The long-awaited return of The Road Scholars is here! Well, it was. I have arrived back in San Luis Obispo after 4 days and 5 nights in the windy city. My high school English teacher, Kate Ramsden, married John Fagiolo Saturday in a beautiful ceremony and reception in Beloit, Wisconsin. I have been promising to visit Kate ever since she moved back to Chicago several years ago to pursue a graduate degree in some form of English (fitting, I suppose, for an English teacher). Since I have failed thus far to live up to the promise, when I found out she was getting married it was not a question of if I would attend but how long could I stay? So using my United airline miles, Sara and I toddled to Frank Sinatra’s kind of town and created some of those Road Scholars moments you have grown so fond of. It was, as you might expect, an adventure. Although the trip is over already (it was a mini-Road Scholar event, not an extravaganza), I managed to keep some notes each day that I have turned into “From The Road” vignettes. I’m sure you’ll enjoy…people always get such amusement from my misfortunes…
Day 1 (Thursday)
I arrived in Malibu last night with such high hopes for this trip. It has managed to go downhill very quickly. Allow me to first fill you in on what I shall affectionately refer to as “the plan”.
Wednesday— After class I drive to Malibu and spend the night in Sara’s dorm.
Thursday—Flight departs from LAX at noon. Upon arrival in Chicago, check in to hotel and settle in.
Friday—take the “El” into the city for a day of exploring and runaway tourism!
Saturday—pick up rental car from airport, drive to Beloit for wedding.
Sunday—check out of hotel in Beloit, drive back to Chicago for more tourism then stay in hotel near airport for early departure to LA Monday.
Monday—depart O’Hare @ 10 AM, arrive in LA @ 12:13, drive back to SLO.
The actual timeline so far reads like a Mastercard commercial:
Parking citation on Pepperdine campus…$40
Towing charges from Pepperdine campus to impound lot…$106
Overnight Parking at airport for 4 days…$120
Waking up behind schedule, walking to car that’s not there and feeling utter chaos and helplessness as we almost miss our plane…priceless.
Perhaps the travel gods are punishing me for my good fortune in the past (remember when we left the car unlocked in Boston or the garage open in Vegas?). Let me tell you, there’s nothing like walking to your car with your arms full of luggage and discovering that it’s not there—especially when you’re already running late. I’m not quite sure I fully understand yet what happened—or rather why—and I didn’t have time to figure out today either. We recovered the car from Malibu towing and high tailed it to LAX where we no longer had time to “shop” for an overnight parking lot. Apparently we parked the car for the low low price of $30/day. This is great. So far getting to the airport cost more than the plane ticket.
We were afforded a small bit of comic relief when “Mrs. Robinson” boarded the plane and seated herself in the row ahead of us. A middle-aged woman, she was seated between two young looking self-proclaimed artists. When they introduced themselves to her as such she exclaimed, “really!? ME TOO!!”. I took one look at her fur shawl, stockings, big hair, and dark sunglasses (not to mention the fact that she stumbled to her seat) and laughed as I thought to myself “no shit.” We called her Mrs. Robinson because when we arrived at O’hare we saw the three of them exchanging phone numbers in the terminal.
Day 2 (Friday)
Rain, cold, and gloom. Ok, perhaps I was a bit over dramatic about Day 1. I mean sure, we were $76 over budget for the day and we hadn’t even left yet, but NOW it’s really gloomy…literally. At least our hotel has worked out great so far. It’s a Courtyard by Marriott and although the Angels lost last night, at least we were able to watch the game.
Our spirits weren’t dampened too much by Day 1. We spent a lovely day in Chicago today. The weather today was gloomy and cold, but we were determined to toddle in the windy city and have a good time (dammit!). Our hotel shuttled us to the “el”, we met a very nice city worker who got us a great map of the city (we did have one, but his was way cooler) and we were on our way! As most of you know, I always enjoy experiencing and rating rapid transit systems in other cities as I feel we in LA and Orange County are leaps and bounds behind the times. Chicago didn’t disappoint here. The “el” experience was just as romantic as it looks on ER. I got a couple of snapshots of the distant “el” train crossing the street above a myriad of vehicular and pedestrian traffic. The only thing I was missing was the steam venting into the crisp air a la New York style. Oh well, maybe next time.
We arrived in the city safely and immediately toured the Art Institute (I even bought some!). After a delightful lunch at Bennigan’s across the street from the Institute, we reverted to true Road Scholars style with a Gray Line narrated tour of the city. Our tour guide was a former Walt Disney World cast member, so you can imagine what kind of fun that was (Sara can elaborate on that if she so wishes). We saw it all: Buckingham Fountain, Navy Pier, Michigan Ave., Lake Michigan, Soldier Field, Sears Tower, John Hancock, I bought some new jeans at Water Tower (the giant mall located adjacent to the city’s old water tower), we dined at the Cheesecake Factory using gift certificates and we may be financially back on track. I’ll fill you in more about the fun facts of the city on the web site. Right now I must shower, shave, and hit the road for Beloit. I have a wedding to attend!!
Day 3 (Saturday)
A bit tired, I woke up this morning, took the shuttle back to the airport and picked up our rental car from the good folks at Alamo. We are now officially Illinois Road Scholars in our blue 2001 Corolla. And since the GPS doesn’t work with the new laptop I’m using, we began our 2 hour drive to Beloit by going in the wrong direction and circling the airport one more time. Did I mention we’re behind schedule again? It seems like I’m always running late—and hungry. We hadn’t eaten yet, so we thought we’d stop somewhere on our way. We were on a toll road to Beloit so at the second toll booth I asked where we could find some fast food restaurants. I was told to take the next exit coming up about a mile down the road. Now, I’m from California. When you tell me something is at the next exit, I expect to either see it from the freeway or by traveling half a block in either direction. We took the appropriate exit and toured farmland for about a mile in either direction. We also had to pay another toll to get back on the freeway. When we finally did find a place to eat, there was no onramp to get back on the freeway, so we took a 10 mile detour on the back roads of Illinois where we finally joined the highway again only to discover…that’s right, food. Not only were there McDonald’s restaurants easily visible from the freeway, they are actually on the freeway. Instead of a freeway overpass like you might find in California for local traffic to cross the highway, these are freeway McDonald’s passes sitting like a drawbridge across the highway. You can eat your Big ‘N Tasty and wave to the cars at the same time.
We’re finally fed and on our way to the wedding but now running extremely late. Instead of having time to check in to our hotel in Beloit, change our clothes and freshen up, we now barely have time to get to the church. Scrambling to save face and make it to the wedding on time, we pull into a mortuary parking lot down the street from the church with 20 minutes to spare. We already showered before we left the hotel in Chicago (thank God), so we just had to change into our wedding clothes. So five blocks from the church, while a field of dead people looked on, I stepped out of the car and into a nice pile of shit. Scrambling to put my good pants on while hopping on one foot (and yes, there are cars in this parking lot), I became aware of half a dozen bees swarming around me and into our car. Somehow we managed to make it to our seats with time to spare and without any bee stings (although Sara did manage to change again before the reception).
The wedding was beautiful. Kate sings and her friends from college that she used to sing with provided the music at the ceremony. It was a truly beautiful Catholic mass and everything that a Catholic wedding should be. It was spiritual and reverent, but not so stuffy that the bride couldn’t sing a hymn or two with her old college pals. It was very Kate and you could tell she was having a blast. The reception was equally satisfying…especially since there was a TV allowing me to watch the end of the Angels game 6 victory against the Giants. Go Angels!
After the wedding we stayed at the Beloit Inn, which gets two thumbs up from this Road Scholar. Our room was magnificent, featured a fireplace, whirlpool bathtub and a view of the Rock River (it looks better than it sounds). Coincidentally we were in the room next door to the newlyweds (one word—plastics).
The next morning we had the opportunity to have breakfast with Kate, John (her new husband) and their families before we all went our separate ways. Since this was now officially a road trip, our way included a rather extensive search for the perfect Wisconsin and Illinois mugs and some postcards. I’ll try and get pictures of the mugs up in a few days, although I’ll probably be pretty busy playing catch-up at school.
We ended the trip by eating dinner with Sara’s aunt Florence and watching the Angels win the World Series. How cool is it to be able to say THAT!?
All in all, good times as The Road Scholars strike again. It’s made me once again remember how much fun the road can be—and also how much goes into even a simple trip, especially when you’re dedicated to publicizing it!
Speaking of publicizing, if you have not traveled recently, you may be curious as to the state of our nation’s airport security. I wore my Skechers for the flight home and they have metallic eyelets for the laces. This prompted a complete head to toe search of my person (too bad it wasn’t a female agent because the search got kind of personal at times) right down to the laces in my shoes. While I was being searched, the X-ray guy informed me they needed to search my backpack. Okay. They completely emptied my backpack to find, in one of the outer compartments, buried under all kinds of pens, pencils, and calculators, a miniature (dull) pocket knife that someone gave me years ago, I think maybe as a stocking stuffer. “Sir, this is not allowed in the passenger area”. Okay fine, Merry Christmas then, consider it a gift. I didn’t even know the damn thing was in there. As we proceeded to put ourselves back together and walk down the terminal, Sara asked me why they went through so much trouble to confiscate my dulled, mini pocket knife and allowed hers—attached to her keys and plainly visible as they went through the X-ray machine in the little plastic bucket—to continue in the “restricted area”. Good question.
Until next time, travel safely and I’ll see you on the road.
-Sean