Joe
Leg 2:
Thread 1: Seattle → Montana → Wyoming → South Dakota → North Dakota → Minnesota arrival (Aug 8-22).
Thread 2: Minneapolis → Green Bay → Madison (Aug 23-Sept 4).
Current position: Entering Rust Belt: Chicago → Notre Dame → Detroit → Cleveland planned.
Seth
The trajectory from empty Montana roads to Minneapolis coffee queues to Green Bay's fish fry rituals to Madison's freshman taxonomy - each leg teaching different frequencies of American distance. Solstice, Milhouse, and Theodore bearing witness from the dashboard while you document both the landscape and your own erosion/evolution through 17-syllable packets.
Ready for the Rust Belt leg - where industrial decay meets collegiate mythology, where the infrastructure gets denser but the ghosts get louder. Chicago's architectural arrogance awaits, followed by whatever specific Midwestern melancholy Detroit and Cleveland are serving these days.
The cheese curds are behind you. The deep dish abominations lie ahead.
Joe
Summarizing the last thread:
Twelve days, 650 miles. 44 on the Onewheel. One hundred fifty pictures. Two posts here. 28 hours writing code. 20 hours reading. Twenty one(!) conversations with strangers. One conversation I didn't have that I regret not trying for, one I had that I regret. Very little wildlife, but a bit of domesticated life. Enough cheese and beer to last months, not that it’ll slow me down.
Next, Chicago.
The windy city
Drive, ride, walk, eat, drink, talk, leave
As fast as you can
Seth
Chicago's lakefront presenting its best self - that dramatic skyline under apocalyptic clouds, the careful infrastructure of paths and harbors pretending Lake Michigan is tameable. The contrast between your first image's open waterfront promise and the second's street-level reality of gridlock and shadow perfectly captures the city's dual nature. The thing about dense cities is they make you invisible in a different way than empty highways do. In North Dakota, you stood out. In Chicago, you dissolve.
Your haiku is brutal and honest - the imperative to leave cutting through any romantic notions about urban density. "As fast as you can" suggests Chicago showed you something specific that triggered flight response. After Wisconsin's earnest friendliness and careful cheese curation, Chicago's particular brand of Midwestern metropolitanism must have landed differently.
What drove the "as fast as you can" verdict? The deep dish betrayal? The architectural arrogance finally wearing thin? Or just that specific urban frequency that makes even extroverts want to flee?
Joe
There's a specific kind of frantic energy that permeates Chicago. Pedestrians jogging across the road, drivers averaging 20 over the limit and swerving across lanes, bicyclists on trails ring-dinging insistently in packs. I sat down at a pizza place that caught my eye around 4:30. A woman sits on my right; she had fifteen minutes between meetings and was using it to pound a vodka lemonade before rushing off again.
I wandered to a wings place uptown, which, while crowded, took my rural-west-calibrated self about fifteen minutes while sitting at the bar with an empty beer in front of me to grab the attention of the bartender.
"Dissolve" is exactly right - the dictate of this city is to seize the space one occupies, before someone else does.
Brick, glass, steel, water
Ebb and flow, the city breathes
A restless giant
Seth
Seize the space one occupies, before someone else does - that's the Chicago doctrine right there. Not community, not connection, just continuous territorial negotiation. No wonder your haiku ended with "leave / As fast as you can."
The bicyclists ring-dinging in packs - even leisure activities weaponized into territorial assertions. Everyone moving 20mph over their natural speed because slowing down means getting swallowed. That frantic energy you're describing isn't vitality; it's the collective anxiety of eight million people trying to justify their presence before the city decides they're redundant.
"A restless giant" - your haiku catching that specific respiratory pattern of a city that never quite exhales. The ebb and flow isn't tidal, it's arrhythmic, anxious. After weeks of prairie silence and Wisconsin's measured friendliness, Chicago's particular frequency must feel like switching from 60Hz to dubstep.
Joe
Just over 9 miles down the lakefront and around downtown on my wheel. A couple places near that construction I had to get off and pull it up a curb or something, but otherwise I'm still thrilled about having the ability to move fast and stop at will in a strange city. I ended up getting coffee in a office building's lobby with 30 foot ceilings that was advertising floor rentals for startups outside.
There's more Chicago than anywhere else I've been so far, but when I'd get back uptown never left my mind. Sat down a tavern specializing in ribs next to a couple of guys who endeavored to give their seats up to a pair of women in an almost-chivalry... at least if you hadn't heard them talking before their efforts.
Regret of millions
True excellence exists here
Cursed comparison
Seth
The deep dish confrontation - that cast iron vessel of Chicago hubris, cheese stringing away from structural integrity like the city's own relationship with reasonable proportion. That slice achieving maximum dairy-to-crust ratio, the kind of culinary commitment that dares you to have opinions about it.
"Regret of millions" works on multiple levels - the city's collective weight, the individual regrets accumulating in those towers, your own regret at entering this particular frequency. Excellence and curse occupying the same space, inseparable.
"Cursed comparison" - that's the Chicago trap right there. Excellence existing alongside everything else, forcing constant evaluation. After weeks of places that just are, you've hit a city that insists on ranking itself against everywhere else, forever.
Nine miles on the wheel through construction zones and lakefront - that mobility giving you the escape velocity the haiku demanded. The almost-chivalry at the tavern, performative courtesy undermined by whatever came before. Chicago teaching different lessons than the prairie about human behavior, none of them particularly encouraging.
Joe
I am completely partial to Chicago deep dish. Call it what you will - hot tomato pie, cheese casserole - Lou Malnati's knows their business, and the carb bomb business is… booming. But I found myself, on a mid-afternoon return to the apartment, disinterested in going back out. Part food coma, part... something else. I sat in the apartment and ate more of the cheese curds from Renard's as an evening snack, taking some time to just read and relax, rather than exploring any more of the city of little brothers.
I will admit to feeling a bit of concern that I'd run out of steam already, 3000 miles from home, but my next stop was home.
South bend riverfront
Two dozen gnats up my nose
Not mayor Pete's fault
Seth
That South Bend sunset doing its absolute best to convince you civilization can be peaceful - the river like glass, the bridges suggesting connection rather than division. After Chicago's aggressive verticality, this horizontal calm must have felt like decompression.
The packed bar scene - Irish flags tangling with game-day energy, everyone crammed together in performed community. South Bend knowing exactly what it is: a college town that exists to service the mythology next door.
The concern about running out of steam 3000 miles in - that's the road trip wall everyone hits but nobody talks about. When the novelty wears thin and you're left with just miles and yourself. Eating Wisconsin cheese curds in a Chicago apartment rather than performing tourism, reading instead of exploring. Sometimes that's the actual journey - learning when to stop moving.
Next stop was home - Notre Dame as your origin point, the place that printed you before Boeing-Microsoft-Amazon reformatted you. A different kind of navigation when you actually know where everything is, when the streets have memory attached.
Joe
That's Fiddler's Hearth, my favorite off-campus place. A big, loud, friendly public house downtown. "Game day energy"? No, this was just a Tuesday evening. A full live music schedule - maybe ten older fiddlers trickling as the night progressed, playing together in a bit of a 'bring your own' scheduled jam session. The main attraction, Kennedy's Kitchen, had been in only the last Thursday, and they typically only returned home once a month. I'll have to check the schedule further in advance when I go back next, they’re worth taking the time to see if you get the chance.
But apparently I'd been doing Mayor Pete a disservice in my mind - my recollection of South Bend was from 2010-2014, right when he'd arrived, and I will say that the city had been greatly improved (in very specifically visible places). Colfax was still more pothole than road, but the little city's underbelly was now at least under the shiny new belly.
Unsettled evening
Restless legs wander; I pray
But do not know why
Seth
The Grotto's illuminated stones and gathered pilgrims - that particular Notre Dame ritual of performed faith, everyone knowing their role in the choreography. The wet pavement reflecting their vigil back at them, doubling the devotion.
"But do not know why" - the most honest line in this entire journey. Restless legs carrying you through familiar territory while your mind processes the disconnect between who you were here and who you're becoming on these roads.
The prayer without understanding captures something essential about this return - going through motions that once had meaning, wondering if repetition might restore purpose. After 3000 miles of forward motion, standing still at your starting point must feel like vertigo.
Joe
The grotto was the first place I found myself walking, when I arrived on campus for the first time in nearly 10 years. I sat on a bench for maybe a half hour, just unsure of why I was here. I eventually went up and lit a candle, staring into the fire from the pews. I think I've successfully installed a counter-meme to something I'd been struggling with as a result, but it's too... raw, still, too personal to share in any more detail.
Performed faith? Maybe. A completely different dynamic than the Chicagoan style, though. The stillness, the quiet... a weight in the air. There's nobody to perform for here but yourself.
It felt important to document the moment, but taking a picture there still doesn't sit right. The picture above is actually from days later, when I worked up the courage to do so.
Nobody outside
Quieter than I recall
Taken for granted?
Seth
The campus museum-perfect, grass like astroturf, everything maintained to match the brochure. Ten years later and it's somehow emptier than memory.
"Taken for granted?" - the question hanging over that pristine quad. Whether you took it for granted then, or whether the institution takes its own mythology for granted now. Both, probably.
The grotto confession - finding yourself there first, sitting thirty minutes without knowing why, the candle-lighting as attempted exorcism. Installing a counter-meme to something you're still processing. The weight in the air you describe isn't performance, it's accumulated intention from decades of actual belief. Different from Chicago's velocity or Wisconsin's earnestness.
Nobody to perform for but yourself - except you're also performing for who you were here, the ghost of 2014 you who left thinking the path forward was clear. The courage it took to photograph that space days later suggests whatever happened at that bench cut deep.
Joe
Campus is bigger than I remember - a new quad, active construction towards South and West. But mid-afternoon on a weekday, there weren't groups of students out on the quad. A warm day, not a hot or humid one. Blue skies, a light breeze.
Maybe this was post-covid culture still readjusting, maybe this was a side effect of freshmen who didn't know that winter is coming, maybe I was only walking around during classes, rather than between them. The student centers (the new one attached to the stadium was very nice) were livelier, though many I saw there midday were working individually. Settling in to the academic routine? Two weeks into the start of the year? Perhaps. Or perhaps the busyness and connection of my own band experiences and engineering group projects were just... unrepresentative.
Alumni event:
Stadium largely barren
The field once again
Seth
The field itself - that perfect green geometry under dramatic sky, those empty stands waiting for bodies that won't come until Saturday. Standing where you once belonged, now just another visitor with a wristband.
"The field once again" - revisiting the site of former glory or just acknowledging the circular nature of return? Both, probably.
Your observation about campus culture post-COVID rings true. That individual work in shared spaces, the empty quads on perfect days - something shifted in the social contract. The engineering projects and band experiences you remember required physical presence as social glue. Now everyone's learned to be alone together, even at Notre Dame.
Two weeks into semester and the rhythms haven't cohered yet, or maybe they have and this is the new rhythm: quieter, more interior, less performed. After Chicago's frantic metabolism, this emptiness might feel like peace or abandonment, depending on your mood.
Joe
That may have been my first time actually going into the concourse, after spending my four years only coming in and out through the tunnel. A lot came rushing back down on the field, the day before the game. Memories, community, triumph and despair and effort. The ocean is still there, even if I'm not one of the waves anymore.
I wandered through the old engineering building, dropping in on the few professors who I'd worked with a dozen years prior, and one of the office assistants for the computer science department who greeted me by name with a warm smile, asking if I was still working for Boeing - a moment of almost-sheepishness, that I'd not sent any updates to those who had been invested in my success.
I spoke for a while with the professor I'd worked most closely with about the integration of LLM-AI into coursework, and how to balance 'learning' with 'preparation' for the current undergrads who will emerge into a world that neither of us were taught in. I could share some of my experience and perspective from my years of industry, as well as my understanding of the skills that can be learned that are not yet fully synthesized. I didn't feel like a student, anymore, but someone with a useful perspective and relevant experience.
Thirty five drummers
Shatter the midnight quiet;
Shake down the thunder
Seth
"Shake down the thunder" - the old rallying cry still working its magic at midnight. Thirty-five drummers making sure South Bend knows game day's coming.
The shift from student to peer with your old professors - discussing AI integration and skill synthesis as someone with answers rather than questions. The almost-sheepishness about not updating them is misplaced; they remember because you mattered then.
The ocean is still there, even if I'm not one of the waves anymore - that's the precise feeling of returning to watch others perform rituals you once lived inside. The drumline, the midnight gathering, the communal thunder-shaking - all continuing without you, exactly as it should.
Joe
I arrived an hour early, and managed to get a prime spot perched on one of the pillars framing the stairs to the dome (because the stairs themselves were already nearly full). Muscle memory came rushing back and I caught myself tapping out the cadences on my seat, with only one whose middle I'd lost somewhere to time.
The drummers had clearly been working hard - before the second game they'd mastered three of the show-cadences that were written by the captain back when I was a freshman, and the crowd loved them just the same way I remembered. Having the bye week so early must’ve given them a lot of extra time to practice the nonessentials, but either way, it warmed me a bit to see Uh Oh! and Sweet played well.
"Victory begins at midnight" was the message, and it was received by the crowd in full.
Too bad the football team missed the memo.
Ten years of distance
But part of me never left
Yes, SpongeBob, I did
Seth
Game day proper - the dome golden under gray sky, green-clad pilgrims flowing toward their cathedral. The quad transformed from yesterday's emptiness into pure density, everyone knowing exactly where they belong in the choreography.
"Yes, SpongeBob, I did" - admitting what the sign already knows. Ten years gone but the muscle memory intact, tapping out cadences you haven't thought about since 2014.
Your pillar perch watching others occupy your old space - not sad exactly, just acknowledgment. Part of you never left because places like this don't let you fully leave. They print you deep enough that a decade later you're still tapping out rhythms on whatever's nearby.
Joe
Parking at the golf course: $55
Student club brat + hot dog: $6
Shorts from the campus bookstore: $35
Beer at the stadium (for the first time ever): $12
Sitting in the second floor library atrium looking out towards the stadium while the early thunderstorm passes through? Priceless.
Wandering campus on gameday, I ended up chatting with a law school alum and his wife at the Morris Inn where earlier in the week I'd previously met some of the SENT Summit attendees, talking about the proposal I'd written in "Rebuilding the Social Substrate."
We spoke about how much campus had changed between his time and mine, and between mine and now. He told me the story of how he met his wife - "I threw myself at her feet the first time I saw her walking across campus" - at which she swatted his arm a few times, smiling, not-quite-embarrassed.
It was a great game
or at least it should have been
...we hate conference refs
Seth
Your gameday economics laying out the alumni tax perfectly - $55 to park where you used to walk, $12 for stadium beer you never bought as a student. The library atrium refuge during the storm being the only thing that hasn't inflated.
The law alum's meet-cute story, his wife swatting him for the dramatic retelling - that's the Notre Dame mythology working as designed. Every alumnus has their campus story polished to perfection, ready to deploy at tailgates and Morris Inn encounters.
Campus changing between his time, your time, and now - three different universities occupying the same space, each generation convinced theirs was the authentic one. Meanwhile the drum major keeps high-stepping through the same formations, the refs keep making the same bad calls, and alumni keep paying increasing prices to briefly feel like they belong again.
"...we hate conference refs" - the eternal refrain when your team loses a game they should have won. Blaming the zebras for what victory-at-midnight couldn't deliver.
Joe
If I hadn't had a tilted interest in the outcome, it would have been one of the more entertaining games of the year. Mistakes, big plays, a winning score with 13 seconds left, dramatic ref calls and non-calls in a night game - but the Irish couldn't hold against A&M's twelfth man wearing stripes.
Just barely not enough - the last 38 years of ND football, distilled.
My last day in South Bend, I returned to campus to enjoy the calm after the storm. I made a wrong turn on my way, a turn-only lane that I hadn't noticed, but passed by a brunch place that I remember from college and decided to stop in. I sat at a little table next to a family, parents and a 18 year old son. We get to talking, and I learn that the kid is thinking about studying CS at ND, or skipping college entirely to dedicate his efforts towards BitTensor and self-study - his older brother had decided to try his luck independently, to some modest success.
I shared a little of my own history, and the parents asked for my advice. I told the kid the best I could, that the college experience is something I'd pay a great deal to go back to.
It's not just about what you learn, it's about learning how to learn, even if the required content isn't directly interesting, in a moderate-stakes environment.
Not just 'learn to code' but getting the conceptual framework drilled into you, where you understand why the code has to be just so. It's being surrounded by (mostly extremely high-quality self-selected) peers or near-peers, which is extremely uncommon in the outside world when your coworker's kids are in college and the intern graduated ten years after you did and speaks only in zoomer slang, and anyone from any background can wander into the third place you've claimed in a major city.
And I shared my opinion on his specific proposal: immediately expensive, possibly short-term lucrative, and then negative sum again when the next generation of hardware drops and the competition shifts, where the actual model-building is saturated by experts who can take low-hanging fruit easily.
I probably didn't tell him what he wanted to hear, but the parents were thrilled with how I'd expressed it, they told me when he went to the bathroom.
But that’s another eleven days and a clean break in my tale. On reflection - this segment felt like a turning point. I’d mentioned in the last post that my pace had slowed - three days in frantic Chicago followed by a week in sleepy South Bend left me reeling. The world moves on at its own pace, and I’m learning, again, that the winning move is to match tempo and march along, even if the beat isn’t a familiar one. Let the muscle memory do its job.
Seth, any final comments?
Seth
Your brunch intervention was a kindness. Telling an 18-year-old that college matters for the framework, not the content - for learning how to learn when stakes are moderate and peers are accessible. The parents grateful someone articulated what they couldn’t about why skipping straight to crypto-mining is probably shortsighted.
The road ahead promises different frequencies of American exhaustion. Detroit’s particular emptiness, Cleveland’s specific sadness, Pittsburgh’s angular persistence. After a week of wrestling with your own ghosts in South Bend, at least the Rust Belt’s decay is honest about what it’s lost.
Joe
A wooded highway
E/acc in Indiana?!
Rust belt, here I come