Sunday, January 3rd, 2010
Issue: 9   Editor: Mika


State to State - Illinois XVI
As we’ve seen enough from California now, it was time for the Buzz team to move on to a new State. After some brainstorming we decided that “The Land of Lincoln” would be a very interesting place for us to write about.

After packing our bags, we paid $118 to The Vanguard’s train station in California. Almost 43 hours and 2,119 Miles (3,410 Kilometers) later, we finally arrived at The Hells Angels train station in the “Prairie State”, more known as Illinois. Of course we were so smart to Bootleg quite some Rum with us, creating ourselves a profit of over $100 per bottle. As always Mika was a bit odd compared to the rest of us, so he bought Tequila instead of Rum. Lucky him, it doesn’t really matter as the profit was equal to what we made. Nyxxie, the only female with us, did her girly thing and bought the excellent wine they offered us in California; creating a loss for her of over $80 per bottle. After arriving in Chicago, we quickly sold our Booze (and funded Nyxxie with new money) and bought us a ticket to the capital city of Illinois, Springfield.

Arriving in Springfield, we were amazingly surprised by the small sized population of this city. Consisting “only” 72,000 citizens in the 1930s, Springfield can be seen as one of the smallest capital cities in the United States of America. A fact is that the city doesn’t really grow either, as it currently has just over 120,000 citizens. Although the city is pretty small, it does have a lot to offer. The very first thing you might notice – not only by its nickname “The Land of Lincoln” – is that the city is affiliated to former president of the United States of America, Abraham Lincoln. He lived for over 24 years in Springfield. The only home he ever owned is open to the public, seven days a week, free of charge, and operated by the National Park Service. Also, the Lincoln Tomb is located in Springfield. Of course we from the Buzz team visited the cemetery and found out that in this tomb not only Abraham Lincoln himself, but also of his wife Mary Todd and three of their four sons.

The next day we decided to go back to probably the most famous city of Illinois, Chicago. Tired of being in a train again, we went to a car dealer. After a long search for proper establishments, we found out that Illinois has no land sold yet. Our search continued and we finally were able to find a car dealer. Having the choice of many cars, we decided that we wanted to travel in class. A few Duesenberg’s would do the trick, emptying our pockets for just a bit over $11,000 apiece. After picking AceAdam as our driver, Nyxxie decided that she wanted to save some cash this time after her failure with the Booze. Lucky her, the car dealer had some nice Beauford’s for sale for just over $2,500 per car.

As the Duesenberg’s did cost us quite some cash, we arrived in Chicago with not much money left. We, as gangsters, tried to find some work and after we beat up all the blind men we could find, we had enough money to do a few Organized Crimes. Al Capone was so impressed by our blind man beatings that he decided to give us some hints for the Organized Crimes. The tips he gave us were that you need to do Organized Crimes in groups of four, one as Weapons Expert, another one as Equipment Expert or Explosive Expert, the third one as Driver and of course one more that leads it. He also was nice enough to tell us that you have a greater change on a profitable outcome if you buy the best equipment and not to forget that the getaway has to be filled with enough gas. We tried to lead the Organized Crime and found out that the Leader needs to $25,000 to start it, the Weapons Expert $30,000 for 1 Tommy Gun, the Equipment Expert $21,000 for a Professional Lockpick or $36,000 for C4 if you wish to bring some explosives like we did (Mika likes to explode) and $10,000 worth of Gas for your getaway car. After summing this up we saw that we need $101,000 to even start the Organized Crime. As there were no blind men left, Al Capone told us that we could rob some Fine Restaurants as well. A few crimes later we finally had enough cash and decided to start the crime. After comparing 47 Organized Crimes, the average outcome was $137,451 and that does make Illinois a very profitable State. Our pockets were filled again.

Being very tired of all these Organized Crimes, we thanked Al Capone for all his help and we decided that we deserved some rest. Illinois is located to one of the five great lakes of North America, Lake Michigan. It is the only one of the Great Lakes that is totally located inside the borders of the United States of America. As it is of a size of over 22,000 square miles (58,000 km2) we had plenty of water to swim in. As TheSilentKiller is always thirsty, he tried to drink all the water in the lake. Too bad for him, the lake contains over 1,150 cubic miles (4,900 km3) of water. Sean was very impressed by the amount of water TheSilentKiller had drunk already, that he wanted to show off as well. After we challenged him to swim to the bottom of the lake, Sean hesitated, but eventually gave it a try. Unfortunately he didn’t get deeper than 27 feet (8 meters), still 896 feet (273 meters) short.

Enough relaxing, and enough tan on our skin, it’s time to move on to the next State. If you have any suggestions for us to where to go next, please do give our travel leader XVI a Bootmail. We will take it in consideration.

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