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A post every 6th months? Sure, that will work.

After one Chicago to Boston drive followed by another Jess and I are finally here, in Boston, with our cat and all of our stuff. The first drive we used to get our car to the east coast and find ourselves an apartment, and the second drive, two weeks later, was in a rental truck filled to the brim with all of our worldly possessions. I don’t know if it’s a good or bad thing that two people can fit everything they’ve accumulated over their lifetime into a 12×10 truck. It doesn’t sound like very much stuff in those terms, but it sure as hell felt like a lot when Lucas and I we’re carrying the boxes down the stairs from our 3rd story apartment. The drive in the truck took us just about 24 hours. During the last half we stopped at just about every single rest stop. We’d gotten ourselves stuck in this loop of stopping for coffee, then to pee, then for more coffee, then to pee again etc etc. There was one guy we kept seeing at each rest stop too, parked like us with the big trucks. He seemed to get himself in a similar pattern of stops, though when parked next to him we could clearly see him doing lines of coke.

There aren’t too many notable attractions on the drive between Chicago and Boston. It isn’t complicated either. You get on I-90 in Chicago and drive until you get to Boston. On both trips we really had to restrain ourselves from stopping at the RV and Motor Home Hall of Fame. I wanted more than anything to see the Eagle-5 from Spaceballs and Cousin Eddie’s RV from Christmas Vacation. But alas, we were crunched for time on both trips and knew that stopping for 8 or 10 hours to see all that this magical place had to offer was not in the schedule. Cleveland is one heck of a town also. It’s not every day that you drive past a river and get to say “See that river? That river caught on fire.. more than once!“. Jess was almost ready to change all our plans and just move us to Cleveland instead of Boston when we stumbled upon a radio station that only played hits of the 90’s. We’re not talkin those soft rock, adult contemporary hits of the 90’s - I mean Pearl Jam-Soundgarden-Ugly Kid Joe-Green Jello Big Bad Wolf hits of the 90’s.

Before I moved (or even the first year year in) if you’d told me that in Boston I’d be homesick for Chicago I would have.. well, you know what I’m getting at. I’m not sure if it helped or hurt the homesicky feeling, but on the second night after we moved Jess and I headed out to see Chicago favorite Jon Langford and the Waco Brothers at TTs. Jonny is one of those artist who always mills about the venue before and after his sets, talking and shooting the shit with anyone who comes up to him. I didn’t get a chance to say hi to him at this show, though Jess did when she bumped into him in the women’s bathroom. There was an opener, though we didn’t watch them. Jess and I just kinda sat down and took in the surreal feeling of being in Boston with a bunch of Chicago regulars kicking around the club. We got up to watch Chris Mills. He’s this bizarro American version of our Chicago via London friend Martin. They both have the exact same body, haircut and even similar faces. The Wacos went on next and as expected rocked the place. If you’ve heard the Live and Kickin at Schubas album that’s probably the best description I’m willing to give you. They came out for their encore and started right into covers with thier version of George Jones White Lighning, followed by a blistering cover of Cash’s Big River (personally, my favorite Cash tune) and ended with a tribute to Bo Diddly who had died that day. We left and hitched a cab home. The cab driver didn’t know how to get to our house, and really, neither did we but it was a pretty painless ride. We got home with our ears ringing, tired, sweaty and a little drunker that we had planned for a Monday night, but it seemed like a nice welcome to Boston, and way to say so long to Chicago.