On Monday I set out from Chicago around 9. The Windy City is great and I would have loved to stay longer. I had to get going back home for the Baltimore Grand Prix and a dog in Ohio that I am going to transport to Maryland. It was actually good to leave Chicago to get away from the ridiculous gas prices. The most expensive in the country! The average price seemed to be around $4.10. Luckily I did not drive much and did not have to fillup my car in Illinois.
Driving through Ohio was fairly uneventful. The only real events happening was stopping at tolls! They are a killer. I think I spent more on tolls driving through Illinois and Ohio in 1 day then I have ever in my whole life. It must have amounted to about $20 or more for the day. I will have to check all my receipts I got to see exactly how much. At least Ohio's rest areas are nice. Most are clean bathrooms and have some sort of convenience store or food court. Overall Ohio is not bad.
For some reason today I was not up for driving much. After about 4-5 hours of driving I got really tired. Driving by yourself can be difficult. I listened to Pimmsler's Speak and Read Russian tapes again trying to learn Russian. Don't ask me how to say anything in Russian because I can't even remember much if anything that from those tapes. To a certain extent trying to listen to make you mind think too much is not good for driving because you need to pay attention to the road. I found Audiobooks to be the best. So I put in “The Bourne Supremacy” by Robert Ludlum and listened to that for the majority of my driving. There are great movies and books. Especially listening to when you are by yourself in a car for long periods of time.
Originally I got a call from a very nice guy in Youngstown, OH named Andrew from Couchsurfing. He said I could stay at his place, but when I was getting closer and closer to Cleveland I realized driving another 2 and half hours to Youngstown from where I was would not be safe. Another girl from Couchsurfing, Alissa, called me back after confirming my request and said I could stay with her and her roommate in Cleveland. I decided to go with Alissa because I was too tired at this point to drive much more. Cleveland was only 1 hour away.
I got into Cleveland and was driving around. Man, Cleveland feels a lot like Baltimore. A lot of bad neighborhoods next to good neighborhoods. A city in change with lots of new construction going up. All it mainly geared toward gentrification, yuppies, and colleges. When I got into Cleveland I finally meetup with Alissa's roommate David. We started talking and were talking about where we are from. Turns out we are both from Newton, MA. Small world.
