Since our next game was Thursday night in Minneapolis (which is over 560 miles from St. Louis), we drove after the Cardinal game from St. Louis north through the state of Illinois to Utica. This was a trek of roughly 230 miles, which made for a more manageable journey the next day before the Twins game.
Since the Cards-Brewers game ended right around the time rush hour was starting, it was pretty slow going across the Mississippi to start our trip north. Lots of traffic. We were listening to this sports radio talk show host named Steve Slaten busting on Tony LaRussa mercilessly. Just one bombastic rant after another. All heat, no light. Almost like it was a personal vendetta. We were all amazed at the level of vitriol directed at LaRussa, considering his record (5 pennants and 2 World Series titles) and his reputation.
It turns out it is personal. This jackass Slaten is the poster child for just about everything that is wrong with sports (and for that matter, political) talk radio. Read this disturbing profile of him (especially the episode where he put a private conversation with Cardinal’s pitching coach Dave Duncan on the air without Duncan’s permission). What a douche bag. Oh, and he is a born again Evangelical. He’ll probably run for Congress eventually (and win).
Just when we got out of the rush hour traffic and started making good time on I-55 in Illinois, we hit a big backup between Exit 33 and Exit 37 at Livingston. At this point, we learned from the radio that we were in the middle of a 4-5 mile backup. At that point, Rich asked if I could check the atlas to see if we maybe could bypass this logjam by exiting here and then picking up the interstate a few miles north. Exit 37 was fast approaching. I took a quick look at the atlas and saw what I thought looked like a good plan. We could exit here and pick up some state highways running parallel to I-55 and then join back up with the interstate around Litchfield. So I gave Rich the go-ahead and he exited.
The going was pretty slow but the scenery was beautiful. It was like we had been transplanted into John Mellencamp’s classic Small Town video. Miles of gorgeous corn fields in the late afternoon sun, punctuated with the occasional 1 or 2 stoplight towns. We even drove through a town hosting a County Fair. Classic small town Americana scenes. I guess the old saying is true: To really see America, you need to get off of the interstates.
Rich calculated later that evening that this detour had cost us 17 miles (or close to that). It probably cost us much more in time than in mileage though. We stopped for a brief dinner at Wendy’s and didn’t get to the campground in Utica until 10:00 or so. Everybody was pretty tired after a long day of driving and baseball, so we all crashed shortly thereafter.
