Rethinking the Road part of the Road Trip

For the third time in four days I am at a dealership getting my tires serviced. Actually fourth if I count the closed dealership the tow truck driver took me to on Saturday. Not 30 minutes out from Matteson, Illinois, the darn “check your tire pressure soon” light starts flashing. I just spent $1,000 getting new tires and now this.
With the help of the GPS on my phone, I locate the nearest dealership. It’s 20 miles back but I slowly make my way there. The service guy is very helpful. The tires don’t look flat because they are something called run flat which means they never look flat. That’s why the stupid computer warning cannot be disengaged;it’s the only way of knowing if a tire is flat. A few minutes later, he tells me he has fixed the problem (back tires were not inflated to proper pressure and the computer wasn’t reset). So back on the road I head.
Most of the way is on Interstate 57, which runs 500 miles from Chicago to Memphis . That’s the same distance as Saskatoon to Winnipeg and the drive is just as boring. No hills, few curves, lots of farms on either side of the freeway and shoulders littered with road kill (deer, rabbits, a fox,) and tons of rubber tires.
To break the monotony, I stop at Mount Vernon, looking forward to a tour of George Washington’s plantation. Unfortunately, that Mount Vernon is in Virginia and I am in Illinois.
11 hours of driving later (including the hour backtracking to the dealership), I am sitting outside a Comfort Inn near Little Rock, basking in the warmth of a humid Arkansas evening. Dinner was a rotisserie chicken and a surprisingly good tetra pack of Pinot Griogo, both from Walmart. I am just praying the computer in my car doesn’t light up with “check your tire pressure soon” tomorrow.