Stops 18-25: A bunch of places in Indiana and also Chicago 

This afternoon was spent cruising through the doldrums. The majority of our drive time was spent on two lane highways surrounded by fields. I’d doze off and wake up and I could have been convinced that we hadn’t actually moved anywhere. I never left the bus throughout Indiana and based on my last experience there, I don’t think I missed much. 

While this experience hasn’t been fun, it certainly could be much worse. On my last bus, one of the passengers boarded in NY and was riding to Oakland. Another was going to Vancouver. There’s even someone who got on my bus back in Syracuse and is also riding to Minneapolis. 

I realize that I’m extremely fortunate to be in a position where I can just “throw away” a weekend to spend it doing something that pretty much everyone around me has to do, for one reason or another. Not only could this be construed in some perverse way as a vacation, but I’m also financially in a position where at any stop that I had sufficient time, I could buy what I wanted. I joked about luxury in an earlier post, but when I finally made it to Chicago, I didn’t think twice about buying a prepacked sandwich and juice for $9 and that freedom truly is a luxury. 

I briefly mentioned perspective in another post and that’s the theme that I keep coming back to. In my day-to-day life, I don’t often interact with someone who sees $1.50 bags of chips in a vending machine and simply cannot afford them. While that in itself isn’t a problem, it makes it very easy to lose sight of the bigger picture. 

My life is literally filled with blessings and opportunities, yet there are plenty of times when I find myself focused on negative events or occurrences. As minor (or even major) they may be, it’s important to always try to keep a sense of perspective and realize that things are pretty damn good. 

So even though I still have almost a full day of travel remaining, I say bring it on.