seared Pacific tuna in tomato tamarind masala I had at Fishhook, quite possibly the best meal I have had on this entire trip (so yay once more for the unexpected, unplanned stops of this trip that turned out to be pretty amazing!).

In the evening, once I finally made it to Vancouver (the city), I decided to round off this crazy day at The Shameful Tiki Room.

At first I thought the oddest thing in the room was the couple on a date sitting behind me, with the guy in a full Jack Sparrow costume that immediately made me think of this:

This was however before I started a conversation with the Russian guy who moved here 7 years ago to skip the military service and is now working in an Italian bar (where he is affectionately referred to as “Pippo”), his girlfriend from Sweden who has only been in Vancouver for 3 weeks and their French-Canadian buddy… We definitely outdid Jack Sparrow in terms of being the weirdest group in the bar, and had a lot of fun drinking mystery bowls and shots of Fernet (as far as I remember :D).

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Day 19 – Heading North

Now that I finally got the camera out of the bag, I can post a few shots taken on the Coast Starlight service on my way to Portland. These were taken on Friday early morning on the Cascades as we crossed from Northern California into Oregon.

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Day 16 – High desert, wild donkeys (and a grizzly bear)

Third day on the train. 5:30 am somewhere out in the Nevada desert.

I had promised myself I’d try to get up in time to see the sunrise. An uncomfortable seat and an expansive neighbour help me make sure I live up to that promise. The light of the new day pouring over our train and the landscape around us more than make up for the broken back and the lack of sleep.

Living the moment

The Nevada high desert is incredibly beautiful, and the marshes full of birds in the early morning light are an unexpected surprise that offer the opportunity for some amazing views as the newly risen sun stretches its rays over the surface.

Before we start climbing towards Reno and the Sierra Nevada, the desert presents us with yet another final surreal twist as the water dries out and all that all seems to be left on the ground is white salt (or so I am told…).

The hills are apparently populated by wild horses and donkeys. Someone points them out in the distance but I can’t seem to distinguish them (although as it turns out, I did catch a few horses on the ridge in one of my pictures 🙂 ).

As we enter the Sierra Nevada we keep climbing and climbing, and the landscape turns white once again, although this time it’s all snow slowly melting into hundreds of small streams and creeks running down the side of the mountain feeding tumultous rapids and the flowers timidly blooming around us.

Thanks to the vigilant eye of the two Amish guys sitting next to me, this time I do manage to catch a glimpse of the grizzly bear climbing up on the side of the mountain right below us, although this time the eye is quicker than the eye (so you’ll have to take my word for it).

Descending towards Sacramento it quickly becomes clear that the curtain is finally coming down on the marvellous show we have just witnessed.

The remaining few hours are a boring succession of low brown buildings and grazing cows across the plains of mid-California. I wonder if I might have been more excited about this landscape if I was just starting my trip in the direction of Chicago, still fresh and well-rested.

My knees hurt from spending most of the time of this trip sitting down, and I am now desperately longing for some hot water after almost 3 days without a shower (luckily, some deodorant and a change of clothes made the situation a lot less critical than it could have been otherwise).

As the train circles around the East Bay towards the final station, I realize that for most of my awake time on this trip I have done nothing but look out of the window. It has been some of the best spent time in a very long time.

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Day 15 – Over the hills and far away

May 15th: this incredible trip across America is now half-way through as I leave the East Coast and the Midwest behind and I start preparing for the Pacific North-West.

The second day on the California Zephyr presents us with the first “wow” experience of this long train trek as we join the Colorado river over mountains and canyons, often so close to the water it almost feels like we are floating on it.

After leaving Denver in the morning we climb slowly up the Rockies. The observation deck on the train is packed and the only complaint is how the sun creates glare on the windows and makes it difficult to get the best shot, but that is definitely a good problem to have.

The scenery slowly changes as the river grows, turns, falls, flexes its muscles, spits and roars, slapping hard the rocks that dare standing in its way.
Small temerarious boats tag along for a short ride, while the mountain forests give way to gorges and canyons with walls tall as a building, painted in a kaleidoscope of colours. Above all, the red rocks that melt every time it rains and give the river “Colorado” its name.

We reach Utah by late afternoon, and as we bid goodbye to the river the landscape abruptly changes, it turns dry and rough and yet it remains breathtaking. The weather changes too, and big dark clouds behind the mountains help making the end of this day even more dramatic.

Throughout this amazing day, as the scenery gets wilder and more extreme I can’t help but think of the men that built these tracks pretty much by hand over 100 years ago, what did their lives up here must have looked like. Old black and white pictures come to mind, small white tents pitched on the side of the mountain or in the middle of the desert, backbreaking work 12 hours a day in the harshest conditions, not exactly much time or energy left to enjoy the landscape.

The sun slowly fades over the horizon and night falls as we reach Salt Lake City. Time to try and catch a few hours of sleep before the last stretch to California.

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Chasing the sun in middle America

There is no wifi on this train (other than the open networks I have to hunt for during the brief stops at the stations along the way), so all I can do is read a book, look out the window, write.

Over the Mississippi, crossing from Illinois to Iowa and the landscape remains monotonous, almost like a videotape playing on loop. Field after field, dotted with the occasional red house or white silo, all looking the same for miles and miles. Yet it is mesmerizing in its empty repetitiveness, like a desert this rural landscape lifts up my thoughts like a plastic bag in the wind and brings them far.

I look at the little dot moving slowly on the map on my phone. Chicago is another planet, yet just a few hours away behind us. Small towns, little white wooden churches, a small station that only has a train or two a day to wave goodbye to. A quiet Sunday afternoon: people sitting on the porch, families enjoying a barbeque and a few cold beers.

At first I wonder how can people live here. Then I realize that one’s ”middle of nowhere” is someone else’s ”center of the world”. In the end, it’s always all just about finding your own place: some people are born there, others can never stop looking.

In the meantime, the sun sets over the plains as Iowa turns into Nebraska. The last dying light glows on the horizon, as we slowly keep chasing after it.

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Kalamazoo – Luleå

On the long boring stretch driving through Michigan, one road sign caught my attention and brought back some memories.

A long time ago, in my exchange year in Uppsala, I went up to the deep north of Sweden to visit the ice hotel. I made the return trip by train, which from Kiruna to Uppsala takes about 16 hours of travel.

The following week, my friend Giuliano did the same trip with a couple of other friends. On the way back though, he forced the entire group to make a lengthy detour and head to the coast for a quick stop in the city of Luleå. The only reason was that he thought the name of the city sounded funny.

Giuliano was a bit crazy that way, he had the ingenuity and the talent for seeing how important all these small silly things are in making our time on this planet a bit more special and unique.

I am sure Giuliano would have found this trip I am making a bit crazy, he would have probably loved to come along (particularly for the opportunity to sample so many new interesting culinary specialties along the way). I am sure that if he had been with me, he would have made me turn and stop in Kalamazoo. Just because the name is funny.

I am grateful for all the silly things that every now and then remind me of him.

 

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Driving in America

TL-DR: it’s so boring!

The main problem is that when the scenery around is nice, you still have to keep your eyes on the road and can’t exactly stop to take pictures when you want.

Then there are those stretches like the 4 and a half hours I had to drive yesterday to get from Detroit to Chicago that seemed to never want to end.

Luckily I had downloaded a few hours worth of episodes of the amazingly funny “My dad wrote a porno” podcast to keep me entertained, but in general I was quite happy to finally spot Chicago’s skyline appear at last… Until I saw the kind of traffic I was heading into. Waze continuously changing its mind on the best route to the Hertz garage didn’t exactly help making the situation relaxing.

To top it off, when I got roughly one block away from my final destination​, the skies opened and a tropical monsoon unleashed on the city (another sign?).

In the end, it all worked out OK though, as I managed to make it to the garage 15 minutes before they closed, and instead of walking the 5 blocks left to my hotel, I spent 20 minutes in more traffic (but with my head dry) in an Uber ride 😃.

A few considerations about my roadtrip experience are in order:

  1. Speed limits are clearly a recommendation. To be honest I think that they are set quite low (70 mph/110 kmh is the highest I have seen), and with broad 3-4 lanes highways pretty much everybody around me was doing on average 15-20 mph over the limit. The few police cars along the way didn’t seem bothered much.
  2. Americans hate blinkers. So much that cars here don’t even have the dedicated orange lights you see pretty much everywhere else in the world, and instead the red position lights blink lightly the few times the car’s owner decides to use them.
  3. I loved the Cleveland Museum of Art and I think it was totally worth putting up with Hertz’s awful service and many hours behind the wheel to see it. Ironically though, the other 2 stops that were intended as “side fillers” – Pittsburgh and Detroit – turned out to be the ones that really made this experience great.

All in all, I am quite happy I am done with cars for this trip.

After a few days to explore Chicago, I look forward to experiencing America from the window of a train while someone else drives.