Commuting, New and Improved with more Stank.

Alright, so you know how I love that it takes me ninety minutes to drive 20 miles to work, right?

I just feel that we, as humans, don't spend nearly enough time in our cars. If I could go just a little slower, I would perhaps take up knitting as I drive, or try calligraphy.

There is a bonus to this forced sentence, though, and that is you can take time out to smell the roses...well, not roses, but there are other scents.

First, one of the best things about Chicago, in general, is that it smells like chocolate...like baking brownies, specifically. Blommer's chocolate factory's fresh choco-laden winds blow over the river, across every bridge, blustering down every street corner at times. And, I for one, can't get enough of it. Even on the days when it smells a little burned, it is so much preferable to the burning ash from A. Finkl, or mystery chemicals from the tannery, or the dead smelt from the river. That's right, I said smelt. That's not a past tense, by the way.

But on the way out to the western suburbs on 290, you also pass the Kreamo Bakery with the buttery soft goodness of baking bread pulled into your car. What we need is a marshmallow factory in between for the s'mores effect.

When you get a few more miles out, there is also a lovely citrus smell that wafts over you as you pass by the first Oak Park exit...which I initially thought was a Necco wafer plant until Brendan pointed out that Necco stands for New England Confectionary Company-O something. Hmmm...I'm also pretty sure it's not an orange grove. Which now has me wondering what I AM smelling. Is it a Lysol plant? Maybe I shouldn't breathe so deep next time. But, even that...that's not what's got my nostrils flaring.

Now there's a new smell in town. A not so fresh smell.

As if the commute wasn't long enough, or unpleasant enough, a gigantic garbage dump (the Hillside Landfill) is broken (I didn't know that was possible) and rotting garbage almost as old as I am has become exposed to the winds. So, right when traffic slows to a complete halt, and the sun is pounding down on you, and all you want to do is get home, you get treated to this olfactory pleasure.

Here's what it is like. Imagine taking your garbage for two months, then putting all of it into your car, and then rolling up the windows, leaving it there all day cooking in 95 degree heat, and then climbing in and driving home. Add some dirty diapers to that, and that's how bad it is.

Someone in this article compared it to "worse than dead bodies" and frankly, they seemed to have had some experience with dead bodies.

Here's more:
27 year old garbage
More odors as they drill
Not closing until 2008?

Perhaps that Necco/Lysol plant can get over there and spray or something, because right now? Ew.

This just in...according to Forbes, my commute is #7 in terms of air quality. Dead body smell beats diesel fumes any day of the week. I demand a recount.