Ann Arbour, Michigan

Ann Arbour during the day...

The original plan was to head into Detroit, Michigan. Detroit is America's most violent city, where police officers sometimes tell civilians to enter at their own risk. However I didn't come to the US just to see the pretty places, I really wanted to experience the shitty areas as well.

From what I'd read, some areas of the US were almost third world, I thought it'd be interesting to experience that first-hand. Unfortunately, I deemed the risk a little too high judging by the opinions of various Americans I talked to as I approached Michigan. What really put me over the edge was the road surfaces were apparently really bad, and I didn't want to fuck up my bike to see some ghettos. Looking back on it now I regret not seeing Detroit, but it's easy to say that from the safety of my home country. Maybe next time.

Instead I went with a well know beautiful city instead of a well know ugly city; Ann Arbour. This small town is surprisingly close to Detroit and home of the University of Michigan, one of the largest Universities in America with almost 43,000 students.

... and at sunset.

Riding through Michigan was actually quite stunning, the leaves had started to change for autumn. I met up with my host Riitta in the late afternoon.

Riitta was originally from Finland, she came to live in Ann Arbour on a green card and worked as a nanny. She was trained as a dental hygienist, but apparently her qualifications are not recognised in the US. But it sounded as though she enjoyed staying in Michigan, as there was a lively night life scene (college town) and she loved to dance.

That night we wandered around part of the University and got some dinner, then went back to her place and chilled on the couch. Later we hit a few clubs which were all packed. Riitta seemed to know a whole heap of people from Europe in the clubs, including memorably Boris from Russia. They all seemed like a pretty chill bunch of dudes. I'm not much of a dancer, so I spent a lot of my time on the side drinking (this eventually changed as I hit Austin and New Orleans).

Blurry clubbing photo! Riitta is on the right.

The next morning I set off for Cleveland.

Fort Wayne, Indiana

Everett and his flag.

I had a choice of two hosts in this Fort Wayne, one was drummer in a band and one was a ex-marine police officer. Now, initially I was going to go with the drummer because that sounded pretty awesome, but in the end I went with the cop - Everett - as he seemed like a super nice guy. As it happened this decision was a great one; Everett turned out to be an awesome dude.

I arrived in Fort Wayne early evening. The place was pretty easy to find as I just had to to locate the "cop car out the front". Everett has a beautiful home, all modern and well put together. Turns out that in Fort Wayne property prices are so low that in most cases mortgage repayments are less than renting. Everett's 2 storey, 3 bedroom house with a basement and huge kitchen was about a fifth of the cost of mine back home. Damn....

American integration room.  

Anyway, Everett first gave me a quick run down of his cop car. He showed me how he responds to calls via a ticketing system which was very similar to what an IT service desk would use. There was also maps that showed where all the units were located (which I indicated would be really useful for me, not that I would be doing anything on the bike that was illegal). 

Out of curiosity I asked him to run my plates so I could see what he could find out about me. As the cop car's computer ticked away I was a little nervous. Maybe I had a speeding ticket from a fixed camera I didn't know about? Was he going to find out about by kangaroo porn ring? But it all turned up green, just my registration details showed up.

Everett and I then headed downtown for a night of drinking. But first up Everett gave me a quick tour of the Fort Wayne police station at which he worked. He introduced me to some detectives and showed me the interrogation rooms, which was pretty fucking sweet.

Everett and I then headed out to local bar. It was a traditional Irish bar with lots of good beer and quiet atmosphere. Next was a cocktail bar where we had speciality Martinis and started to get pretty wasted. Everett and I talked about politics and the US, it was very interesting to hear his viewpoints as a person who is ex-military and a conservative.

Pretty sure this cocktail put Everett and I over the edge.

Then Everett wanted to take me to some sort of super club in Fort Wayne that was known to be a little rough. Sure, I love the dodgy bars, it reminds me of going out back in Canberra where the DJ had to be behind a cage and bogans drank bourbon and cokes from jugs on the dance floor. Ah to be 18 again. 

This club had multiple clubs inside (you dawg), and get this: One club for white people and one for black people. Now this wasn't intended or enforced like segregation, it's just how it turned out. 

It's such a weird thing to go out drinking with a cop. I guess no matter how dodgy the place you just feel kind of safe. I mean, what is anyone going to do? Everyone seems to know he's a cop, so I don't think anyone is going to start anything. The law is on my side! Not that I used this advantage to be a dick or anything, but it was kind of awesome. 

The band even seemed to have groupies.

And it's not like bars in the US are particularly dodgy, in pretty much all of the "dive bars" I went to felt safer than many of the places I've been to in Canberra. There just seems to be a lower propensity for violence in American bars, everyone seems to be more relaxed. Fucking crazy right? Gun toting, warmongering Americans are more chilled than Australians!? Seems fucking wacky, but again and again I found this to be true. Even the bros I came across in college towns such as Laramie seemed to be far more easy going then many of the bogans I've had altercations with in the past. I just don't think Americans drink to the excess that Australians do.

Anyway, back on topic. Everett and I were drinking at the "white" bar, where I got to talking to one of Everett's associates who seemed very happy to finally be able to introduce his lady-friend to Everett. Then he and I walked over to the adjoining section which contained a live band. Everett knew singer of the band, and seemed to have some sort of free reign in the bar, because we then just waltzed up to the backstage area. Here was some sort of green room, with photos of all the bands that had played at this club. Now I was pretty fucked up at the time, but I think some of these bands were fairly big names. Maybe Areosmith? 

Put your shirt on!

Next Everett thought it'd be fun to show me the "black" bar, so he basically said "hold on to my arm", and then "guided" me the through the very crowded venue. I remember being shoved around a whole lot. It seemed like either the patrons didn't like me there or that I was just bumping against them. But I was kind of glad that our tour of the bar was a brief one.

After drinking enough for the night, Everett and I completed the American drunken experience and purchased a shit-ton of Taco Bell. That night I'm pretty sure I had two tacos where the shell was made out of Doritos, some sort of "supreme crunch" thing and nachos. Shortly after I passed out on Everett's couch.

The next morning we were both feeling a little worse for wear, but Everett was good enough to make me breakfast. Including American bacon! God I miss American bacon. Fortunately by this point in my trip I'd drunk enough alcohol and ate enough shitty food that I could shake it off pretty quickly.

I bid Everett goodbye as one of my most positive couch surfing experiences (by the way, I didn't pay for a single drink that night!), and head off for Michigan. I really hope that Everett and I cross paths again one day, Fort Wayne was only meant to be a stopover but I had one of my best nights out there!

Chicago, Illinois 3

Charles deals with a flat - take that Queen Elizabeth!

Another couch surfer in Phil's place arrived that night. A young man - whose name escapes me, let's call him Charles - was from England and was currently cycling across America. This wasn't really a vacation for Charles, more of a lifestyle. He had spent a long amount of time in Canada as an art tour guide, and had recently decided that he wanted to see some of the US. So he jumped on his bike and started riding. As far as I could tell Charles had very little clothing, and seemed to wear the same pair of cutoff jeans and football jersey every day. I'm guessing Charles had some money as he owned both an iPad and iPhone, but was frugal with his bike gear - his panniers were fashioned from old cheese containers.

A photograph of Chicago.

He was a nice enough guy though, talked in that very proper British accent that some of Australians find a little grinding (he in-turn was not fond of the Aussie accent). He talked about some of his experiences on his tour, where a significant amount of his time was spent camping in a cheap Wal-Mart tent. Only a few nights prior he slept in a back of a bar in Montana. But after some long days of riding across the rolling prairies of the mid-west, he had enough of the scenery and decided to catch a train to Chicago.

The next morning I decided to go and do a "Mob Tour" of Chicago. Since this was the city where Capone lived and worked in, I thought it seemed appropriate. Sebastian and Charles were not interested so they were to meet up with me afterwards. 

The bus tour only took a few hours but was fairly fun and informative. The tour guides talked like old mobsters and cracked old-style-dad jokes. But it was interesting to see the locations where some of the mob massacres occurred,  the location of the brothel that Capone worked at etc. The bus also ventured into South Chicago, where I got to see some of the poorer and more crime-ridden neighbourhoods from the safety of a tour bus. 

On the Mob tour.

A side note: Almost every guided event in the US starts the same:

• "Are you ready to have a good time?"
• "Yeah..."
• "I can't hear you, I said ARE YOU READY TO HAVE A GOOD TIME?!"
• "Yeah!"

This process was so universal you just started to expected it. There is something undeniably American about the whole thing.

Anyhow, I finished my tour (in which I got a free mob-pencil), and met up with Sebastian and Charles in downtown Chicago. Not before I tried out Chick-Fil-A for the first time, you know that homosexual hating fried-chicken place? Yeah it was pretty good, lots of different sauce flavours and the chicken comes with waffle fries. Nothing mind-blowing though.

The captured U-Boat.

Charles wanted to go see some art, so Sebastian and I went to the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry. We first went to go see the German U-Boat, which was captured by the Americans during World War II. The exhibit detailed the whole story behind the capture and how difficult it was for the Americans to capture it intact before the Germans could scuttle it. 

According to the Americans, once the German crew knew they had to abandon ship, they opened numerous hatches to order to sink it quickly. They also activated a number of timed explosives to destroy the submarine after they had abandoned ship. The German U-Boats contained a lot of technology and code-cracking data that would pose a massive threat to the Axis if it got into Allied hands, hence the extreme measures taken by the Germans. A great little part of the story is that there was supposed to be 15 self-destruct charges laid around the submarine, but the American explosive experts could only find 14! Anyway, it was a great exhibit.

Next we looked at the exhibit relating to space exploration. They had a great little piece on past and future rockets, where I noted that the Aries V was shown, a design which was part of a project which has recently been cancelled by the US government.

It's full of stars!

Unfortunately for Sebastian and I, we found out that the museum had a very early closing time of 4:30 PM. So after they starting turning the lights off, we headed out to see Chicago University. 

Me as a post-grad.

Luckily for us, we had caught the university in orientation week. So after wandering around taking photos of some of the stunning buildings on campus (Chicago University turned out to be the most picturesque University I saw in America, including Harvard), we managed to sneak into a few orientation events. 

It was pretty easy really, we just picked up a plate and moseyed on down to the buffet table. We ate "free" burgers, chicken, salad, vegetables, cookies and brownies. We also enjoyed sitting down and pretending to be students with a bunch of our "fellow" students, who probably had some pretty difficult internal questions like "how are you a freshman when you look like you are close to 30?". We almost tried to get free beer, but thought there may be a chance they'd check our student IDs, so decided to leave while we were still ahead - with a few brownies to go.

Sebastian and I get away with all the goods!

Sebastian had to leave for dinner with Phil, but it was my last night, so I wanted to stay and spend some more time in downtown. An interesting fact about Chicago: Downtown shuts down around about 7:30 PM. The bars stay open for happy hour and then it all goes dead. This is not to say that Chicago doesn't have a lively night life - some bars stay open until 5 AM - but these venues are spread out in different neighbourhoods. Luckily I was meeting up with Joel later that night in one such neighbourhood, so I decided to kill sometime and go see the Willis Tower.

The Willis Tower (formally known as the Sears Tower) is the tallest building in Chicago. It's like the Empire State in NYC; a sort of must-do tourist attraction. I don't think the view was a spectacular as the Hancock Tower I saw a few nights prior, but it did have the sky deck thing, which made for a pretty awesome photo.

Afterwards I chilled at a Dunkin Donuts (the only place I could find in Chicago with a power outlet to charge my phone) and then caught to train to go meet up with Joel. Joel had responded to my couch surfing request, but I had already accepted the offer from Phil, so instead I met up with him for a beer. Joel was a pretty interesting dude, originally from Spain, he worked as a Professor in Chicago. Gave me a lot of insights into Spain, including the economic shit-storm they have got themselves into!

Joel and I. The person who took this literately
had the need to take 8 photos. This is the best one. 

The next morning I packed my stuff up and head out of Chicago for Fort Wayne, Indiana. At some point I took a wrong turn and managed to get myself into the middle of downtown Chicago, something that I really didn't want to deal with. To make matters more interesting, I had to go through multiple underground sections which confused my GPS. But I got out in the end!

Chicago, Illinois 2

My new host Phil lived about 20 minutes ride away from Kelly. Phil had responded to my open Couch Surfing request only a couple of days after I had posted it on the Couch Surfing website. My post was made almost a month before my planned arrival in Chicago and because I knew finding a host in Chicago was going to problematic, I jumped on the offer.

Phil is a very friendly guy, a god-fearing christian from the deep south with traditional values and approaches to hospitality. He had only really started hosting a few weeks before my arrival, but was certainly making up for that in volume. In fact, I think he had something like 30 surfers in a month. By the time I left America, he had almost 100. My first night staying with him, he had one guest on the couch, one on a mattress, another on my air mattress and him on the floor. Despite all my efforts to convince him otherwise, he gave up his only room and bed to me. I managed to get this due to my long standing invitation into his home. This is just the kind of guy Phil was, offering all he had in the sake of being a good host, christian and human being.

The deep dish pizza.

Me, not being religious, thought I might be confronted by his zealous religiousness which was alluded to in his profile and messages. However at no point did he try and push any Christian agenda, which I was thankful for. The neighbourhood Phil lived in was quite nice - It wasn't upper-class but it was nothing like south Chicago. What surprised me is that people would say hello as they passed you on the footpath. Didn't expect that in a big city like Chicago, but everyone had told me it was a friendly city. The neighbourhood did have its fair share of drunks and weirdos, but way less than you would find in many of areas of Sydney. Phil's place was close to the red rail line, and the Chicago metro system was extremely straightforward to use.

This is what I actually look like when I eat.

The first day I had in Phil's place I walked down to the local Starbucks and basically blogged all day. Exciting eh? I had to majorly catch up on the blog, and I think I wrote about 6 posts that day - a massive effort. The reason I didn't want to spend so much time on the blog was that I was trying to avoid wasting all my precious little time in the US on the laptop. Blog posts take a long time to craft, finding the right photos and trying to make them at least slightly easy to read and entertaining. I thought I could spare one of the 6 or 7 days I had in Chicago by doing some blogging.

View from the Hancock Tower.

That night Kelly (my previous host) and I went out for deep dish pizza. Kelly recommended a very highly ranked place on Yelp, as she herself had not been there, meaning a new experience for us both. Apparently all visitors want to get deep dish in Chicago, which can make it kind of repetitive for a host. The pizza was way better than I was expecting, I guess I was thinking it would be something similar to a quiche but with cheese instead of egg. But rather it was just a really tasty, saucy pizza. The crust was amazing as well, very buttery and more like a pie crust than a pizza base.

Afterwards we both headed to the Hancock Tower for a cocktail. We both got long island ice teas, which cost about $20 plus tips. But the benefit is that you get to see the view of Chicago from almost the height of the observation deck plus a bonus alcoholic drink. The view was spectacular!

The next day I went and did an architecture tour of Chicago via a river boat. Pretty interesting stuff for nerds like me, they explained all the Modernism, Post-Modernism and Art Deco styles used in Chicago architecture.

Example of "Post Modern" architecture.

"The Chair" style of architecture. 

Look at the size of that building on the left!

Me on the architecture tour.

The Trump Tower. Yeah the hair guy.

After wandering around Chicago for a bit I met up with Lumi at her workplace downtown. We wandered around Millennium Park, and checked out some sculptures, art and the famous "Bean".

Animated faces would periodically
spit water from their mouths on this
sculpture.

Lumi and I at "The Bean".

More bean action.

We then headed down to Navy Pier, where normally there would be a whole bunch of retailers and sideshows, but since we were closing on winter, it was a bit dead.

Navy Pier and Lumi.

View from Navy Pier onto downtown.

Chicago sunset.

Lumi and I on Navy Pier.

The next day Sebastian and I went out to see some of Chicago together. Sebastian was one of Phil's other couch surfers, coming all the way from Singapore for a friend's wedding. We went all the way down to the "Field Museum", where there were exhibits on the Egyptians, dinosaurs, botany and gems.

Some of the dioramas were pretty amazing, these were constructed before zoos could hold animals from all over the planet, so the animals were hunted, killed, stuffed and put on display. Obviously this practice is frowned upon now, but back then it was the only way for regular people to see exotic animals. The museum also had one of the largest and most complete fossils of a Tyrannosaurus Rex in the world. Pretty awesome stuff. 

Sebastian cooks me the food of his people.

Sebastian and the largest mammal to ever exist.
They told us we weren't allowed to take photos
in this exhibit but FUCK DA POLICE.

Nice dinosaur...

It ain't a complete museum visit without
you humping the leg of a Brachiosaurus.

After the museum we both wandered down the the planetarium, which was unfortunately closed due some almost certainly boring-ass documentary being made. We instead walked down to the "beach" and back through Millennium Park.

Fountain in Millennium Park.

Sebastian and I at the bean... Plus some douche-bag.

That night Phil prepared me a home-cooked meal. Phil had previously asked me what I wanted him to cook and I said meatloaf. Never had American meatloaf before, but I've seen it in a lot of American movies and TV! It was pretty good, served with a whole bunch of sides. Great stuff!

Chicago, Illinois 1

Arriving in Chicago.

I had some trepidations about Chicago, not due to its crime or the possibility of a axe-murdering, psychopathic couch surfing host, but rather of the traffic. Chicago was to be my first of the big cities in the US that I would have to navigate on a motorcycle. It would act as a lead-up to the much dreaded NYC traffic that would be coming in a few weeks. The idea of parking outside the city and then using public transport to get into it the guts of it was impractical; the luggage on my bike was too unwieldy and large to carry onto any bus or train. I would have to just suck it up, rely on my motorcycle, GPS and a few years of riding under my belt.

In the end the traffic wasn't too bad, Chicago did seem to have the "speediest" drivers yet, all seemed to do 80 MPH (130 KPH) in the 55 MPH (90 KPH) zones. But that didn't bother me too much. There is so much space on American freeways that it is relatively easy for a motorcycle to get out of trouble easily.

In order to catch a Chicago Cubs baseball game, I had to book in with an additional host (Kelly) the night before my main host in Chicago (Phil). Kelly was one of my more interesting hosts, she was originally from Florida and worked into the world of Sports Entertainment. No, not wrestling, but the design, construction and at one time the performing of mascots. She moved up to Chicago to further her career in the industry. To make ends meet she worked at the local bar (every neighbourhood has a local bar in Chicago), but as her other job she designed and built mascots for various sporting teams. She had ambitions to one day bring her skills to Australia, as our market is not as jam-packed as the American one.

Kelly decapitates the Easter bunny right in front of me upon arrival.

When I arrived I met Kelly in her local bar where I had a few drinks (on the house thanks to her) then we both headed to her flat. She lived in a small but very comfortable studio/basement apartment. As the name suggests, I slept basically in the same room as her on the couch (you can see the couch that I slept on in the photo above on the left). Luckily, neither of us snore!

That night Kelly and I met up with one of her friends from acting class. We met at her apartment which was this super trendy place right in the middle of some hipstery part of town. She shared the apartment with 4 members of a band, of which the name I have no recollection (they gave me a CD, it was not the last time I was given a CD by a band in the US). In her very early 20s, this friend of Kelly's had the dream of eventually moving to LA and perusing and acting career. All I remember of her was that she was truly tiny, probably under 5 foot and wouldn't weigh more than 50 KGs. But she was eager to show Kelly and I to some of the cool bars in that area of Chicago.

Kelly keeps the heads of her victims in the window as a
warning for all those who enter.

That night we hit a club with the highest concentration of hipsters I've ever seen. The place was jam-packed full of scarves, thick-rimmed glasses and bad facial hair. I couldn't believe how much they stuck to the stereotypical hipster uniform. It was the first time in my trip where I looked severely under-dressed with only some baggy warn-out jeans and an "Stanley, Idaho" t-shirt I might as well have been wearing overalls and a straw hat to these tartan-loving, skinny-leg trendoids. Oh and to top it off, the bar was surrounded with retro arcade games. Now this was kind of cool, but seeing as this was aimed at hipsters it felt very "so-retro-it-hurts".

To balance it out we also went to some heavy metal bar, which was more my kind of scene.

The next morning Kelly made me breakfast (including these awesome cinnamon scroll things with icing on them so popular in America), and then we headed down to her bar to watch the start of the Bears (NFL) game and have a few drinks. She then gave me a lift to Wrigley Field to go and watch the baseball game with Lumi.

Wrigley Field before the game starts.

Lumi is a girl that responded to my open couch surfing request to hangout. Apparently she meets up with quite a few couch surfers as they come through Chicago. Originally from Columbia, she studied in the US and is now working in the financial sector in Chicago.

The baseball game was much faster than I was expecting, I thought it would be slow like cricket, but because the innings are over so quickly (only 3 people have to get out to end the innings) it keeps the pace kind of rapid. So Lumi and I drank expensive beer (something like $8 for a Bud Light) and eat peanuts. The field itself was very iconic, one of the oldest in America. It has nets overhead to stop bits falling off due to old age hitting the spectators. I had a fantastic time there even though the Cubs lost.

The thousand yard stare of the cubs mascot.

Lumi and I Wrigley Field.

The "hurler" launches the ball to the "whacker".

After the game Lumi, Kelly and I all got a drink at a local bar in Wrigleyvile (the drinking district that surrounds Wrigley Field), and then I got a lift back home from Kelly. I had to quickly pack my gear up and head off to my next host: Phil.