Chicago and end of Future Guidance tour

-Ralph

On the way to Chicago we stopped off in Cleveland, which was full of Indians baseball fans- first game of season. I've been surprised by the sheer amount of native american iconography you see around the place, like the labels on sports teams and the big statues outside bars. We traveled on to Chicago via a night in Ann Arbor and at a party by Lake Michigan where there was a big fire and a nice dog and a good time. The weather warming up and starting to feel like Spring. Also saw parts of Detroit, which looks down at heel to say the least. 

Chicago is big and sprawling, and you get around on those cool elevated trains that give Richard Kimble away in The Fugitive. Underneath they're all grimy and rusty looking but I'm sure they're fine. At one point we caught the red line right at sunset, which meant that we were kind of gliding over the rooftops in the evening light with the sun on the horizon, past the baseball stadium which had a game on. Nice way to get around. We visited the Museum of Science and Industry, which has an entire German submarine in it, which is highlight #178 of this trip. Also a super giant train set of Chicago. And a tornado.

Our theater was in a fairly remote building which used to be some kind of industry, and is now an art space. Joel did this last show, and we all had a great dance at the end. As the visitor at the end, I got to enter out of an industrial freight elevator, which was pretty fun. Retired the eggplant necklace which has been with us for the whole tour and was starting to look pretty bad. And that's it- nine shows in six cities. Met lots of people and had a really good time. Want to thanks Mouce and Karah for all their help with the tour, as well as all our wonderful billets and guides.

After that Karah and I took the Greyhound down to Kentucky, which was among the more eyeopening things we've done. Lots and lots of sad and desperate seeming people on long, long journeys (someone who'd come from California). Not everyone like this, but not a few. Guy behind us who'd been to Iraq and had a service dog, then of course at the next stop a woman who was mortally afraid of dogs comes on. She's loud and not very appreciative of the lives this dog has apparently saved, and has to sit at the front and get off when the dog needs to get off, and the dog handler gets taken out and quizzed again at the next stop (despite the sign that says service dogs are welcome) and gets on the bus again in a bad mood, and the scared woman is still scared of the dog, and later the handler says its simpler over there, cause if your neighbour gives you trouble, you can just shoot them. We also talked to a nice guy from Alabama who'd been up to see his grandkids. No one likes taking the greyhound, but its way cheaper than flying. There's all the paperwork and procedure of flying (minus the metal detectors) minus the glamour. You feel like you're being processed and transferred. When you get on the bus and are waiting to leave, they lock you in to stop freeriders, which makes you feel like a prisoner en route to a new facility.  In Louisville, an hour and a half from our destination, a front tire goes down on the bus, which means a two hour delay, during which time four people borrow our phone for personal calls to family members they hate who are angry at being messed around ("my own sister won't take me in tonight, said she'd drive me to Lexington. I'm sorry if my husband being murdered affected her") Someone else yelling at their deaf father to TELL THEM TO TURN THE CAR AROUND WE'RE LEAVING NOW. The driver has come from her other day job looks tired. The whole greyhound setup seems to me at that time to be a showcase for the most unappealing aspects of America. 

Anyway, now I'm in Kentucky, its green and nice. Home in a week. This is the last post on this wee tour blog. I've got a bunch of photos which I'll post soon. See you all soon!