USA Day 2: More Indiana than Expected
After a somewhat jetlagged morning, we set off at about midday towards Battle Creek in Michigan, where Iviolinist lives, who’s putting us up for three nights while we acclimatise.
The way across from Chicago is around the bottom of Lake Michigan, taking us briefly through Indiana. Unfortunately, shortly after crossing the border we missed an exit and subsequently made the brave decision to make our way through back streets across to the highway we were meant to be on. It was just a couple of kilometers to the north, after all, so it couldn’t be too hard to find... could it?
After about half an hour of driving, however, we realised that we’d somehow got turned around and were in fact going not vaguely north-east as we’d thought for the past half hour, but due south. *facepalm*
How this happened, we must put down to the confusion of the small incident we had getting off the highway, when we realised that then road we were on was not, in fact, the continuation of our exit ramp, but as we’d gone through the toll booths had invisibly merged with the entrance ramp. This meant that even if we wanted to turn left, we should still remain on the right side of the divider. Fortunately, the lights were red for oncoming traffic, and there was only about two metres to reverse back to get on the right side of things, so we were out of the way before anyone (except perhaps the lady at the toll booth) noticed. Still, there remains some confusion as to whether we encountered a small wormhole that teleported us from one side of the freeway to the other, because the map does say that the names of the towns we were encountering at first really were on the other side of the highway to what we turned out to be.
While wandering around, we also stopped off for Hubby’s obligatory coffee and I got some unbelievably American cheese-and-bacon-fries. I managed about half. :)
In any case, eventually we managed to get back onto the right road, out of Indiana, and on to iviolinist’s, which was fantastic. She was my very first online friend, back in 2002 when I first sought out a beta-reader for The Promise Ring, and... well, she’s the one who taught me to love writing, and she’s the one who taught me how to love writing properly. We don’t stay in contact as much as I’d like, given my appalling communication habits, but the bond of betaing a novel-length is pretty much unbreakable. :)
So after the scary moment of knocking on her door, the hug, the combination of odd silences and machine-gun chatter common to any net-friend-meeting I’ve been to (well, this is the second, so I’ll consider myself an expert, shall I?), she took us around on a tour of Battle Creek.
To top off an awesome night, we went to the new Indiana Jones movie, which Hubby and I have been wanting to see. It was all quite unrealistic until the aliens came. :P No, seriously, it was pretty darn good, and we all enjoyed it.
Daylight savings (and the winter-summer crossing) along with the jetlag makes an instinctive feeling for the time rather difficult. We’re used to the sun setting at about 5:15, not 8:45! Fortunately, by the time we made it out of the movie theatre and it was almost midnight, and thus finally actually dark. Given the level of general exhaustion, it even seemed like the right time!
The way across from Chicago is around the bottom of Lake Michigan, taking us briefly through Indiana. Unfortunately, shortly after crossing the border we missed an exit and subsequently made the brave decision to make our way through back streets across to the highway we were meant to be on. It was just a couple of kilometers to the north, after all, so it couldn’t be too hard to find... could it?
After about half an hour of driving, however, we realised that we’d somehow got turned around and were in fact going not vaguely north-east as we’d thought for the past half hour, but due south. *facepalm*
How this happened, we must put down to the confusion of the small incident we had getting off the highway, when we realised that then road we were on was not, in fact, the continuation of our exit ramp, but as we’d gone through the toll booths had invisibly merged with the entrance ramp. This meant that even if we wanted to turn left, we should still remain on the right side of the divider. Fortunately, the lights were red for oncoming traffic, and there was only about two metres to reverse back to get on the right side of things, so we were out of the way before anyone (except perhaps the lady at the toll booth) noticed. Still, there remains some confusion as to whether we encountered a small wormhole that teleported us from one side of the freeway to the other, because the map does say that the names of the towns we were encountering at first really were on the other side of the highway to what we turned out to be.
While wandering around, we also stopped off for Hubby’s obligatory coffee and I got some unbelievably American cheese-and-bacon-fries. I managed about half. :)
In any case, eventually we managed to get back onto the right road, out of Indiana, and on to iviolinist’s, which was fantastic. She was my very first online friend, back in 2002 when I first sought out a beta-reader for The Promise Ring, and... well, she’s the one who taught me to love writing, and she’s the one who taught me how to love writing properly. We don’t stay in contact as much as I’d like, given my appalling communication habits, but the bond of betaing a novel-length is pretty much unbreakable. :)
So after the scary moment of knocking on her door, the hug, the combination of odd silences and machine-gun chatter common to any net-friend-meeting I’ve been to (well, this is the second, so I’ll consider myself an expert, shall I?), she took us around on a tour of Battle Creek.
To top off an awesome night, we went to the new Indiana Jones movie, which Hubby and I have been wanting to see. It was all quite unrealistic until the aliens came. :P No, seriously, it was pretty darn good, and we all enjoyed it.
Daylight savings (and the winter-summer crossing) along with the jetlag makes an instinctive feeling for the time rather difficult. We’re used to the sun setting at about 5:15, not 8:45! Fortunately, by the time we made it out of the movie theatre and it was almost midnight, and thus finally actually dark. Given the level of general exhaustion, it even seemed like the right time!