Day 37: Wheaton, IL

Eventually the rain in Memphis lightened up quite a bit, or at least enough that I would be able to see where I was going, so I just threw on all my rain gear and continued north.  Most of the rain was along I-55, so I wound my way northwest through Arkansas and Missouri until I hit US-67, which took me back northeast into St. Louis.  I think I may have figured out why Arkansas is the poorest state in the country.  In Mississipi I saw a lot of corn fields.  Across the river in Arkansas I saw a lot of neatly cultivated rows of dirt.  In all the heavy rain most of those neatly cultivated rows of dirt turned into lots and lots of mud.  I saw a domesticated zebra in Arkansas, just hanging out in a pasture with a bunch of mules and small horses.  One zebra.  Not even a pair.  It was possibly the strangest thing I've seen so far.  The folks in Arkansas are nearly as nice as the folks out on the bayou in Louisiana.  Everywhere I stopped people wanted to talk to me.  It was as if no one had ever seen a sportbike before, and the idea that anyone would ride one all the way from Washington state to their tiny little town in Arkansas was just unbelievable to them.  The girls at the gas station teased me about riding in the rain, the young guys wanted to know all about the bike, and all the old guys gave me somber warnings to ride safely, and be careful.

Missouri is a pretty state, and almost every view from the road could be called picturesque.  That being said, there's really nothing interesting about it.  Nothing significantly sets it apart from Mississipi, Arkansas, or Illinois, aside from the effort that they seem to put into maintaining that picturesque appearance.  Every lawn is trimmed, every house is neatly painted, even the grass growing along the highways seemed like it was actually tended and cared for.  I stopped in Fredericktown, which is a charming little community about 90 miles south of St. Louis, looking for a barbcue restaurant that my brother had heard about called The Pig.  Some yokels on the internet claimed that it was the best barbecue in the state, and worth the two hour drive from St. Louis.  Since I ended up on route 67 to avoid the rain, it seemed like providence.  With a little searching I was able to find the place, and it looked like what you'd expect from a drive-in barbecue shop that's been open since 1947.  When I saw the menu on the wall I thought it was a typo.  $2.40 for a pork sandwich.  When the price was confirmed, I thought I had hit the jackpot.  As soon as I saw it, I realized why it was only $2.40.  It was about two ounces of meat squished between two pieces of white bread and grilled in a sandwich iron.  I finished it in about two minutes, and when the girl came back and asked if I was done with my plate I said 'yeah, unless you want to put a couple more sandwiches on there.'  I figured for two and a half bucks I could sample just about everything on the menu.  All said and done, I had a 'Brown' which is theoretically made from just the edge of the pork shoulder, so it has the most smoke flavor, a 'Combo' which is basically a Brown with a slice of american cheese melted on top, a fried catfish sandwich, pulled pork, and coleslaw, along with a couple bottles of soda.  I hadn't eaten anything all day because I was anticipating the best barbecue in the state of Missouri.  After making my way through three sandwiches that were good, but less than impressive, and a tiny little dixie cup full of coleslaw that wasn't any good (and cost me a $1.75) I decided to forego the white bread and just orded the pulled pork without the sandwich.  It took the little girl a couple seconds to catch on, but she asked the cook to 'throw in a little extra, cuz he seems kinda hungry'.  The pulled pork actually turned out to be pretty good.  It was the only thing that really impressed me, which is nice, otherwise I would have walked away incredibly full, but not very satisfied.  It was a typical midwest style, with smoked, shredded pork stewed in a thick, sweet, tomato based sauce, and it was really pretty delicious.  I ate a ridiculous amount of food and the bill was still five dollars less than my rib dinner in Memphis, so I can't complain too much.  Besides, to find this place I ended up on a tiny little highway out in the country which turned out to be the best road of the entire day.  Perfect blacktop, smooth, winding turns, and beautiful farm houses and ponds and orchards and pastures to my left and to my right.

I made it into St. Louis about an hour after dark and rode straight past the Arch.  It's huge.  I was never really that impressed by it before.  I always thought 'It's a big arch; who cares?'  But it's absolutely enormous, and when it's lit up at night it's quite pretty.  St. Louis is a beautiful town, probably the prettiest city that I've seen so far.  Even some of the more beat up neighborhoods south and west of downtown are full of old brick houses and tenements that show a lot of character and soul, even if they're not so well kept or restored.  I decided to take a tour of the Anheuser-Busch brewery while I was there.  I'm not a big Budweiser fan (in fact I kind of hate it) but it's the biggest brewery in all of North America, so I had to check it out.  I was pleasantly surprised to find out that the tour is free and even includes two free beers in the tap room at the end of the tour.  Free beer always tastes better.  I've probably been to more than thirty breweries in four different countries, and this was by far the biggest and the nicest.  Parts of it were built in the 1880s and they've built new additions to it as late as the 1990s, but they've done a really nice job of maintaining the architectural style.  A lot of the brewery sits on land that was originally part of the Busch family estate, and some of the existing buildings were part of that estate.  Regardless of what you think of their beer, the brewery has a lot of history, and it was fun to see beer being made on such a massive scale.

After my brewery tour I had lunch at a place called Penny's BBQ, famous for their ribs and their pork steak.  I'd never heard of a pork steak before and I assumed it was basically a big pork chop.  It's a little more than that.  The chef used to be a meat cutter for Kroger, so he cuts every pork steak himself, and each one is smoked individually, then grilled and smothered in a honey barbecue sauce.  It's listed on the menu as an 18oz Pork Steak for $10.99, but I swear I've had 20oz porterhouse steaks that weren't as big as this.  It was enormous, about two and a half inches thick and the size of an oval dinner plate, and there was only one tiny little bone in it.  They had home made potato salad and coleslaw to go with it.  The potato salad was possibly the best I've ever had, and when I told my mother about it she was horrified.  Her coleslaw is still better though.  I don't know how they got the potato salad to be so rich without being incredibly dense and pasty.  I think they may have used whipped butter.  I don't know, but it was damn good.  The pork steak was also wonderful, and for the first time in my life I felt like I may have eaten enough pork for one day.  But that didn't stop me...

After all that food I had no choice but to go back to the hotel and take a nap.  Nap taken, I went downstairs to the lobby where they had free drinks from 5:30 to 7:00.  St. Louis is quite a beer town, but you'd better be willing to drink Bud, Bud Light, or Busch. Cuz that's what you get.  I heard a rumor that President Obama had 150 pizzas flown from a little place in St. Louis called Pi (the mathematical symbol) all the way to Washington, D.C. because it's his favorite pizza in the country.  Normally I don't pay much attention to celebrities' opinions, especially politicians, but for a Chicago kid to say that his favorite pizza comes from St. Louis, well, that's a pretty gutsy claim.  So I had no choice but to check it out.  The place itself drove me nuts.  It's in a trendy, gentrified part of town and was packed wall to wall with ageing yuppies and rich young hipsters, and is the kind of pizza place that has a bigger wine list than menu, but before I finished my first beer a seat opened up at the bar so I seized it and settled in to wait for my pizza and observe the crowd.  The bartender confirmed the rumor that it was, in fact, Obama's favorite pizza, but rather than having 150 pizzas shipped to Washington he had the chef and kitchen crew flown out to Washington D.C. and they cooked the pizzas there.  Much more sensible.  Anyhow, I ordered the South Side Classico (deep dish), which came with onions, green bell peppers, italian sausage, and of course mozarella.  The sauce was incredible.  It had huge chunks of tomato and tasted strongly of fresh basil and wasn't overly seasoned with garlic or oregano.  The crust was just right, crispy on the outside where it seared on the pan, but fluffy and chewy on the inside.  I can't however, say it's the best pizza in the country.  Too much sauce, not enough toppings.  It's a deep dish.  The reason you make a deep dish pizza is to fit more toppings on it.  That's why they were invented.  I could barely taste the sausage, and there weren't nearly enough peppers or onions on it.  It was still a fine pizza, just not the best in the country.

The following day, having exhausted my food and lodging budget for St. Louis, and still full from all the pork and pizza, I set out for Chicago, or at least the outskirts thereof.  I took the interstate, which was boring, but after all, this is Illinois.  The highway engineers of the midwest have less imagination than a slice of wonderbread.  "Go straight for 15 miles.  Make a 90 degree turn to the right.  Go straight for three quarters of a mile.  Make a 90 degree turn to the left.  Go straight for 30 more miles.  If there's a hill, get the dynamite; we're going straight through it.  I'll be damned if this road is anything but flat."  Not that there are really any hills to worry about.  I saw an exit sign for Mt. Pulaski.  The closest thing to a mountain I could see was a hill about as tall as a three story apartment building.  There are bigger hills in Seattle that don't even have names, let alone aspire to the title of 'Mountain'.

I haven't been in the Chicago area for very long, but already it looks like my schedule is filling up.  We had a big family barbecue in Elgin yesterday with my mother's side of the family.  Tonight I'm taking my grandmother out for dinner.  Later this week I'll be having dinner with my father's side of the family.  Later still I'll be having lunch or dinner with my old boss from Safeco who moved here a few years ago.  And somewhere in between I'll be changing my oil & air filter, going for bike rides with all three of my uncles, and spending some time with all of my cousins.  I should still have plenty of time to relax before I head out west, finally in the direction of home.