Point F: Oak Terrace

Start drive time: 8:14 AM CST
End drive time: 2:32 PM CST
Pit stops: Mt. Olive, Springfield
Miles driven today: 302
Total miles this trip: 2,596
Number of 25-foot-tall statues of men in swimsuits spotted on the side of the road: 1

Because the weather looked like this the night I was planning to leave St. Louis:

Man, you know it's bad when light poles start bundling up.

I was worried about the roads in Illinois and did not want another day of white-knuckle driving on skating rinks for hundreds of miles. Fortunately, the Paul Simon Freeway was clear and dry and I got to enjoy untrammeled views of rural Illinois for hundreds of miles to the tune of "Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes."

I was treated to the following vistas:

Fields

Pro-gun signs (my favorite of which was a 5-part stanza that read: "Criminals menacing/A lady alone/Require more/Than a phone/Guns Save Lives")

More fields
Pro-soybean signs

That was pretty much it.

Fortunately, my bladder was able to perfectly execute its plan to urinate at as many historical sites as possible on today's trip so I took slight detours on Route 66 to visit the Mother Jones Memorial site and Lincoln's home in Springfield.

Worth. It.

Mother Jones is buried in the Union Miners Cemetery, which as a union thug myself, I think this is totally rad. 

NO SCABS ALLOWED

For realzies, a "resting place of good union people." I am. all. about. that. Segregated cemeteries have a long and storied history and unfortunately today, many cemeteries are hodge-podges of it-doesn't-matter-what-you-believed-in-while-you-were-alive-because-you're-not-anymore-so-just-deal-with-the-fact-that-you-can-decompose-next-to-someone-different-from-you-and-nobody's-hurt-by-it-because-you're-already-dead. I am in favor of more segregated cemeteries. Although I had originally been planning on donating my cadaver to caffeine-jacked med students and cremating whatever remained after they practiced giving face lifts to my decapitated head or whateva, I now believe that I would like to lobby to get buried alongside other good union people in Mt. Olive. I mean, there's already a giant tombstone with my last name on it at the Union Miners Cemetery, so it wouldn't be a big deal or anything. I'm totes looking forward to eternally resting next to other people who also know the lyrics to "Solidarity Forever." I just wonder what the dues are.

I also stopped by Lincoln's home in Springfield, Illinois, because I'm a huge fan of walking around the houses of people who aren't there to see me look through their medicine cabinets.

This park ranger threatened to break the camera of anyone who took a picture of his face, which I thought was really pretty intense but maybe he was still mad about the furlough

The tour was extremely informative and I learned that in addition to wrestling animals on the floor and praising the thighs of dudes he shared his bed with when he was living in smaller digs, Babraham Lincoln had an affinity for migraine-inducing wallpaper and hella ugly carpet. Lincoln was almost never home when he lived here because he was busy fighting vampires or whatever, but Mary Todd Lincoln went through a domestic servant about every other week because her children were total monsters who liked to defenestrate anything that was not bolted to the floor. MT also set the precedent for the hit television series "The Simple Life" (which aired from 2003 to 2007) by being a pretty heiress who wanted to marry powerful and felt like she was totally roughing it by making a huge production out of cooking for herself. Viewers in the 1850s tuned in weekly on stereoscopes and immortalized Mary's famous catch phrase "That's hot" over 150 years before Paris Hilton plagiarized the former First Lady. 

Do you see how reasonable this drive is? It was also unambiguously the most boring one. 

After napping hard enough at the hotel that I was completely disoriented by the duck ringtone on my phone ("What? Why am I in a pond? Oh my god, is that drool?"), I spent the rest of the evening eating free hot wings and talking to other fellow interviewees about "Orange Is the New Black" and Rob Ford's propensity for munching on rectangular containers. All in all, I'd say we've got a pretty good chance of this weekend-long-interview being a totally awesome thing.