Road Trip!

Ann Arbor, does a good job of being positioned a distance from any place o finteerest for a graduate student.
The only great thing is that is more than half of the way to Madison, WI if I was to travel from the east coast, and it is just my luck that one of my great friends from undergraduate lives there, Ms. Lindsey Roper. It has been too long since I was able to see her and I knew that she would be the perfect person to share my birthday weekend with... 
And so, I rented my first rental car - which also happened to be my first time driving a new car. The car had less than 30 miles when I started my trip and all the tags that come from the factory were still present in the car. It was an 2011 Nissan Versa, a great little car, with pretty good gas mileage.. only negative was I drove approximately 900 miles this weekend.. without cruise control. UGH!
One of the pros of driving in this part of the country is that the states realize the drive is boring and that there isn't much of anything to look at so the speed limit is 70, meaning most people are going at least 80 mph. (Not me dad ;) don't worry)
Traffic moved well most of the time, and I thought I was being smart by starting out here late enough in the day to miss the real brunt of the traffic rush hour in Chicago, much to my surprise however, when you cross into Indiana, you also cross into central time zone, meaning I hit smack in the middle of Chicago rush hour! Here you can see my first views of Chicago as I passed from Indiana into Illinois.

Driving through Chicago, they have decided requires you to pay over $10 dollars in tolls. Which wouldn't be so bad if they made you stop once at the beginning and one at the end. But instead they would rather have multiple toll stations, SEVEN to be exact! The one I've pictured here is the nicest looking on, but also the most expensive one.The toll road also led to the most expensive gasoline of the trip, not surprisingly, I paid 3.89 a gallon!

I finally made it to Madison though, with it taking just shortly longer than predicted. (I was able to make up some lost time once I hit the normal highway in Wisconsin) Lindsey had an amaretto sour and delicious chicken tacos waiting for me when I got to her house. And we had a great first evening talking and catching up. Below is a picture that I took on Saturday in downtown Madison - seeing the sheer number of people participating in the protests here was a really moving experience.

I hung out in Madison until Monday morning and then drove back to Ann Arbor to continue working here for slightly longer than one week.
I can't wait to get back to Hanover but it was really a great experience to travel to see Lindsey. She is a great friend and made sure I had a great time!