Road Trip Diaries

We left Al and Sally’s Motel and did some driving before breakfast. We started off with a detour along the lakeshore, to get our fill of prettiness before entering the industrial wasteland between here and Chicago.

We rejoined US-20, and got to Portage, "Steel City USA" before we saw anywhere suitable for breakfast. Denny’s, as it turned out.

I chose a $4.99 breakfast deal, thinking it might not be too large. The name "Big and Bountiful Meat Lover’s Breakfast" might have tipped me off, if my brain hadn’t been weakened by the several hours since my last meal. So, it worked out that Debbie had a relatively modest portion of waffles with bacon, buttercream and maple syrup; I had a monster breakfast spread across two plates, consisting of  ham, two sausages ("links"), two eggs (sunny side up), hash browns, three pancakes, buttercream, maple syrup. And ketchup.

I managed it all though.

We proceeded through Gary Indiana, hoping against hope to see a sign saying "you are now entering Gary" (hi Gary!). The best we got was "The people of Gary welcome you".

Gary was run down and miserable. Along route 20, we saw at least five tatt "gentlemen’s clubs", and billboards offering help with depression. Apparently it used to be a thriving industrial town, but now there’s a lot of unemployment and deprivation.

Avoiding the freeway, we kept going into Chicago in fits and starts: there were lots of red lights. We passed an oil refinery: not attractive, but interesting.

I recall a question to the Guardian’s "Notes & Queries" column, asking how America manages not to have constant roadworks, like the UK does. The answer is:

They have plenty: and we’ve seen plenty more.

Having "done" Chicago in the past, we weren’t going to bother with its downtown area, but we were passing close to Frank Lloyd Wright’s home and studio, which is now a museum, so we went there for a tour. We weren’t allowed cameras! What’s more, I neglected to take an exterior shot too. The house was built in the late 19th century, yet looked pretty contemporary. Our guide called it "ageless". It was certainly a nice house, with lots of "art glass" and natural wood.  I was particularly taken by the studio, with it’s gallery suspended by chains.

We took the freeway out of Chicago — it was a bit congested with commuter traffic. We arrived in the Chicago suburb of Elgin at just about motel-hunting time, and checked out a couple of toll road exits for options. We tried to redeem a voucher from a booklet of motel ads we found at a petrol station, at the Marriot Courtyard, but the receptionist pointed out the "Thurs-Sun Only" limitation. D’oh!

He only had smoking rooms left, and it was a lot more money than the price with the voucher would have been. We moved on to the nearby Super 8, where we are now settled.

We have free wireless Internet… but it’s not working. On a whim I tried the default Linksys login and password, and found that I could log in to the wireless access point. It’s not got an Internet connection. I’ll mention that to the front desk on our way out to dinner and a cinema.

I didn’t mention the Internet situation to the front desk on the way out, because it wasn’t manned. Dial up will have to do.

We drove to the Marcus Movie Theatre in South Elgin, bought tickets for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory on their UltraScreen, then walked to the nearby Lone Star Steakhouse for vast and delicious slabs of beef.

During our meal, two people were lucky enough to get one of those novelty restaurant treatments where all the serving staff (or wenches, if the theme is Merrie Olde England) clap and recite some sort of rhyme. The family in the booth behind me were having some sort of family therapy session during which they enumerated each others’ faults ("Accountancy is one of your strengths, but your obsession with money is fuelling your depression").

We returned to the cinema with 40 minutes to kill. We played Offroad Thunder — I won. We played with a gadget in the lobby where an image was projected on the floor, which reacted to your movement when you trod on it — sort of like EyeToy.

With the time killed, we bought a drink and it was time to go in. I looked in my wallet for the tickets. They were gone! After a frantic search, we gave up, and returned to the ticket desk. I was prepared to buy more tickets, but just in case, I asked the man if he remembered selling us the tickets. He told us to just walk in. It turned out there was nobody checking tickets in any case. The enormous theatre had about 8 people in it, including us.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: a story about a small boy who visits a psychopathic weirdo who runs a factory using underpaid migrant workers, is almost perfect.  Helena Bonham-Carter is miscast. Sometimes the words are unclear in the Oompa Loompa songs. The tagged on not-in-the-book story is probably unnecessary (but viewed alongside Big Fish, suggests that Tim Burton really loves his ol’ dad). Other than that, nearly perfect.

It looks as if they scoured Britain for funny looking British actors. Kevin Eldon is in it for about 6 seconds. So is Margaret Slitheen from Doctor Who. The late John Suchet plays all the Oompa Loompas^*.

It gets a US PG certificate, which just shows the classification board are idiots. Just because it’s based on a children’t book doesn’t mean it isn’t every bit as sick and disturbing as Rob Zombie’s R rated The Devil’s Rejects^**

Debbie drove us home safely. There were cats-eyes and everything. Bedtime.

Oh, and Elgin’s pretty nice. We should give them back their marbles.

(*  or someone who looks a tiny bit like him)
(** Haven’t seen it, but it’s the sequel to House of 1000 Corpses and in all likelihood, it’s actually a lot more disturbing than Charlie and the Chocolate Factory)

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