Trip day 1

We got on the road this morning about an hour late. It could have been worse. Quick stops for fuel and breakfast at McDonald's and we were on our way.

We ran in to the duty free shop at the Blue Water Bridge in Sarnia. The duty free shop at the Peace Bridge is nicer, but this one isn't too bad. When we crossed the border the agent asked if we were bringing any dog food. Yes, we had two weeks worth of food for the dog with us, already measured out and everything. She wanted to know where it was made. Being Iams, it was made in the US. Good thing, as we wouldn't have been allowed to bring it across the border had it been made in Canada. We couldn't figure out what the big deal was with dog food until later that day: dog food might contain beef by-products, so Canadian dog food might possibly have Canadian beef in it. The US is taking their beef ban quite seriously, it seems.

Lunch this day was leftover pizza from the night before. Good thing we hadn't ordered hamburger on our pizza. We met Josh at Buffalo Wild Wings in Tinley Park, just south of Chicago. The traffic through the area south of Chicago was its usual insane construction mess. We sat in the construction zone for an hour, and when we got to the end they had their hands out looking for a toll. Sixty cents. Norah and I felt like handing them an invoice for our wasted time. All I had was a $20 bill. He have me fourteen $1 bills back in change. Thanks a bunch.

After dinner, we had a fairly uneventful drive and arrived as per our plan at the Motel 6 in Davenport, IA. Checking in was an adventure. The clerk's computer crashed four times in a row. Turns out they're running their hotel computers on Windows 98. Once it finally decided to keep working for more than two minutes at a time, we were set, and we headed off to bed.