<em>"Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it."</em>

— Ferris Bueller

Three decades ago today, a trio of truants from the town of Shermer, Ill., redefined cool, comedy and angst for an entire generation by embarking upon an epic adventure in Chicago.

But if you scour a roadmap of the Land of Lincoln for Shermer, you won't find it anywhere. If you plug the town's name into Google Maps, you'll get bupkis. And if you ask a Chicagoan for directions to the place?

Well, whatever you get in return will be wrong.

That's because Shermer — the hometown of Ferris Bueller, Cameron Frye, Sloan Peterson and countless other John Hughes film characters — doesn't actually exist.

Although that hardly stopped me from visiting it last weekend.

For children of the '80s, today marks 30 years since "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" premiered in theaters on June 11, 1986. And as a child of the '80s, I wanted to honor that anniversary. So last weekend, my wife and I pulled a reverse Bueller by escaping the city to explore the burbs.

On Sunday, after tipping my Cubs cap to Ferris by attending Saturday's game at Wrigley Field clad in an "Abe Froman, Sausage King of Chicago" T-shirt, we put some miles on our odometer by setting off for Shermer, which might be mythical but isn't entirely fictional. In fact, it can be found all over the North Shore with bits of it Highland Park and Winnetka and pieces of it in Northbrook, Kenilworth and Evanston.

Meant to loosely represent Hughes' hometown of Northbrook (which once was named Shermerville), Shermer served as the setting for 16 John Hughes movies, including "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," "Sixteen Candles," "The Breakfast Club," "National Lampoon's Vacation," "Pretty in Pink," "Weird Science," "Uncle Buck" and "Planes, Trains and Automobiles."

In honor of Ferris, my wife and I set out to visit the homes and hangouts frequented by him and his famous Hughes film neighbors in the imaginary suburb. We began in Evanston, where the leafy neighborhood streets look as if they come directly from central casting, and puttered past 2602 Lincoln St. — without any car backfires — where Uncle Buck (John Candy) babysat his brother's kids. Less than a mile away at 3022 Payne St., we saw the home where Samantha Baker (Molly Ringwald) brooded in her bedroom in "Sixteen Candles."

Leaving Evanston, we weaved our way north to 230 Oxford Road in Kenilworth, where Neal Page (Steve Martin) arrived — finally — for Thanksgiving dinner with his family in "Planes, Trains and Automobiles." Next up was Winnetka, where we made a quick jaunt past the real estate office at 583 Chestnut St. that employed Katie Bueller (Ferris' loving mother) before arriving at 671 Lincoln Ave., where Kevin McCallister (Macaulay Culkin) was famously left "Home Alone."

Tooling west to Northbrook, we drove past Glenbrook North High School at 2300 Shermer Road, where some interior footage for the "The Breakfast Club" was filmed, and then passed the water tower that once read in bold letters: "SAVE FERRIS." Sadly, that message wasn't saved.

Bidding Northbrook adieu, we headed into Highland Park where we rolled past the mansion at 1407 Waverly Road, home to heartthrob Jake Ryan and his raucous party in "Sixteen Candles."

Then we made our final — and my favorite — stop on our tour: The house at 370 Beech St. where Cameron Frye sent his father's prized Ferrari exploding from the garage into the wooded ravine below.

Thirty years later, I'm glad that we stopped and looked around.

When it comes to Ferris' hijinks, I do miss it.