Cedar Rapids, IA to Chicago, IL
250 miles
5 hours driving

I futzed around with the network in Chris' place again in the morning and got it working fine just by cycling the power on the cable modem. No idea why it wouldn't give me DHCP packets earlier. Chris showed up at 7 and we went out for breakfast at Denny's near Quintrex. I left him all of the MP3 CDs from my truck. The feds still have all his stuff, and he missed out on the last two years of music (and our tastes are silimar) so I figured it would make a good gift. After breakfast he went back to work on his last day as a half-way-house-bound semi-con and I drove to Chicagao.

Even though the distances are getting shorter on these trips, I'm spending the same amount of time in the car because the speed limits are really coming down. Despite this, it didn't stop the Illinois state troopers from pulling me over for doing 72 in a 65. 7 over?? Anyway, they only gave me a warning. But it was instantly the weirdest traffic stop ever.

So the guy explains that he's going to give me a warning and I'm happy, but then tells me that I should come back to his SUV cruiser while he writes it up. So he clears off a space for me in the passenger spot of his truck and then goes around and gets in the driver's spot. I sit sorta half in and half out of the truck, and notice that it is a K-9 unit and there is a large german shepphard right behind me. Another cop shows up and appears beside the driver's window. The first cop gets out and they talk outside for awhile, so I hang out with the dog.

They ask me to get out, and tell me that the new cop is going to complete filling out my warning. Meanwhile, the first guy gets the dog out and asks me if there is any reason why a drug sniffing dog might alert on my vehicle. I said no, and he lets the dog into my car. Meanwhile, the new cop is confused about my strange itinerary, and why I'm driving one way and flying the other. The dog doesn't alert on anything, so he asks if he can search it "for contraband." I agree and give him the key for the trunk. He spends about 5 minutes working in there before the new cop is done asking me about my schedule and goes to help the first guy search my car. They spend at least 15 minutes in there going through everything. I'm surprised they didn't start ripping off door panels.

The search reaches new levels of rigor, as they begin going through my crumpled gas receipts and quizzing me on why I was in Minneapolis, etc. The new guy finds my hotel receipt from Nebraska (which has my address at the top and only mentions Nebraska in fine print at the bottom) and asks why I have a hotel receipt from Los Alamos if I live in Los Alamos. I have to show him how the address he's looking at matches the one on my license, and that the bottom of the receipt mentions "Sidney, NE." He apologizes and returns the receipt to the floor of my car.

Then, amazingly, the first cop finds the same receipt and brings it to me asking the same questions. Luckily, I didn't have to go through the same embarrassing explaination to him as the second cop took care of that. "Sorry, I'm thick-headed," he said.

At this point, the second cop was going through my trunk. In retrospect, it was humorous that I happened to have Nina's copy of "The Great Influenza" along with a copy of "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" in the trunk right next to each other while these guys (who were clearly very jazzed about the Patriot Act) were going through my stuff. Oddly, the cop didn't notice the irony and was more interested in the details of the story in the influenza book. By the end of the conversation he was talking of picking up a copy for himself.

He began asking me about my work and schooling, etc. When it came out that I worked on Department of Homeland Security stuff they were suddenly very polite and friendly, and the search ended abruptly. It was the weirdest traffic stop ever.

Anyway, I got back on my way and made it to Chicago without further incident. Even though I was arriving in Chicago at 2pm, there was still a huge inbound traffic jam on the interstate. What's that all about? Found Jen's apartment and spent the afternoon hanging out with her and Amber, and watching Gangs of New York. Amber is talking now, and despite claims that this was highly unusual, she spent a good portion of the time I was there screaming. When Dave showed up from work, we got some Thai delivery.

I called up a friend from College, Sarah Nicholaev, and hung out with her in Lincoln Square for the remainder of the evening. She has become the world's expert on what to do if your feet start turning black. Just call her at work and ask. We had a great evening and it was wonderful to see her again.

I had to drive to Lincoln Square, which was bad because what had been a very pleasant parking situation at 2pm turned into an impossible parking situation at 10:30. I seriously drove around in an expanding search pattern for 45 minutes before finding a spot for the Impala, and then had to walk for about 15 minutes to get to Jen's apartment. I would have saved time just walking all the way to Lincoln and back.