Got up early to the sounds of grinding gears. After yesterday’s great plains hellride, Gary and I simply pulled over and posted up in a rest stop, hidden in the big rigs. And when those truckers get moving early in the morning, it’s loud. Really.

029. “Woke up to some beautiful details.”

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We were a little past Des Moines, and hammered the final 250 miles to the big city Chicago.

030. “Chicago: A city by the lake.”

Now, the fodder on this “weblog” usually files somewhere under the “Hot Air” category. Here’s some more horseshit to add to it:

On the way into the city this morning, en route to Coudal Partners to “talk business,” I experienced the mindblowing benefit, and, romantic drawback of my new iPhone. Now, in the olden days, I’d come flying into the city, you know, coming in real hot and wild, and lost and shit. If I had my act together, I’d stop outside of the city, locate my place on the map, make a couple calls, etc, to pinpoint where the hell I was going. But that usually wasn’t the deal. Well this morning, not five miles before the city limit I typed in “400 North May Street, 60622” into my Google Maps feature and had a play by play route pop up instantly. Amazing. Four turns later and I was in front of Coudal Partners.

Now, this was efficient and took a lot of the magical pain out of the transaction, but, it kinda felt a little too, uh…easy, or something. Before, I’d wing it and use my gypsy senses to hone in on my location. No matter how much of a junkshow I was rolling into town, I’d eventually track the target down.

But today, it was just, “handled for me by the little machine in my hand”…

…swerving all over congested highway, on my way in.

“iSwerve.”

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Got into the city and shot the sheet with Coudal about our upcoming Field Notes launch. Orders are piling up!

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Got out of the “Captains of the Graph Paper Industry” meeting and headed right the hell out of the city, around the Gary horn and all the way up North to Traverse City, and, my gal Leigh. Just like that. Only one stop so everyone could piss and refill the tank.

It was “Real Good” to be back home, with her.

031. “Heading north.”