A phrase that has immediately given the chronicler high blood pressure since it entered his vocabulary in 2018. This time it's serious. He's riding with Trailroad. Another company that won't let it run under any circumstances and the driver isn't being malicious, just rule-abiding, so they're not allowed to transport the bike. The chronicler panics, sees his plan evaporate and the West disappear into the fog. So they fight. Maybe the counter has boxes. It doesn't, and the black woman there, whose appearance dates back to the time when she was on tour with Aretha Franklin, doesn't care much.
At the gate, he shows the driver the large plastic bag lapping over the edge of a large rubbish bin. Would that be ok? He nods. Without further ado, the chronicler tips the rubbish into another bin and Scott's bum into the bag. The driver nods again. The bus is clean, equipped with modern screens and quite full. It has worked, but somehow bothers the chronicler.
Hopefully the transfer driver is also happy with it
He has to change buses once and is curious to see what the next driver has to say. Now, during the break, he is sitting in the deepest Midwest in a locally run restaurant, surrounded by huge car parks and the 24,000 inhabitants that make up Burlington. He has three hours to tell you all about it. Don't worry, it won't be too much.
This is the first time he has skipped a day, as announced. He had an appointment with the sister-in-law of an old friend, Sabine.
From the in-house reading room on the fifty-sixth floor
Not only did she put him up in her spectacular flat on the twenty-eighth floor, right on Lake Michigan. She did his laundry, gave him his monthly injection because she's also a doctor and took him out with her lively boyfriend Alan. It was fun and interesting and late at the end. Thank you Sabine, thank you Alan. He had to get up again at five in the morning to get to the bus station.
Alan and Sabine discuss the question
Alan thinks quickly. In response to the chronicler's question, he rattles off: 100% Jesus. Politicians are incompetent. They have organised the economy in such a way that the ratio of CEO salary to average income has risen from one to eight to one to fifty since the seventies. It has failed to provide more paid leave, paid maternity leave, and health insurance. and today has the record of 120,000 drug deaths from last year on its hands.
Alan is also a doctor, will vote for Mr Biden and is preparing a speech for a Harvard alumni reunion this weekend. Sabine has seven-day shifts and currently has four weeks off. As a German, she is staying out of the topic, but seems a little piqued that Alan also sees certain necessities in politics from the Trump toolbox.
At the start in South Bend yesterday morning, the chronicler had another part of society on the hook.
Rick and Jim do business over breakfast
Rick and Jim like to be disturbed, realise what he wants and come round the corner with 20-20-60 and ⅓ - ⅓ - ⅓. Rick says that if we have 60% Jesus in us, the remaining, necessary 40% will inevitably work well. The chronicler forgot to ask for their personal details. Sorry.
The cranking was fine. The traffic was bearable, at times he could use the brand new carriageway alone for kilometres in the roadworks area.
The chronicler would probably know a few candidates
Flat land and a tailwind. Agriculture dominates here. Covered in dust, farm tractors rush over the huge fields, which would delight the chronicler's grandchildren. House-high red Case machines with four equally large rubber track drives, oversized triangles on the sides for propulsion and low ground pressure.
The sun is shining, he stupidly leaves Michigan to the right. Why not take a look over a cup of coffee? After a break, the sky turns pitch black as we head north. Even the chronicler's heart sinks. At the last minute, he takes refuge in a rusty industrial building at the side of the road. Lucky for him.
Torrential rain around Chicago
Large equipment for specialised civil engineering is repaired between oil drums and tool benches. Machines for the foundations of high-rise buildings. Always hard and noisy dirty work. He doesn't understand much of what the people explain to him in slang and at high speed. The sky is colossal over the hall. In such a way that the chronicler would have barely survived in the wild, but would have been rendered useless for days. The parts of his equipment forever. There was enough time to interview Casey before the road was passable. He is married, has two girls and appears to be a chief mechanic.
Casey, 25-25-50
The men bid the chronicler farewell with best wishes and warn him of the town's youthful gangs.
The almost forty kilometres to the city centre lead past tank farms, gutted steelworks corpses and large, steaming industrial plants. Chicago is not so easy to conquer. Firstly, there were more than 140 kilometres between the starting point and the destination and secondly, and this is something the chronicler has never experienced before, the blue dot goes crazy in the high-rise canyons, wandering back and forth uncontrollably. It only finds its way to the hostess via the traditional method of orientating itself by street names. He has not been shot at or robbed.
https://www.relive.cc/view/vYvE2kB5LGO
PS The chronicler doesn't want to leave out Etienne, who is sitting next to him on the bus, travelling to Davenport, Iowa, looking at him from the side with a mixture of disbelief, mockery and joy in his face. Etienne wants to know again and again why the chronicler is doing what he is doing. Is he a journalist? And he doesn't accept the question. You can't compare anyone with Jesus or even use parts of him.
He has four small children and answers evasively to the question of what he does for a living with factoring. He is of the opinion that politicians only serve their own interests. He has no idea and doesn't want to. He accepts what comes. What does it look like in Germany? The chronicler thinks well and adds that many people still complain and lament. Often unjustified, in his opinion. And Etienne is not dissuaded from his opinion that the people are right. If the politicians don't work properly, the people will clearly recognise this. He and the chronicler cannot come to a common denominator. But after this special hour, Etienne is at least convinced that the chronicler already knows what he is doing and can let him go in peace. At the next stop, Etienne can't be dissuaded from buying him coffee and chocolate. Thank you!
The chronicler showed good will, supplemented the bin liner with household foil from the dollar store and so the Scott disappeared into the bus cellar without any discussion.
Super. Do it well.
