Smile! Your Mom Chose Life!

Overview: Today was a drive-heavy day (as road trip eventually probably should be) from St. Louis to Wilson State Park, Kansas.

Specifics: After waking Conor up at nine (“Nate, what the hell are you doing?”), we made breakfast, packed up, and left the comfortable hospitality of the Millers.

By the way, breakfast was a momentous occasion because I willingly agreed to EAT EGGS. HUGE!! My Egg Experiment is well on its way to success. For those of you that don’t know, I. Hate. Eggs. Like, to the point where if I smelled them being made, I felt ill. So I decided a couple of months ago that enough was enough and decided to force-acquire a taste for eggs. I know this is possible due to the overwhelming success of the Great Tomato Acquiring of Summer 2009, but it is a more difficult task due to the level of pure evil I generally ascribe to the taste of eggs.

Anyway, it’s progressing. And working.

We hit the road circa 9:30 and headed for Kansas City. Paradoxically, Kansas City is actually in Missouri. I will never understand that one, though I suspect someone knows why. Maybe they had a border war or something. In the home of the Royals and the Chiefs, we stopped in a really delicious, hole-in-the-wall barbecue joint. Steve Miller recommended the place, called Arthur Bryant’s World Famous BBQ. Apparently he went to medical school there. In KC, not the barbecue joint. Small world.

So yes. It was tasty. Because the weather was kind of crappy (rainy, 60 degrees, blah) we decided to push on to Topeka, Kansas, to explore the Capital of the State with Really Long Straight Roads.

Sidenote: the Welcome to Kansas road sign – completely unimpressive. 

(As usual, not my picture.)

Kansas FAIL.

Topeka is only about an hour away from Kansas City, which is kind of impressive because it seems everything is fifty-six hours away from Topeka. Conor was wholly unimpressed with the city. I was a little more tolerant of the lack of people due to the fact that it was a working Monday afternoon, cold, and drizzly. 

But Topeka was a lot smaller than I think we were expecting. Basically there is one street stretching for about three blocks, bordered at one end by a courthouse and at the other with the Capitol. Incidentally, the Capitol dome is green and has a statue of a dude shooting a bow and arrow into the sky on top. The only really notable thing about walking Topeka was that we passed a Christian paraphernalia store with a very special poster in the window. The poster, rather clearly drawn by a child, featured a hand-drawn cartoon child holding a banner billowing in the wind. The banner read, "Smile! Your Mom Chose Life!" with a little inscription underneath saying "Choose life."

Interesting aside: my Torah portion I had to read for my Bar Mitzvah was the chapter where the "choose life" quote comes from.

So thanks, Mommas Friedman and Farese, for choosing life. Happy late Mother's Day. (And my mom's upcoming birthday!)

Back to me. We had to pay at a parking meter. That always kicks you down a notch.

We didn't stick around to explore all the beauty Topeka had to offer, for the following reason: We decided somewhere before Topeka that we wanted to catch a movie. This is somewhat ironic, because one would think that after about twenty logged hours of driving, you wouldn't want to sit in a chair and stare straight ahead for another two. BUT that’s exactly what we want to do! 

Unfortunately, the Topeka movie theater – note singular “theater” – was only showing Avatar and a couple of somewhat unusual movies like “The Tea Cup Fairy.” We left Topeka with the promise of more options in Salina, KS, where we currently sit. Lured by the sarcasm and wit of Robert Downey Jr, Conor and I are currently waiting to catch a 7pm showing of Ironman 2 in the Salina mall.

Notably, Salina is a much bigger town than Topeka, which is kind of weird because to the best of my determination, Salina is 2 hours from everywhere and has approximately zero access points for moving large quantities of materials (namely, access to water or an airport. Salina has neither). This leads me to question what, exactly, people in Salina DO. After all, it is a fairly decent sized town

On the way in to the city, we passed a really ginormous factory that looked like sixteen or eighteen grain silos, all made of poured concrete and welded together. It kind of looked like a thirty-story high panpipe, but all the same height:

(As usual, not my picture)

Anyone who can tell me what the hell this thing is gets a special prize. The picture does NOT do justice to how freaking huge this thing is. By the way, don’t ask what the prize is, because I’m not sure yet.

After this movie, Conor and I will head about another hour west of here to Wilson State Park to camp for the night. We plan on making a campfire and playing cards by the fire, because Vegas rapidly approaches us (Saturday night) and let’s face it, neither Conor or I are particularly well-known for being cardsharks. Although Conor might be a real ace, I have no idea. We’ll find out tonight.