The Great Chik-fil-a Adventure
We have to go to the Aurora Navy office every wednesday for physical training. I carpool with the only other girl in the group, K.
So this past wednesday we drove to Aurora and when we pulled into the office parking lot, were told we were all going to the YMCA in Naperville. We followed another car to get there. Once PT was over, he was going home in a different direction so we needed to figure out how to get back home to St. Charles. We sort of got directions, but ended up turning the wrong way. We drove for about a half an hour before realizing this, and I turn on my GPS to figure out where we're going.
K: "Wait, are we seriously in fucking Oswego??"
Me: "Google navigator doesn't lie..."
Oswego is in "southern Illinois." In Chicago, anything south of Interstate 88 is just farmland and I think I've only been past it once on our school trip to the capitol. Not-Chicago Illinois is like New York State. There's the city, and it's suburbs, and past that no one really pays attention. You will never hear anyone from the upper 1/4th of the state say they're from Illinois, because we're from Chicagoland and anything beyond I 88 is just some mystical land of farmers and reclusive wizards.
We got over the surrealness of the fact that we were somewhere in Oswego and got ourselves driving in the right direction. We had about an hour drive back to St. Charles. We're about 15-20 minutes away when we realized we were pretty close to where (we think) the new Chik-fil-a is.
Chik-fil-a has long eluded Chicagoland.
For my non-states readers, Chik-fil-a is a magical restaurant with the most blessed and delicious chicken sandwiches in existence. I know, chicken isn't the most exciting food group, and on a food awesomeness scale- ranging from 1 (Blech) to 20 (I Just Had An Orgasm In My Mouth!), chicken doesn't have much potential to score above a 13 (Pretty Yummy). But these chicken sandwiches must have magical properties or some shit because they are Crazy Delicious (a 17 on the food-awesome scale).
AND WE'RE FINALLY GETTING ONE. I heard weeks ago that it was being built and it finally just opened and K and I have been wanting to go. So even though we'd been in the car for like a year, we decided Chik-fil-a was just too enticing and we decided to go and grab some happiness before we got home. We were pretty sure it's right off of Butterfield Rd and Kirk Rd. We eventually figured out that it's not on Kirk, but it must be close by. We continued to drive down Butterfield, certain it's "right up here somewhere!" for maybe 20 minutes until we hit Naperville Rd.
K: "What? No. NO."
Me: "I think it's true."
K: "Did we just drive from St. Charles to Aurora to Naperville to Oswego to Aurora back to FUCKING NAPERVILLE?"
We stopped for gas. I got out to pee.
The lock breaks in the bathroom. Instead of turning the dial and going *click* like it was supposed to, the dial just spun round and round in a circle and the deadbolt couldn't turn from the inside. I pounded on the door for ten minutes until K finally heard me (it's one of those outdoor bathrooms on the side of the building), and got the gas station attendant to set me free.
We asked where the new Chik-fil-a is. No one knew. I felt defeated on a level that I didn't know existed. We retreated to Burger King in West Chicago (cause we're hungry and they have cool happy meal toys), and dined on hamburgers made of failure.
I got on the Chik-fil-a website later that night to see where it was:
The top of the map to the bottom is about 40 Miles, and it was a 3 hour round trip.