Today it was Thelma and Louise vs. Day 18.<\/p>\n
Day 18 lulled us into a false sense of security during the long, smooth ride from Minneapolis across the green fields of Wisconsin on our way to our final destination of Chicago.<\/p>\n
Day 18 gave us no traffic, clear roads and and beautiful weather as we made excellent time.<\/p>\n
Day 18 was kind to us on gas and bathroom stops. She had the best radio stations to date.<\/p>\n
Until late in the day across the Illinois state line. <\/p>\n
Then she turned.<\/p>\n
She started charging us ridiculous tolls every 10 feet. She switched up the descriptions of the campground to not provide a shuttle service to downtown as originally planned, but be 20 miles from the nearest train station and 55 from Miracle Mile. She needled the children for the first time all trip by not staying on her side nor keeping her hands to herself. She took the last of the diapers without telling anyone on the day in which that would be an issue. Then that minx of a day tried to make the slide on the RV malfunction and the battery need a reset.<\/p>\n
Day 18 underestimated Thelma and Louise.<\/p>\n
Just when Day 18 began her premature victory dance, our heroines rented a car–with seats!–so the night in Chicago would be saved. They crawled under the RV and did major mechanical work in record time. They drove like bosses through the countryside and tight city streets. (You should see Louise’s parking spot–epic.) And even when 18 closed the most famous deep dish pizza place in the city as we walked up tired and hungry due to a power outage, well, we went to the 2nd best a few blocks away and got a table for 8 in 5 minutes.<\/p>\n
Did you really think that after a half dozen different campgrounds on this trip alone that you’d catch us flappable when the guy said our site was for 5 not 8? And that diaper thing–I bet you were counting on that for that to be a potty training moment in a Culver’s in rural Illinois.<\/p>\n
WHO DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DEALING WITH, DAY 18????*<\/p>\n
If you need character references, I suggest you go back to your associates, Days 14 and 9. Meanwhile, you can just fade off into the sunset and we will meet 20 on Michigan Avenue tomorrow.**<\/p>\n
(*This is by no means a challenge, Day 18. If there are any misunderstanding today, we apologize profusely and no need for you to seek revenge or a reappearance.)<\/em><\/p>\n (**Faithful Reader, if this seems like a lemons to lemonade post, you would be correct. Our version was in the form of a carafe of Italian Lemonade served at Gino’s East to accompany our deep dish.)<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Today it was Thelma and Louise vs. Day 18. Day 18 lulled us into a false sense of security during the long, smooth ride from Minneapolis across the green fields of Wisconsin on our way to our final destination of Chicago. 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She is reading responses from Pearl, Gene and Tito. She is flipping through the RV manual and saying words I don't understand like, \"alternator\"\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Column"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":676,"url":"http:\/\/www.suburbandiva.com\/2016\/07\/10\/day-2-st-louiskc\/","url_meta":{"origin":713,"position":1},"title":"Day 2–St. Louis\/KC","date":"July 10, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"The first question people usually ask when they hear about this trip is whether or not we ever burn ourselves on the crack pipe we surely must be smoking to attempt this. The second most frequently asked is if the RV is hard to drive. The answer to that (and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Column"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":723,"url":"http:\/\/www.suburbandiva.com\/2016\/08\/09\/postscript-and-legal-notes\/","url_meta":{"origin":713,"position":2},"title":"Postscript and legal notes","date":"August 9, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Now that we've been back a few days and Louise's legal team has had a chance to review the material, (she's so high maintenance) I thought I'd offer a couple of clarifications from our recent trip. ~All of the mystery rashes and various infections have been cleared up. The only\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Column"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1006,"url":"http:\/\/www.suburbandiva.com\/2021\/08\/02\/headed-home\/","url_meta":{"origin":713,"position":3},"title":"Headed Home","date":"August 2, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"There comes a time on every trip when you know it's time to pull up stakes and head home. For this vacation, that point came when I had to wrestle the rhinestone-studded tweezers from Louises' hands when I feared she was going to stab a stranger who tried to mansplain\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Column"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":551,"url":"http:\/\/www.suburbandiva.com\/2014\/05\/10\/happy-mothers-day-for-real\/","url_meta":{"origin":713,"position":4},"title":"Happy Mother’s Day. For real.","date":"May 10, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"My discomfort for Mother\u2019s Day is well-documented. Over the years, I\u2019ve explained that since my own mom passed away 13 years ago, ownership of this day has not been possible for me. This has eased slightly in recent years, or at the very least, worn the edges of the day\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Column"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":678,"url":"http:\/\/www.suburbandiva.com\/2016\/07\/11\/day-3-and-almost-my-last\/","url_meta":{"origin":713,"position":5},"title":"Day 3 (and almost my last)","date":"July 11, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"I thought it might take a little longer, but Day 3 was the moment Louise tried to kill me. I should have known something was amiss when she returned to the campsite with a trail of cheap wine from Walgreen's that led to the back of a rented white U-Haul\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.suburbandiva.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/IMG_3236.jpg?fit=900%2C1200&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.suburbandiva.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/713"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.suburbandiva.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.suburbandiva.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.suburbandiva.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.suburbandiva.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=713"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.suburbandiva.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/713\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":715,"href":"http:\/\/www.suburbandiva.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/713\/revisions\/715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.suburbandiva.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.suburbandiva.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.suburbandiva.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}