Date: 23-Oct-2006
Place: Chicago - Illinois - USA.
My first ever drive in US as a valid driving license holder. And this was incidentally my first driving ever done myself all the way.
I, my room-mate and a colleague of mine, rented a car and went for a long drive. We got a Pontaic (dont ask me the model and make - I am not good at that). Nutshell is that it was a big car - like most of the cars in US which are bigger than the biggest car I've seen in India. It was elegant car with powerdrive, look wonderful from outside and inside. :)
We had the car from 1500 hours on Saturday to 1600 hours on Sunday. On Saturday we set out for Lake Geneva which is almost 90 miles from here. We set out at 1530 hours.
It was a wonderful day, heavy overcast, rains forecasted and it did rain at times during the trip. But the weather promised some beautiful scenery on the way. For the Lake Geneva expedition, I was the driver and one of my colleagues was the navigator – quite able but again new to the roads of the US :) and hence the inevitable happened.
The way to Lake Geneva goes past the highway-94, Milwaukee road, and highway-294 among other big and small roads. However we forgot to take an exit on the Milwaukee road to I94 and we lost directions for almost an hour. We asked for directions at few outlets on the Lake Cook Road and some joints nearby and finally managed to hit the I94 highway again.
After a long ride on the I94 highway we were to exit to Lake Geneva road; and again there was a glitch as we took a wrong turn at the exit and spent a few precious minutes. This time I took it on myself to come back to the correct path and was quick :) When we were on the Lake Geneva road, the Sun had almost reached the horizon. And what I saw next was my best experience. The road on the hilly terrain (going up and down in crests and trough), half wet, straight and ending right into the Sun (that was how it seemed), was reflecting the Sun making the rest of the scene black. I captured some of these beautiful scenes in my camera (while I was driving the car); its for you to let me know how good did I prove to be with camera in one hand and the steering wheel in the other. B)
Well we reached Lake Geneva when the dusk was about to end. But we did take a small stroll by the lake and enjoyed some peaceful moments on its banks. The lake is not too big, the perimeter may be around 8-10 kilometres max. But the beauty of the place at the sunset would have been awesome – only if we could reach in time (then we would have missed what we witnessed on way to the place).
We had snacks at food joints close by and we set out for our journey back. It was already 2000 hours. This was going to be my first ever night time riding on a four wheeler ever. I was a little nervous. Especially because it was a country road way up to the highway, hardly lit and hardly any traffic and the road passed a reserved sanctuary with deers that often cross the roads. It was almost 25 miles stretch. When I began this stretch I was quite nervous, but gradually I got used to it and I even clocked 80mph on the road, best I could do with the available visibility.
As we were moving towards the city, there were jams on the highways :O because of the construction/maintenance work that is usually carried out on weekends. (And I'd like to challenge those who proclaim that there are not jams on US roads!! :X) This delayed our return to the city. For miles together we were stuck up in jam where I never stepped on gas. Let the car run at its base speed. That part of the journey was so tiring, that if I didn't have anything to much and music to listen, I would have fallen asleep. Finally we reached Chicago at 12:30 hours (that was because I had often clocked 110 mph on the expsway on my way back).
Overall it was a nice experience. It is quite easy to ride in US. The roads and lanes are quite wide, the traffic is organised and pretty disciplined. And so I managed myself to keep away from any accidents :) That would be a day to remember !!!
Dont forget to send in your critics and comments. And dont forget to visit the pictures taken during this trip. The link to the album is
http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/chheda_sumit/album?.dir=/9a34re2&.src=ph&.tok=ph3vJlFBoXCzAQAZ
Note: This link may expire, write to me to get the new link if that happens.
