Finally in Fargo

And so starts my exciting new adventure… I spent the entire day driving, which was rather uneventful. I listened to The Associate by John Grisham, whose books I’ve never really gotten into, but it was the best of the available alternatives. It seemed to pretty accurately describe the horrors of Big Law (at least according to the rumors), which made me happy that I am nowhere near “qualified” for the option of subjecting myself to such torture.

Just like everything associated with this transition, things have been thrown together haphazardly and everything seems to be occurring at warp speed. I finally received word from New Boss on Wednesday that my background check was complete and I would be allowed to start my new job the following Tuesday. This news would have been more well received if it hadn’t been for the fact that I was within an hour of leaving for Thanksgiving with the fam and had not yet packed more than a couple haphazard boxes. So, I left anyway and drove two hours west for Thanksgiving, turned around Thursday night and drove two hours back home (east), spent until 6 p.m. Friday packing and loading the car, and then turned back around and drove the same two hours west back to my dad’s. I “slept in” this morning until 8 when my dad came in to give me the “tickly toes”. Since I was a kid, his method of waking me up has been to come in the room and tickle my feet and loudly say, “tickly toes, tickly toes, time to get up, tickly toes”. It worked a lot better when I was a kid and more ticklish. Now I pretty much just laugh at the silliness and am thankful to have such a great dad. I finally got on the road about 9:45 and spent the next 12 uneventful hours in the car.

I’ve already started picking out my “landmarks” for the trip. Besides crossing the state lines, the first landmark is the Sears Tower in Chicago. However, by this I don’t mean the real Sears Tower, but a small little tower that has “Sears” written on it and is on the other side of the highway from the cityscape. It makes me laugh. I was going to try to take a picture of it today, but it snuck up on me because of heavy traffic, so that didn’t happen. After several toll booths, the next landmark is crossing into Wisconsin (which seems like it should occur a lot sooner than it actually does!) Now we are into waterslide territory. I swear there are hundreds of waterslide parks along I-90, although maybe in reality only 10. Nonetheless, I was surprised by the number of outdoor waterslide parks located in the tropics of Wisconsin. The next landmark is where I-90 splits back off and the remainder of the trip is on I-94. Right at the split, there is a huge cranberry farm and the cranberry bogs are right next to the freeway. They are like giant red lakes. After awhile there is also this weird outcropping of rocks that looks sort of like the Wisconsin version of Stonehenge. Eventually come Minnesota (i.e. St. Paul and Minneapolis), where I pass the Land-O-Lakes butter company and also the Creative Memories scrapbooking headquaters. And from them on… a whole lotta’ nuthin! Until the big “Welcome to North Dakota” sign appears on the horizon and 775-ish miles from the beginning, you are FINALLY in Fargo!