Tips for Chicago Driving

After 42 straight days of blogging, I had to take two days off due to an insane schedule.  Someday I will blog 50 days in a row…  Maybe…  I did write a list, in my head, as I was driving through Chicago (over and over again).  It might seem less than theological in nature.  If you need to think about it in terms of flip flops and glitter, that’s OK.  But there are a lot of places where you might read between the lines for something a little bit profound…

Tips for Chicago Driving:

1. Don’t

But…  If you have to…

2. Try to keep moving, preferably in the general direction you wish to go, but if not… at least somewhere.  This sounds less intentional than it should be, but there is something to the first law of motion.  Things that are in motion tend to stay in motion; and if you’re driving in Chicago, the last thing you want to do is stop.  You may never get moving again!

3. Find Lake Shore Drive.  Even if you don’t need to take it, the lake is beautiful.  If you can’t be where you want to be, you might as well be somewhere beautiful, right?

4. Do not drink too much coffee.  There are no bathrooms in Chicago.  None.  But, even if there were, you would not want to park your vehicle to use one.  It will cost you $40, and you will probably not re-enter the road in the right direction, if you can get back on at all.  Then you’ll need more coffee.  Then you’ll need another bathroom.  And before you know it, you will feel as if you are on the Indy loop, driving around in circles that never, ever end. 

5. Be aware that (almost) all roads connect to get you where you need to be.  When you get lost (I was going to say ‘if,’ but I’m pretty sure I got lost every single day, both ways), you just have to ‘re-route.’  If you’ve left enough time and space for error, you’ll still make it.

Happy Driving!

L.

Oh, also…

6. Bonus tip for when you’re on your way home from Chicago:  Fill your gas tank.  It’s really awful to run out of gas in the middle of nowhere, especially in the dark!  But if this does happen to you, just push the accelerator a little harder, think of II Kings 4, and pray that God can multiply gasoline like oil just long enough for you to get to a gas station that is a mile and a half up the road, even though your vehicle is making it clear that you have “0 miles to empty.”  It might work.