bytex64.net/blog

I got a call at 8:30 this morning letting me know my tire was ready. I promptly fell back asleep until about 12:30. I said goodbye to Mike, picked up my tire, and was on my way. Hearing the guys at Tires Plus chuckle about people who couldn't understand the non-beeping nature of the credit/debit widget made me realize that auto repair has a similar vein as computer repair. They both have their BOFHen and lusers. Great service, by the way. I traveled back to Bloomington to get on Route 66 and headed south.

Illinois has great signage, marking out Route 66 pretty clearly for the entirety of its journey through the state. A little ways down the road I stopped at a Dixie Diner to drain my bladder, fill my stomach and gas tank, and absorb a little bit of what Route 66 used to be. A patty melt with fries and a root beer (billed as an iced tea) set me back nearly $9, so it's not cheap, but the melt was good, and the fries were supernaturally crispy, a trait I enjoyed down to the last ketchup-dredged one. And you get to overhear truckers talk about trucking, old people talk about hijacking a Japanese aircraft in WWII, and the waitress calls you "hon" and "sweetheart." It's also the only place I've ever heard any one order "sweet tea," a southern-ism for pre-sweetened iced tea.

Refueled, I got back on the road. Three hours of driving took me through small towns, big towns, some lined with tributes to the glory of old. At some point, I missed a turn, went through a shithole town, and wound up on a meandering wooded backroad called "Possum Hollow." In the dead of night, "Dueling Banjos" starts playing inside my head. I retraced my path and was rather thankful when I found 66 again.

All in all, Route 66 wasn't really as cool as I thought it would be. The more I traveled it, the more I realized that the road I was traveling wasn't the original road, no matter how closely it followed the original path. I can't ever go back to the way it was. That left me sort of disillusioned, and cemented my new plan of taking I-70 straight to Colorado.

I got as far as Edwardsville before I lost my way again, and decided to find a hotel for the night. I'm currently holed up at the Super 8 Motel in Troy, which is pretty close to St. Louis. I'm currently eating ramen out of the ice bucket (for advanced ramen eaters, only!), and I'm going to shower and sleep. 'night everyone.