I’ve only been to Chicago a handful of times, but it’s always been an annoying experience. In fact, Chicago is annoying enough that it makes Illinois a state I’d rather drive through than drive to. (When Gencon announced it was leaving Milwaukee, I was terrified it was going to Chicago. Thankfully, it ended up in Fort Wayne, Indiana.) In no particular order:
.
- The club that wouldn’t let me in because of my hair — Hey buddy, it’s the twentieth century! (Well, it was when that happened.)
- Animal rights protestors at an aquarium — that’s the biggest animal rights problem you can find?
- The insane priest at my brother’s wedding who started rambling about drive-by shootings during the ceremony. (He was drinking something, and I don’t think it was holy water.)
- Too many damn tollbooths. Drove through there once on the way to Milwaukee, and ended up searching under seats in my luggage to find coins for the nickel-and-dime toll roads. Would it kill you people to just have one tollbooths at the exits like a normal toll road?
- The Field Museum doesn’t mention moko in its Maori display. How can you have a Maori display and not mention of their major indigenous art forms?
Anyway, today, I received the map of Wisconsin I ordered, so Illinois is next, because it’s the only state bordering Michigan left on my list. The Wisconsin map was disappointing in its lack of cheese-related tourist traps, but it did list the Tommy Barlett’s Robot World and Exploratory, which claims to have a Mir space station. Yep, a Mir space station… in Wisconsin… at a place called “Robot World”. That’s the kind of thing you only find in the Midwest.