Dear Virginia:

My wife and I finally decided to arrange things so that we could have the weekend off, to attend the meeting in Chicago. This was the first time that we had ever gotten away from our business on a week-end. It really seemed strange not to be working. We left home on Friday night and I drove until 4 the next morning. We then pulled into a roadside park and went back into the camper for a few hours sleep. We got up at about 8 A.M. and I changed into a shirt waist dress, put on my makeup and a pair of heels. My wife set my hair and then putting a bandana on, we proceeded on our way. For some strange reason, I get a kick out of going out with curlers in my hair. I, of course, never go into any place nice or go shopping that way. I took along our credit cards for gas and when the attendant handed me the slip to sign, I thought why shouldn't I sign Diana instead of Ron, which I did. Funny how a little thing like that can give a person such a thrill.

We were making rather good time and I thought that we would be at the motel by 6 P.M. I had planned to skirt Chicago but for some reason we missed the turn and into the heart of Chicago we went! This wouldn't have been so bad but we ran into one of the worst rain storms that I've ever seen. Traffic came to a standstill. Bumper to bumper as far as you could see. We would move about ten feet and stop. This went on for over two hours. There must have been at least two hundred cars pulled off to the side due to overheating. I was quite worried because our camper is a very big one and I had visions of us stuck right in the middle of the expressway. The reason for the tieup was that all the underpasses were inundated and naturally quite a few cars would stall right in the middle of the water. We finally managed to get through that mess and find the street where the motel was. Only one little problem remained - which way should I turn? There weren't any buildings or any other indications as to which way the numbers were going. I finally decided to turn right. What a mistake! We went for about a half mile and found ourselves in another traffic jam. We had to keep going straight because there wasn't any place to turn off. We were in this jam for over an hour. I finally found a place to turn around and headed back. If I had turned left instead of right, we would have been at the motel in about a minute instead of an hour. We parked the camper in the motel but not very close

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