no sleep 'til manchester (Day 8)

Free State Project migration Day 8 - Wed., 5/25/05 I spent this day driving through the "Rust Belt". And let me tell you, parts of it were pretty rusty. Definitely the ugliest day of driving of my whole trip. There was nothing attractive about the state of Indiana, as far as I could tell (to be fair, I only saw a small part of it). I was pleased that a Guns N' Roses song came on the radio as I was crossing it, though (Axl Rose and Izzy Stradlin' both come from Indiana). Michigan wasn't so bad. I've known a lot of cool people from Michigan, for some reason. And you've got to love a state with a town named "Kalamazoo". I headed north at Ann Arbor and bypassed the greater Detroit area. Michigan had more roadkill deer than I'd ever seen in my life. I sent loving thoughts to Michael Moore (just kidding) as I passed Flint and headed east towards Canada, which I had never been to. The border guard asked me a lot of questions; I was a bit surprised. Maybe he saw my boxes of STUFF and thought I was smuggling something. I was shocked to find that the speed limit signs all switched to metric in Canada; fortunately, my speedometer lists kilometers as well as miles, or I wouldn't have had a clue. I tried to follow the speed limit, but that was apparently considered uncool; absolutely everybody was passing me. But for some reason I was really stressed out at the thought of getting a ticket in another country, so I continued to drive slower than average. Western Ontario was amazingly empty. They have different fast food chains there. I passed a couple of good-sized cities, but there was no traffic to speak of. I didn't arrive at my destination of Niagara Falls until 10:00PM. My motel (the first one that wasn't a Motel6) was disappointingly ratty; I'll bet it was nice when it was new, but my room had not been well-maintained. I had a coffee maker in my room, but was only given DECAF. The outrage!! The air conditioner was a joke; I blasted it all night long and the room never cooled off. The motel restaurant was closed for the night, so I ate leftovers from Chicago that I'd had unrefrigerated in my car for 24 hours, hoping they wouldn't kill me, then went to sleep.