It happened again the other night on my way home to Beverly from a West Loop restaurant. Just a few minutes from home, everyone in the car started gushing.
This very vocal exuberance didn’t stem from our discussion of a brilliant new movie or the fabulous profiteroles on the restaurant menu.
No, we were oozing with enthusiasm for the smooth and speedy, oh-so-thrilling simple pleasure that is the post-construction Dan Ryan Expressway, which had just carried us 15 miles in roughly 15 minutes. After months of inching along in construction lanes and years on an overcrowded patch of concrete, the once-nightmarish roadway is now sweeter than a sweet dream.
At parties and at book club meetings, while making car-pool arrangements and dinner plans, neighbors revel in their tales of quick trips home from downtown. It’s almost as if it’s a secret that our friends on the North Side don’t even know they’re missing.
There’s nothing like it when a highway works the way it’s supposed to. Sometimes a gray stretch of road ranks right up there with a warm, sunny day as a reason to smile.
