April 22-24, Final days of the road trip


By Chris Ransdell

Brian was able to get a cat scan and find out that one kidney stone passed unnoticed but another one has now started its way down from the other kidney into the bladder.  The pain hasn't come back (it was probably leaving the kidney at that time) and we carried on after a 3 hour emergency room visit.

The Hampton Inn in Scranton was ok and on Wednesday morning we promptly got our lease signed and got Comcast installation scheduled, etc.  That went so well we figured we could zip across the street to Sears and get a bed delivered while we were out.  In just a few minutes we found that a floor model mattress was a good deal and we found a microwave too along with some bed related items (rails, mattress cover etc).  Actually paying for these items was very painful.  Not because of the price but because of Sears systems.  The first item (mattress) had to be separately (because it was a floor model?) and went ok. The second item was just the bed rails but that time the purchase triggered a fraud alert from Sears card.  Sales associate called in and about 20 minutes later had an authorization code to complete that purchase.  Then it was time to ring up the microwave, sheets and mattress cover and again a fraud prevention call.  While he called them, they called me on cell phone and emailed.  It was like an APB was out on me.  Literally 90 minutes after we made our selections we were able to escape Sears and go to Red Lobster for lunch before heading towards Chicago.  It was 2 pm.

The trip to Chicago provided another chance to drive along US 6.  This time we went all the way over to Ohio on 6 and 6N before getting on I-90.  A really great deal on Hotwire and the desire to salvage some time in Chicago despite a late start conspired to make driving to Chicago in one day seem, if not totally reasonable, not totally insane. So we did it.  700 miles, maybe 90 minutes of snow flurries and about 6 different road tolls later we arrived in Chicago at 2 am Chicago time (3 am Eastern).  It was more boring than anything else and other than Cleveland (what a toilet), there weren't very many annoying people on the road and by the time we got to Indiana there just weren't many people of any kind on the road.

The Hotwire Hotel out by ORD airport was a Hyatt Grand Regency. Even after parking and a rip-off bottle of water, the total should be about half what I would expect to pay for 2 nights at such a nice hotel.  We were on the 11th floor with giant curved windows in a quiet little loft area set off to the side of the main atrium area.  Once we got up after the late night, we walked to the CTA station and took the Blue and Brown line trains until we got to the Paulina stop and had a relaxing lunch at Orange on Roscoe street.  After that we walked a considerable distance to walk down North Halsted Street to see how the gayboorhood was doing.  It was a brief visit but it looked good.  Then we took the red line up to Willis (Sears) Tower for a quintessential Chicago tall building experience (pictures below).  After a long ride back to the hotel on the Blue line we had just an hour of downtime before heading to dinner with my friend Pat in Bollingbrook.  It was a long drive in rush hour traffic with about 4 different tolls to pay but dinner at Ted's Montana Grill was good and seeing Pat was great.



Friday morning came very early (5 am) since we had to get to Midway airport by about 7 am to return the rental car and get through security.  The drive there wasn't bad down I-90 and Cicero Avenue.  Everything about security and the airport was pretty easy. Our flight was delayed about 40 minutes in leaving but was otherwise uneventful.  Our friend Bob picked us up in my freshly washed Diesel Cruze which was very thoughtful.  We visited the cat briefly and then headed to the same mother in law apartment we lived in for the last 6 weeks in Oregon for our one night in Portland before packing up the truck and heading out Saturday.  Tonight we head out for dinner and drinks with friends and my Dad, most of who will also help us pack the moving truck Saturday morning!

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