17. Kansas

Aug 13, 2009 Uncategorized

Well I made it to Kansas on what was a very boring ride until the end. I took highway 36 out of Denver, but it was so slow, flat, and boring I decided I-70 offered the same thing but at a higher speed. Before making that switch I was also worried about running out of gas. I finally found this gas station in the middle of no where. I was so excited I took a picture of it

I originally planned to overnight it somewhere in Kansas and head to Lawrence the following day. But since I made good time I decided to push through and get there the same day. What a mistake that was…

I heard at a gas station that there was a storm up ahead. I was surprised to hear that since it was a hot and clear day. A few hours later I saw some angry clouds in the distance. It felt like I chased them for hours.

Finally around 6pm I caught up to the storm. There was thunder and lightening in the distance, but I was still dry. I don’t want to say I’m scared of lightening, but it is something that worries me. I finally started to get rained on, and it was really coming down hard. By this point the lightening was striking very closely. It was so loud that when I heard the thunder I couldn’t hear anything else – not even the bike or the wind. I also took my headphone out because I figured I didn’t need to help the lightening hit me.

After a couple miles of this I conceded to the storm and pulled off at an exit. I pulled off to the side of the road under a bridge. I was on the road long enough to get soaking wet though. Just like in Denver, when I squeezed my hand into a fist a bunch of water came flowing out of my glove. Not fun.

I tried calling Laura to tell her I was being delayed, but it was so loud under the bridge from the storm and traffic that I couldn’t hear a word she said. She said she could hear me though. I took these pics while I was waiting. After about 20 minutes it cleared up and I got back on I-70.

It took 4 tries to get this shot with the hazard lights blinking

I stopped to get some gas and asked the gal there about the storm. She said it was moving east which meant I would be chasing it the rest of the way. Since the storm wasn’t going 75 mph with gusts of 95, I stopped a number of times to prevent myself from catching it. The toll booths helped with this too because it’s a pain in the ass getting a wallet out with my gloves on.

I had already memorized the directions to Laura’s house while waiting under the bridge. I got a bit sidetracked because I didn’t memorize the updates she sent me. I was pretty sure I needed to take a left, but according to the outdated directions I was recalling a right turn was in order. When the cross streets started getting smaller I knew I needed to do a U-turn. Then I made it to her neighborhood.

Wow, these houses and lots were huge. I was blown away by it. She said most people were on 2 acre lots. It made me think of old southern farm homes because of the size and space each one had. It was a very pretty neighborhood. But it was also really weird. I was supposed to stay on 85th ave to get to her house. But then I intersected 85th ave while on 85th so I took a right to maintain the road. This was a mistake.

I called Laura and ask her to go outside to see if she could see me. She couldn’t. I had to use my speaker phone to talk to her, which meant I needed to kill the engine. That worked fine for the flats and downhills, but then I encountered an uphill portion of the road. I told her to hang on, flipped my helmet up, put the phone in my mouth, turned the engine on, put it into 1st gear, and slowly rode off. I rode around for a bit like this and would periodically kill the engine to ask her where to go. It probably looked goofy, but it got the job done.

It turns out she actually lives on 86th ave but that road also connects to 85th. Once that was straightened out I made it to her. We were both happy to see each other. We split a bottle of wine while playing ping-pong in her basement. She also has a sweet basement. That’s where I stayed while here. It’s furnished and finished with a couch, tv, ping-pong table, and a computer. It seemed like a sweet room to have growing up. Eventually she retired to her room, and I slept on the fold out couch.

I stayed in Lawrence, Kansas with Laura much longer than I thought I would. Despite staying here for 4 nights, I don’t actually have much to say about the area. But the other side of that is I’ve probably had the most fun on the trip chilling with Laura. The only thing I did worth taking pics of was playing mini-golf. I talked myself up hoping to intimidate her to weaken her game, but I think she saw right through me. I started out playing terribly, and despite a brief burst of pars I managed to maintain that terrible play throughout the day.

We didn’t check or count the scores until the end. I figured I had lost but also thought it was close. Turns out I was right on both accounts. She beat me 86-88. The only asterisk here is that we played with a 7 stroke limit per hole. I think I had a few more meltdown holes that I took 7s on, but she had a couple really bad ones. Either way she beat me. Here are the pics from golfing

The mini-golf here is haunted. I don’t know why that was the theme for the place, but it is what it is. Here are pictures of all the ghouls

This hole almost got me in trouble. You can’t see it now, but when we played this hole there was a motorcycle parked in the open space left of the bat and right of the tree. No big deal, but I hit my ball so hard it launched off the course, past the grass, through the fence, and missed the guy’s bike by about a foot. It then traveled the length of the parking lot. Argh

I think Laura would have taken 20 strokes on this hole if it weren’t for the 7 stroke limit. I had a lot of 7-stroke holes myself, but this one really gave her some grief

After 18 holes we each had a shot at a free game. Typical mini golf rules – get a hole-in-one and you get a free game. We each found an extra ball so we both got 2 attempts.

Laura’s attempt:

My attempt:

Laura also snagged an action shot of me on the green

When we got home we had some food and then hung out in the basement for the rest of the night. There isn’t really anything from it that is wroth reporting though. We were just hanging out enjoying movies and music. The next night we wanted to hit up Lawrence’s downtown area. If you didn’t know it already, Lawrence is home to Kansas University. It makes me cringe to type this because I know Laura will enjoy this admission, but they have a pretty good basketball team.

Anyways, it was like a 30-40 minute drive to get there. We didn’t want to risk a DUI on the way back, so instead we camped at a nearby campground. It was a good idea and that place was empty. Sadly it was a KOA and I had to drop another $25 to camp in a tent. Here are the pics from our campsite:

We only went to one bar called the Sandbar. It was pretty small, but when we walked in 3 girls were dancing on the bar. It seemed like 1/2 the crowd was watching the girls, and the other half was watching some weird video on the screens beside them. Then a big fan connected to the ceiling turned on. The bouncer told us to stay put before checking our IDs. He walked over the the fan and started tossing small cocktail napkins at it, which caused them to blow across the bar. But it got stranger. Then some sort of popcorn storing device connected to the fan released a bunch of popcorn. Wtf? Now there is popcorn flying, napkins flying, strobe lights going crazy, so-so girls dancing on the bar, and a crowd left trying to figure out what the hell was going on.

Eventually we took a seat at a table in a nook by itself next to an aquarium. We had a couple drinks and took these pictures.

Then Laura was like “hey, let’s try to make fish faces” Why not?

Then I tried to make a puffer fish face. The beard really blocks how good of a face it actually was.

Some clever chalk advertising we saw on the walk back

Max is too manly to hold a purse and showed Laura his mad face

Earlier in the night I saw a girl drinking a beverage with a shark in it, so I asked the bartender to make me one. He said they were premade mixes which meant 2 things: it would be really weak and really sweet. But I was lured in by the novelty of the shark. I figured I could try to add it to my bike somehow.

So we’re sitting together examining my drink. I pulled the shark out to play with it. I didn’t realize this (and fuck the bartender for not mentioning it to a customer that obviously doesn’t know what it is) that the shark was filled with grenadine. So I pulled it out to look at it. Then I noticed the table was now covered in 2 blood-red puddles. I immediately thought “Oh shit! Laura’s dress!” Remarkably none of it got spilled on her dress or myself. Phew. And now the shark looked like he had a fresh kill with his red jaws. The drink was ok but I felt like since I spilled all the grenadine I didn’t actually taste it correctly I ordered another one and then Laura shot a video of me playing with the shark. I guess the darkness of the bar went over both of our heads because the video is too dark to view. whoops

I forgot to mention this earlier, but the night before Laura asked if she could join me on the back of the bike traveling for a few days. The condition was she had to be back to Kansas by the 20th, but she was going to fly there anyways. Adding a passenger would add another chapter to the trip, and it would also be fun to spend traveling days with another person. I agreed to it and said I would have to repack my bags to fit her added gear. All she would really need are clothes and toiletries. I could cut back on my clothes and leave some here to fit hers in. So we also wanted to camp out as a test run for the trip. We fit fine in my tent. There wasn’t room to sprawl out by any means, but we each had enough space.

The next morning we were being lazy and sleeping in/dozing. After a while we were just laying there talking until an old man who worked there pulled up in his golf cart. He told us checkout time was in 20 minutes. This amused us both because this isn’t a hotel. It’s not like they are in a hurry to clean a room for the next guess. Also, we were the only tent there on a space about as big as a football field. We got some breakfast and headed back home.

The next day she did her thing and I did mine. She had a job interview to go to and whatnot. At this point I reflected on our friendship and thought about how confusing the whole thing was. I thought about how I’ve known her for a couple years, but we never really ever hung out or spent much time together. We had a couple spurts where we’d hang out for about a week, but that was it. We always had an awesome time and a lot of fun, but for whatever reason we just drifted away and didn’t spend much time together outside of class. After spending a few days with her now I just started to wonder what caused that. Wouldn’t you think that if you had a good time together you would continue that until it stopped? I don’t know. I’ve had other friends over the years that I saw on a much more frequent basis than her, but it seemed like I always had a blast with her. I guess this is just turned into a bored ramble.

We went to a movie my last night in town. Public Enemy was all right. If that was portrayed accurately then John Dillenger was a bad ass. I know stealing and killing isn’t cool, but that guy had some brass ones and executed his plans very well. It may have been illegal, but he accomplished some amazing things.

Tomorrow morning (Friday) I will be leaving for St. Louis. I guess I’ll have a peak at that big arch. Also – special shout out for my father. His birthday is today. Happy birthday dad!

Before I left Laura’s house I took some pics of her neighborhood. Here are a few shots of these cool houses

I stopped at a gas station before leaving and spotted this monster mantis