Kathy and CarlM turned up shortly thereafter, Kathy proudly stuck a printout of a post from skin_mechanic in my face when she arrived. It was a picture of a box, with my bday present inside, being sent to my house in New York while I drove west. Everyone on the Z3 planet knew what he had sent me, and kept the secret, saying only "Heh heh heh". I am still amazed that the Message Board could keep a secret like that. Pretty cool eh? Even Teachum had deleted the secret bday present files from his hard drive just in case I went poking around. JTP too. The Teachums and the Melbys had the sad journey ahead to share the burden of the loss of family of close Z3 friends. Nice friends who come out to stand with you when you have to bury a parent, even if you have to drive 4 or five hours and leave the Z3s at home. In a suit. We sent along a banana bread with our sincere sympathy for their loss. They went one way on dreaded 294 and we went the other, North and West please. I 294 still sucked as bad or worse than it did when we arrived and within a short time we abandoned it again. I could not for the life of me figure out why so many people were in a rush to get to Wisconsin. It took some poking around but we finally found a backroad that would take us all the way to JTP in Wisconsin. Route 14 was- as the French say, "pas mal". It even had some nice bits.

6 Day Two- 1/4 Lap of America Part 1 Another Change in Plans~~ Part 2 Indiana~~ Part 3 Chicago Roads~~ Part 4 The Pit~~ Part 5 Teachum's Garage~~ Part 6 Love and Hate on I-294~~ Part 7 Route 14~~ Part 8 Manona Terrace (FLW)~~

1/4 Lap of America Frank Lloyd Wright Gumball Page May 21-30, 2001 Esmerelda's Home Page