The Proof by "Slats Grobnik"
Okay, I’ll admit it. I was one of the guys who called BS on Dave’s “800 mile commute.” I mean, we’ve all had jobs where we had to wear the Red Robin suit, or work the overnight shift, but 1) No one would be so dumb as to put him or herself in the position where they would have to MAKE a 13 hour drive in to work, and 2) No one would actually do it.
So here you go – I was wrong.
Dave picks me up at 4:15am at my hotel in Skokie, Illinois, a few blocks from his house. He looks surprisingly awake, all things considered. “Sorry I’m a little late. We need to go.” He and his family had been moving pretty much all of the last three days, dragging couches and chests of drawers up to the second story walk-up that he’d been blogging about. But now it was Friday morning, and time to head in for his 7pm overnight shift.
If you haven’t been part of the inner circle, here’s the short story: Dave and his wife of 24 years decided to move from the Raleigh, NC area to Chicago about six months ago. One of their three children is a special needs child, and the best school they could find for his needs is at the northern tip of Chicago. Since their oldest son is already going to school in Chicago, and David was born a few blocks away from where the school currently resides, they decided to move up here.
It apparently looked so good on paper…. But I’ll let you read the blog if you’re interested. It reads like fiction, but it all checks out. Besides, who could make this stuff up?
So I grab my coffee, and he slides over the 12-pack of Mountain Dew Throwbacks to make room for me (“Can’t get these in North Carolina!”) and off we went… driving a polka-dotted 2009 Toyota Prius. I do need to digress a little here. It’s his wife’s car. She’s one of those people who does “fun”, “crafty” stuff, like setting up hand-knitted birds nesting in grapevine around the windows, creating hand-made play-dough for the kids, and, “livening up” a white Prius with perfectly-positioned polka dots.
Dave wryly explains the polka dots as we pull away from the curb, “I definitely felt my testosterone drop a little when I walked my little girl in to school one day, and walked back, carrying Clifford the Big Red Dog in one arm, a handmade doll in the other, huddled under a Strawberry Shortcake umbrella, only to slip into my polka-dotted Prius and drive away. But that’s the sort of thing that good daddies just have to take in stride.”
The Google Maps GPS lists a little over 800 miles, and 12 hours, 27 minutes to go to our destination.
You have to leave Chicago pretty early to escape the angry gods of the Dan Ryan Expressway from completely stopping you in the part of town called “The Circle”, where several interstate highways come together and the “Speed Limit 45” signs are merely a cruel joke to be crawled past. Apparently, 4:30 in the morning is the appropriate hour. We sweep easily past the early morning construction, a polka-dotted blur blazing down the Express lanes at 60 miles per hour.
“I really respect Chicago cops,” David says. “They seem to believe in the ‘Protect and Serve’ mantra more than the ‘Soak everyone you can with a speeding ticket’ policy that is so prevalent in many cash-strapped cities. My wife was following me down the Skyway when we drove up here. The speed limit is posted at 45, everyone’s doing about 65, but the traffic is moving safely along, which is the goal, right? So the policeman just sits and watches everyone drive on by. I asked her, ‘When’s the last time you did 20 miles over the limit and passed a cop who didn’t bat an eye?’ As long as you’re driving safely, you’re fine. They’re more likely to pull over the two problem people – the guy who needs to do 75 weaving in and out of traffic, and the jerk doing 45 in the left lane.”
With 13 hours ahead of us, we’re not about to attract any unwanted attention. “I set the cruise for a pretty consistent five miles over,” he explains. “It’s sort of like a gift the police give you. Better not to push it. The only reason I can afford to do this is because I can make the trip for about sixty bucks each way. One $250 ticket will blow my budget for the next four weeks.”
He’s not kidding about the cost, either. For the trip, the Prius, even with the added drag of the polka dots, manages a pretty consistent 48 mpg. By carefully choosing where he purchases gas, he avoids the $4+ Chicago city cost, and fills up in Ohio for $3.25, and Virginia for $3.09.
The last few days moving into the apartment from the storage unit involved the Prius, though. So, we go as far as we can, but are forced to fill up in Spiceland, Indiana at $3.49. The car only holds 12 gallons, and we fill it up: $32.18. “Ouch,” he says, pointing at the pump next to us, which reads $105.27.
When I ask him if he’s concerned about falling asleep at the wheel, he laughs. “I really like to drive, and thankfully, the only really boring parts are at the beginning and end, but that’s where the traffic is, so I have to stay on my toes. US 35 through Ohio and West Virginia and the West Virginia Turnpike up through the mountains of Virginia and North Carolina are some of the most beautiful landscapes this country has to offer. If I’m going to complain about the driving, it’s certainly not the drive itself that I’m complaining about. It’s just, well, about 780 miles longer than I really planned on.”
He’s right about the boring part. Generally, I-65 is a flat, dull two-lane road, broken up only by the other-worldly view of the Meadow Lake Wind Farm, a bizarre landscape of hundreds of immense windmills, set about halfway between Chicago and Indianapolis. This morning though, the fog on its’ little cat feet is playing hide-and-seek, causing the trucks ahead of us to appear and disappear as we head southward. Other than losing the signal to WLS radio, there’s little to indicate that we’re even moving. We never see the telltale lights of the windmills through the fog.
I mention that we’re going to hit Indianapolis right before rush hour. But Dave leans forward and moves the clock up an hour. “Nope – we just crossed the time line. We’re going right through the middle of rush hour. When I was little, we used to live in South Bend, Indiana, which is just on the Eastern Time side. My family lived in Valparaiso, Michigan City, and Whiting, which is just on the Central Time side. I couldn’t figure out for years how we would leave at 2:15pm for a 2pm appointment and get there early, but we would leave Grandma’s house at 6pm, and it would already be time for bed by the time we got home. I thought my parents were making stuff up just to confuse me.”
Despite the hour, the traffic in Indianapolis isn't bad. As we’re heading east on I-70, I want to know more about this insane commute. “I tell my kids that they can do anything they set their mind to, but they have to be willing to set limits on what they’ll accept. I call it ‘plan C.’ What’s the worst that could happen? And are you willing to accept that possibility? If you are, then accept it and move ahead with your plans.
We wanted to get the kids accepted into the one particular school. They were. We wanted to find the perfect living situation. It took a little while, but we got it. I completed my Masters at the top of my class and went through a number of interviews. I wanted to have a job in place on August 1st. Plan C was using the Prius and commuting to work in North Carolina. So, here we are.
I really can’t complain. As long as my family is in the best school for our situation and I can keep everyone fed and in a safe home, I have a job, which is more than a lot of people right now. My dad used to quote Wally Lamb, ‘I cried because I had no shoes. Then I met a man who had no feet.’ It doesn’t seem right to complain.
After 9/11, I was unemployed for nine months. Over 150,000 people in the travel industry lost their livelihoods, including me. I had been in travel for over a decade and had offers all over the country – and POOF – it was gone in a matter of hours. But at least we didn’t lose anyone we knew in the Towers or Pentagon.
What’s funny is, my fifteen minutes’ of fame sort of came out of that. I was quoted in the New York Times of all things, and because my wife was 7 months pregnant at the time, we were featured as ‘the local face of the tragedy’ on a few local news shows. It didn’t help me find a job, but maybe our own personal tragedy helped some people to connect. I don’t know.”
As we cross into Ohio, David reaches over and punches an “O” on the phone, watches traffic for a moment, then hits “H” and Enter to send a short text to his wife. “I’ve watched people drive like they were completely drunk, weaving back and forth at highway speeds, trying to text while they’re driving. They’re crazy. If I’m typing more than a letter or two, I pull over. But I do like to let my wife know when I cross states. She keeps track of my progress that way.”
Interstate 75 is under construction, so we fall quiet as we dodge traffic cones and cement barriers, looking for the exit to US 35. The GPS gets a little confused at this point, showing us hanging over space and continually rerouting us until Dave kills the volume. The exit suddenly appears and we dart to the right, and a confused van nearly hits the cement barrier trying to catch the brief exit before it disappears. But it all settles out, and we make it onto the similarly coned and heavily signed highway, with the speed limit dropping to 45. “Uh oh – this isn’t going to end well.”
I crane my neck to see what David’s watching in the rear view mirror, and hear an older car’s engine whine by at high speed. A young girl driving what looks to be a Dodge Dart is trying to weave through traffic, but there are a lot of cars, and not a lot of space. “Remember what I said about the police? This is not an area to speed through.”
Watching the girl rocket into the left lane, she finally finds daylight and smashes the gas pedal around a turn. Sitting in the median is an Ohio State trooper. The girl slams on the brakes so hard she nearly slides into the officer. Dave puts on his turn signal, and we all dutifully move into the right lane so the more-then-slightly-agitated officer can catch up to her. She’s already pulled over, and is waiting for him on the side of the road.
“I’ve been blessed in my dealings with the police,” Dave says. “I never got in any trouble growing up, and the one or two times I really needed to get somewhere in a hurry, they were dutifully nowhere to be found. When my step-mom called from Dallas last year to say that my dad was in the hospital, and I really needed to get there immediately, there was only one flight left that night. It was leaving Charlotte airport in about two hours. We lived a good two and a half hours from Charlotte. My wife appeared from out of nowhere with a hastily packed suitcase, I threw it in my Geo Metro, and drove like the proverbial bat out of hell, praying the whole time for the police to be somewhere else.
They complied beautifully. I pulled up into valet parking, explained the situation at light speed, they called US Air, and I sprinted across the airport, running onto the plane as they closed the door behind me. For all the good it did me. I made the flight, but he never made it out of the operating room.
We have very strong hearts, my family. Always have. We sometimes joke that my grandpa’s heart would probably still be beating if it hadn’t broken when Grandma died.
My dad had a great heart, but weak arteries. We found this out when he came in from cutting the grass and collapsed on the bed. Do you know what an aneurysm is? It’s when a blood vessel ruptures and bursts. They fix it by putting a sort of bandage around it and securing it to the next piece of strong blood vessel they can find. They ran all the way from the top to the bottom, and every time they would try to connect the bandage, the next piece of blood vessel would disintegrate. ‘It was like overcooked pasta’ the doctor explained with a sad, defeated shake of his head. 'I did everything I could.'
(continues)
