Fergus to Madison, or “the Elegance of the finger”

So dog and I had the honor of a cop escort out of Fergus Ontario – upon exit we duly pointed Mathilda west on 6. Reached the plains of Ontario and had an uneventful crossing, over the unexpected azure-colored water with the Canadian and American flag flying high at Sarnia and had a brief debate whether to head due west to Flint, honor Michael Moore and cross Lake Michigan on the ferry or wrangle with memories in Ann Arbor and run the gauntlet of Chicago. My deep-seeded hatred of everything law and worry over the “in transit” plates of the truck pushed us toward the latter – I really didn’t want to wait in line for the ferry and time everything etc. etc. 

So south by southwest we traveled – each of us having our own private moment of sadness and reflection as we stopped at Zingerman’s Roadhouse for the pulled pork. We lived, or rather I lived and he visited at 715 S. Forest Ave off Main Street. Ann Arbor a sweet, cloud-covered town. Dog was seriously pissed off not to get any pulled port with South Carolina vinegar sauce and collards and wouldn’t look at me for at least an hour – he just plugged his snout into the air conditioner and considered the situation.

Back on the road in the heat we began to hit the dystopia of Gary Indiana. Eight years previous I hitchhiked out of Gary in what was quite possibly the most depressing four hours of waiting for a ride at the toll booth of my life. Got a ride on 80 to somewhere in Ohio, slept by a gas station, caught another ride in the morn with a music producer, huddled under a rainfly by an exit in western Pennsylvania. I recall being so sad, so sad and quite alive.

Only a 1500 Toyota Forerunner who sounded like she had a growing exhaust manifold leak separated dog and I from that predicament. We prayed on the altar of her dashboard.

I have this idea of writing a stringer article for the Times on dancing salsa across the US. Apparently there was a good spot in Madison Wisconsin on Thursday night – College Night at the Cardinal Bar. It would be a long day of driving, but we set our cross-hairs for that.

At first we stopped every couple miles to pay the 50 and 60 cent tolls around Chicago – but after a while it got old, and one of the beauty of in-transit plates is that, well – we can cruise. And cruise we did, right beneath the purple panoptical eyes of the highway authority, Dog missing the biscuit he routinely scores at the tolls.

We hit the Wisconsin border, going on about 12 hours of near constant driving. A trucker cut me off, and I cut him off back (flooring Mathilda, much to her groaning displeaure) and exited soon thereafter for gas. As I exited he gunned the truck and I swear, in gestures almost balletic, we both raised our arms and extended fingers out the window at the exact, I mean the exact same moment. I can only hope that he took some pleasure in this life-affirming coordination of mutual hatred and disregard.

We pulled into Madison just as the sun set – what a sweet town, the entrance skirting along Lake Winona. Dog was all too eager to get out after the long day and take a dip in the lake – much to the chagrin of the wood ducks. We took a long walk, then he curled up on the furniture blanket and I went to find a place to eat, which ended up being some awful brew-pub not far from the capitol playing techno and the Heat game on silent. I ate a not-so-good bacon cheeseburger as Lebron soared through the air. I walked the neighborhoods, quiet Sears mail-order Arts & Crafts type houses. The ease of a college town. And down to the Cardinal. It was college night and, speaking frankly, I felt like a dirty old guy. The amount of good dancers was not huge, and the club devolved into reggaeton fairly quickly. So after a short bit of time I figured I had enough if that article ever saw the light of day and headed back to the truck. We hit the road, unsure of where we were headed – and decided to bit the bullet and stay in a KOA site.

I thought long and hard about the relationship between our forefathers in their covered wagons – a mock-up of which greeted visitors – and the modern-day equivalents in their RVs as I set up the Big Agnes tent, and came up with nothing.

In the morning I saw that the KOA was impressively located in De Forest Wisconsin – by a cell tower and behind a Subway. Dog did not appreciate sleeping in a tent, nor did he appreciate the Subway so near (see pic) and made his displeasure evident. I reminded myself that I very much needed to reread the opening chapters of Travels with Charley: An American Adventure – those first few pages before it too devolves into nothingness. But that opening! How wonderful.

In the morning I broke down the tent and pulled out early – just as folks in their monstrous RVs fired up the gas and started cooking bacon and god knows what else on their huge Viking stoves or whatever they’re packing in there. Dog posed for a couple shots on the semi-urban outskirt of this seemingly inconsequential midwestern town – nothing about the midwest, only about the contents of De Forest – and we pushed on to a remarkable diner near the Wisconsin Dells, which used both salvage – a tractor seat and old milk jug for a bar stool – and anticipated way ahead the amount of coffee they would need to be serving.

Their specialty, by the way, the corned beef hash, completely hit the spot. I made another mental note to make an entry on Roadfood.com about what a score this place was – but that will never happen, who are we kidding.

Got back outside to see that Cal had decided to take the wheel – we were going back east he decided, back to the folks who love us. Enough of this craziness.