Started: Loop, Chicago, IL
Ended: Plymouth, MI
Total Distance: Walking: 0.9 miles, Train: 248 miles, Driving: 21 miles
Though the idea for this blog started as a travelogue of this epic five-week trip that starts today, as we started to talk about what we’d write about, we realized that just the trip wasn’t enough. This is the summer before my tenth year of teaching and before R’s fourth year and we’re both finding ourselves at professional crossroads, and we’re both liable to run into a long discussion on our opinions about education (though, let’s be serious, who isn’t? Everyone has an opinion on education). This is a trip that will involve visits with friends (her friends, my friends, mutual friends), extended stays with both of our families and stops in both of our college towns. We will be seeing lots of nature. We will be making lots of food. And between all of that will be just a lot of time on the road. The trip started today: I had said goodbye to my cats, got on the Brown Line and we met at our school in Downtown Chicago. We then walked down to Revival Food Hall, got some food to go[1], then trekked to Union Station for the 6pm train to Ann Arbor. We watched Chuck for most of the time and were picked up by my parents and taken back to my childhood home in Plymouth.
I always have trouble with openings. My usual approach is to put black on white and go back and fix it, but that isn’t exactly an option here. I’ll try to leave with some sort of mission statement… this will be a blog with entries about lots of things.
[1] Mushroom pizza from Union Squared, a place that models “Detroit-style pizza.” While I firmly believe this isn’t a thing, they more or less are trying to recreate Buddy’s pizza. And they do an admirable job with the crust, but I was pretty disappointed to realize that the pizza came with a basil pesto sauce instead of marinara. It was pretty dry as a result and I really wish I got something else, though I’m pretty biased against non-tomato based sauces on pizza.