Back home again in Indiana...

While the drive out to Topeka wasn't brutal, I benefitted by gaining an hour, and I hadn't just spent two days in class.

On the return trip, I decided to exploit my Holiday Inn loyalty status by snagging a discounted hotel room halfway home. This meant I could depart Topeka late enough to miss morning rush hour and get into Wentzville, MO on the far west side of Saint Louis before evening rush hour started there. Then Tuesday morning I could make another leisurely departure and roll into Indy somewhere around 2:30-3:30 in the afternoon.

Along about Effingham, halfway across Illinois, the sky got ugly. Shortly after that, it opened up into an apocalyptic downpour. From Effingham to Terre Haute, I-70 occasionally slowed to a 40mph crawl as I tried to squint through rain that was like like a cow peeing on a flat rock just to see the taillights of the car ahead of mine.

I pulled off at Terre Haute to get gas, and got back on the interstate. It was only raining within normal parameters until I got to the I-465 perimeter highway around Indianapolis. From there into downtown Indy it was again raining streetcars and taxicabs and I could barely see twenty feet in front of the car.

Siri then started chirping for me to bail on the interstate miles before I normally would. I resisted for one exit, but by the second, traffic on I-70 had slowed so much that I got off at the Harding Street exit, then had to resist Siri's blandishments as she kept trying to steer me through the geographically quickest route home...through some of the sketchiest neighborhoods in town.

"No thanks, Siri, I'll just cut over to Illinois on 16th and head north from there. I'm good."
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