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Cow Report #6A Visit to OhioSeptember 25: the Report is now complete! I've added pictures from the Air Force Museum, and all images in the page now have clickable, larger copies available! Beginning with this trip, I'm going to present the Cow Reports here, as a Web, page rather than as email messages. Since this will be my first real cross-country trip with the new digital camera, I would like the Cow Report to include pictures as well as words. It will probaby be more convenient for you folks to view the photos on a web page as opposed to email attachments. Presenting the Cow Reports as a web page avoids filling up your mailboxes with email containing large attachments (the photos) and allows you to peruse the report and images a little more at your leisure. I may continue to send out short email messages to notify you of updates to this page. But feel free to check this page from time to time to see what's happening! I hope you enjoy the new format! If you have any comments or questions about this Cow Report or my adventure in the midwest, please email: etech@tulsagrammer.com. Contents:Epilog EpilogI've been home for two full days now, and I look back on the trip with many pleasant memories! The only sour note was losing my personal cell phone somewhere in Indiana or Ohio. I'd used the phone at a rest stop in Indiana to call my uncle and let him know I was just a couple hours away. And that was the last I saw of the phone! Oh well, it was more than a couple of years old, so I have a good excuse to go looking for a nice, new phone with plenty of fancy techie options! What was the high point of the trip? In terms of sightseeing, I'd have to give the Gateway Arch in St. Louis a slight nod over the Air Force Museum in Dayton. I don't know if the Arch qualifies as a truly unique construction effort, and the view probably isn't much different than what you can see from some of the newer buildings in downtown St. Louis that are almost as tall as the Arch, but it's sure interesting to look at! But visiting my friends and relatives was the real purpose of the trip, and that's what I enjoyed most! I haven't seen Warren in at least 15+ years, I think, and I'd never met Linda until this trip. And it's been about ten years or so since my previous trip to Ohio. So the trip was well worth the time just to see everyone again! Once again I'd like to thank everyone who hosted me during the trip. Y'all are a great bunch of people, and it won't be another ten years before I see you again! Day 10: Return to Tulsa!Traffic! Rain! St, Louis intimidates me; it's the first time since my visits to Los Angeles last year that I've encountered long stretches of freeways with four lanes in each direction! (Tulsa has one section of freeway with about a mile or so of four lanes in each direction, but that's where the 169 merges with the Creek Turnpike; it's really a transition.) I hit the road at 8:30am, and before long encountered traffic that was very much like Los Angeles: lots of it and it wasn't moving very fast! I think part of this traffic was caused by construction on I-270 which caused some lane closures at one point. St. Louis drivers can't seem to handle merging much better than LA drivers! Once out of St. Louis, I encountered some really heavy rainfall for 30 or 40 miles or so. Very poor visibility, especially with the 18-wheelers zooming by, shooting up rooster tails of spray! But the rain stopped by the time I reached Rolla, Missouri, and the remainder of the trip had pleasant, mostly sunny weather with temperatures in the high 70s. I'm sorry there isn't more to report about the tail end of this trip, but the closer I got to Tulsa, the more I just wanted to get home. I had a fun time on the vacation, and enjoyed spending time with my friends and relatives along the way. But once I left St. Louis, there really wasn't anything more to look forward to, except getting home and sleeping in my own bed! Day 9: Return to St. LouisI left Mason about 8:30am, and a completely uneventful drive brought me back to St. Louis by 5pm or so. Those of you who saw last year's Cow Reports may remember a bit of information about the largest cross in the western hemisphere, located just outside of Groom, Texas. Well, they have competition! Just west of Effingham, Illinois is a similar cross built by the Cross Foundation. It looks to be about the same size as the one at Groom, but I didn't stop to take any measurements. Back in St. Louis, my friend Warren had finished a long day, so none of us were very interested in going out for the evening. Linda, Warren's wife, fixed a great salmon dinner and then we went downstairs for a little web surfing. It was kind of funny; Warren and Linda each have their own computers, on desks that sit side by side in the basement. I was sitting between them with my laptop, the three of us cruising the Internet for a few hours! Day 8: Cincinnati, Movies & DinnerSunday was another low-key, relaxing day. I tagged along with my friend Jennifer as she walked the family dog ("Misty") around the neighborhood. Walking through the neighborhood, Jennifer pointed out several homes that had "electric fences" similar to the technology that Jennifer and Gil use to keep Misty within their yards. For those not familiar with the technology (like me, at the time), these are systems that consist of wires buried around the perimeter of your yard, with some sort of signal transmitted through the wire. The dog wears a collar holding a tiny radio receiver or sensor of some sort. As the dog approaches the wire, the collar starts to emit a tone. If the dog gets close enough to the wire, the collar will emit a small electric shock to attract the dog's attention. The system seems to be effective, but why not just build a real fence? Part of the answer: the neighborhood association has bylaws that "discourage" the construction of fences that would be tall enough to prevent big dogs from jumping out of the yards. So something else is required, and the electric fence seems to do the job. I wondered if this kind of system could be used with cats, but the dog needs to go through a training process in order for the electric fence to be effective, and as we all know, cats are way too independent to be trainable for something like this! After the walk, we sat around for a while trying to decide what to do for the rest of the day. Just on the Kentucky side of the river was an aquarium that was suggested, but no one really seemed very enthusiastic about that idea. Finally, we decided to go see My Big Fat Greek Wedding at a little art theater in Cincinnati. Good choice! I can see why this little film has become such a big hit; we all enjoyed it! (According to the Internet Movie Database, MBFGW was produced for $5 million, a paltry sum in today's film industry, and has now grossed $95 million! That must be making someone happy right now.) After the movie, we had dinner at a converted riverboat on the Ohio River. The location gave us a good view of boats and barges on the river. And the restaurant was almost right next to the prototype for the Brooklyn Bridge. Turns out that before he designed the Brooklyn Bridge, John A. Roebling designed and supervised the construction of the Cincinnati Suspension Bridge. The Cincinnati Bridge is about 800 feet shorter than the Brooklyn Bridge, but looks almost identical! After dinner we crossed over the Cincinnati Bridge back to Ohio and walked along a riverside park. Unfortunately, either I hadn't brought my camera with me on this field trip, or I was too lazy to pull out the camera. so I don't have any photos of the flying pigs to share with you! A short ride back to Mason brought us to the end of this day and my visit to Ohio. Thank you, Jennifer and Gil, for hosting my stay in Mason, and particularly for the use of your broadband Internet connection so that my Cow Report could be updated! Day 7: Mason, OH & Hot WaxToday was a low-key, relaxing sort of day. A short, 40-minute drive took me from Dayton to Mason, OH to visit my friends Jennifer and Gil. We finished the day attending a free concert in a park near their home. The featured artists were a group called Hot Wax, a 50's and 60's Revue. For my Tulsa friends, Mason has weekly free concerts in this park that are similar in concept to the summer concert series that's held at Utica Square. Except that Mason's concerts are held at a park rather than a shopping mall:
The band was actually pretty good, especially their tribute to Herb Alpert. But these guys look old enough to have easily had first-hand experience with the 50s and 60s!
Earlier in the day, Jennifer took me for a short tour of the city (Mason isn't very large, so there wasn't really a long tour option.) One of the minor highlights: visiting the local Kroger store and discovering self-service checkout facilities! You scan and bag your own groceries, but it's not completely on the honor system; there's a clerk who supervises four stations that are all grouped together. What's interesting is that the scanning system seems to be able to detect when a scanned item has (or hasn't) been placed into a bag. Jennifer and I started to wonder how this was possible; maybe a weight sensor in the pad the bag was resting on? I noticed that there seemed to be some sort of sensor at the top of the unit (I should have taken some pictures!!!); perhaps that's part of the secret. I told Jennifer that I was tempted to go buy a bunch of items, one at a time, in order to test theories of how this bag sensor worked. Jennifer laughed at the idea that I might spend a couple hours in the store and then come out with a few bags of cheap little odds and ends. I told her that my friends, on hearing the story, would all say: "yup, that's Eric!" After the grocery store, one of our stops was a Voice of America facility. At one time, this was a massive transmitting facility for the VofA, but it was decomissioned some years ago and the antenna complex all torn down. But the administration building remains, and there are plans to turn it into a museum. On our stop, however, the building was vacant and locked. As I was returning to the car, I spotted a pair of grasshoppers apparently in the process of making baby grasshoppers. Having my camera with me, and not being one to pass up a good photo opportunity, allow me to share my picture:
Day 6: The Air Force MuseumOne day was not enough! I spent the entire day today wandering through the Air Force Museum in Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. And one day just wasn't enough time. The Museum has an incredible collection of military aviation memorabilia, most of it in the form of full-size airplanes. Most of the collection is housed in two huge hangars that make up the complex itself, with additional collections maintained in an annex site a mile or so east of the museum itself. This is my second visit to the museum. The exhibits haven't changed much since my previous visit, although they have been rearranged somewhat. But unlike my previous visit about ten years ago, this time I came prepared to photograph the exhibits. Unfortunately, the lighting conditions aren't real bright in the exhibit halls, and most of the aircraft are way too large to be suitable for flash photography. So I'd brought a tripod and was prepared for long-exposure photography. But this takes time; it's not just a matter of putting the camera up to my eye, framing the photo and pressing the shutter button. Instead, I need to identify the spot where I want to have the camera, setup the tripod, setup the shot, perhaps wait for other visitors to get out of the way, and then snap the picture using the camera's self-timer. (Using the self-timer gives the camera 10 seconds or so to settle down before the shutter trips. A shaky camera and a long exposure don't mix very well!) This process had a serious detrimental effect to the number of planes that could be photographed in any given amount of time.
The second problem that cropped up: turns out that on this day the museum was hosting a series of seminars by pilots and RSOs (Reconnaissance Systems Operators, also known as the Guy In Back of the pilot who operates the camera controls) who flew the Lockheed SR-71 "Blackbird". Those of you who know of my interest in aviation know that the Blackbird is my favorite airplane, and I couldn't pass up the opportunity to hear from some of the men who have flown this aircraft. There were 8 crewmen on stage during the seminar that I dropped in on, and it turns out that several more were in the audience. Including the pilot who was at the controls of the record-setting flight of the SR-71 that was retired to the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum! (Los Angeles to Washington DC in 62+ minutes in 1991.) I spent an hour, maybe an hour and a half attending the seminar, which obviously cut into my photo time.
A third problem: post 9/11 security considerations. The museum itself was just as open to the public today as it was ten years ago. But the annex facility, which houses the presidential aircraft collection and the YF-12 variation of the Blackbird) is located on the Wright-Patterson base proper. Ten years ago, you just caught a shuttle bus outside the museum which took you to the annex, spent as much time as you wanted, and then caught the next shuttle back to the museum. Now, the process is more controlled. You need to sign up for a particular shuttle, showing government-issued photo ID of course. Then you need to show up at the departure area 20 minutes before scheduled departure, where the docent calls the roll to see who has shown up for the trip, and have your government-issued photo ID checked a second time. The bus takes the group over to the annex and then you have about 45 minutes to spend in the two annex hangars before the entire group is loaded back on the bus to be returned to the museum. As you can see, there's a lot of overhead to this process, which again cuts into photo time. The museum is currently constructing a third exhibit hall, which is scheduled to be completed in March 2003. At that time I suspect that all of the exhibits at the annex will be brought over to the museum itself, which will completely eliminate the hassles involved in the current process.
I'd seen most of the airplanes during my previous visit ten years ago. However, one new addition since then was SAM 26000, which was the Boeing 707 that served as Air Force One from the early 60s until the late 80s or early 90s. (This particular plane was used during Kennedy's trip to Dallas in November 1963.) This plane, like the others in the presidential collection, had been prepared so that visitors could walk through and see what AF-1 was like! It certainly had better accommodations than anything I've flown on! I'd like to extend special thanks to my uncle Carl for his generous hospitality and for providing accommodations during my stay in Dayton! Day 5: BallooningMuch of the day was spent with my uncle Carl taking me on a tour of Dayton. Our itinerary included a brief stop at the World Headquarters for NCR:
NCR WHQ was included in the day's tour because a founding member of my Unrequited Loves Club works for NCR in Los Angeles, and I thought it would be fun to stop by and say "hello!" to the building while I was in Dayton. My friend tells me that each of the flags represents a country where NCR does business. My cousin Stephen is an adventurous sort of person. Last time I visited Dayton, about ten or elevn years ago, Stephen was very heavily involved in skydiving and base jumping. (Base jumping is a lot like skydiving, except that you jump from fixed structures such as bridged, tall buildings, TV and radio antennas and so forth rather than airplanes. Since that visit, Stephen has hung up his parachute (at least as far as base jumping is concerned) and is now working towards his certification as a hot air balloon pilot. In order to earn the certificate, he needs to fly a certain number of solo flights, and he had decided that today was a good opportunity to add one more flight to his logbook. The flight was scheduled to originate from the Dayton Wright Brothers airport, a general aviation facility in south Dayton. Wind conditions almost grounded the flight, though. Launching the balloon is apparently very difficult and even risky when the wind exceeds 6 knots or so. We had a mild breeze for much of the day, which was supposed to taper off late in the afternoon. My uncle Carl and I met Stephen at the airport shortly after 5:30pm, with a noticeable breeze still blowing. Shortly afterwards, we were joined by Dwane and Jennifer, neighbors of Stephen who have frequently served as his ground crew for previous flights. We waited around till 6pm, but the breeze was still a little too strong, so Stephen scrubbed the launch. (NASA isn't the only organization forced to deal with weather delays!)
By the way, here's an interesting bit of information: you can use grass or other, similar flora, to help judge wind speed. Gather up a small amount of grass; then extend your arm straight out and release the grass so that it drops from shoulder height. If the grass falls to the ground about ten feet from the point where it was released, the wind is blowing at roughly ten knots. Following the decision to abort the flight, we stood around talking for a while. At about 6:15 we noticed that the breeze seemed to have subsided, and had been that way for a few minutes. The experts in the group had a change of heart and decided to go ahead and launch after all. Our first task was to pull the balloon out of its storage bag and spread it around the grass. "Lighter than air???" Not when it's empty! That balloon bag was heavy and took three people to carry it off the trailer and then pull the balloon out along the ground. (It's not as heavy as the basket, though!)
Once the balloon was unpacked and the rigging set up, the next step was to use a large, gas-engined fan to blow cool air into the balloon. This inflates the balloon and allowed Stephen to check the inside of the envelope and make sure that it's intact and rigged properly. Now we may not have had much of a breeze at this point, but that envelope is big! Even a tiny bit of breeze is enough to exert quite a noticeable force on the balloon! Jennifer, uncle Carl and I were holding the base of the envelope while Dwayne, our expert crewperson, was holding the crown rope. This is a rope that attaches to the top, or crown of the balloon, and Dwayne's job was to try and keep the balloon stabilized as it expanded. (Since we were all very busy at this point, there are no pictures of this part of the operation.) After Stephen checked out the inside of the envelope and found it to be ready for flight, he started firing the burner to begin raising the balloon. Dwayne was still holding the crown rope while the rest of us on the ground crew continued to hold the base of the envelope. But we're only a foot or two away from the burner, and it's hot! Once the burner was fired up, it only took a couple of minutes for the balloon to lift off.
Unfortunately, in the rush to get off the ground, Stephen had forgotten to tie the end of the "vent rope" to the basket. I'm not completely sure what a vent rope is, but I believe it runs to an adjustable opening in the top of the balloon that can be used to release hot air, thus causing the balloon to descend. Without access to the vent rope, the balloonist looses a significant amount of control over the craft. Stephen started the flight with the rope just out of reach! He thought about the situation for quite a while before he decided on an interesting solution: he was able to cause a fast descent of the balloon into the middle of a soybean field. When the basket hit the ground, the balloon itself was still traveling downwards with quite a bit of inertia. Stephen had a few seconds to jump out of the basket, grab the vent rope and then jump back into the basket before the balloon recovered and started climbing again. The maneuver was successful!
The remainder of the flight continued relatively uneventfully. The sun was sinking in the western horizon when Stephen decided to land the balloon in a small open field with some power lines along one side. Stephen cleared the power lines by ten feet or so and then brought the craft down just at the edge of a big weed patch. The balloon was deflated by squeezing the remaining warm air out of the envelope; it was then loaded back into its storage bag, and finally everything loaded back onto Stephen's trailer.
All in all, it was an interesting experience, and I enjoyed my first experience as a balloon chaser!
Day 4: Edwardsville to DaytonHaving arrived safely in Dayton, I'm now halfway through the vacation, at least if you're looking at the distance traveled. (If you want to be pedantic, I won't reach the halfway point until Saturday morning when I arrive in Mason, OH. But Mason is only 30 miles or so south of Dayton, and that's close enough for me!) Although today's segment was a bit shorter than the first leg of the trip, it felt longer since somewhere along the trip I entered the Eastern time zone. (The company cell phone that I carry, a tiny little Samsung, automatically detected the changeover. I was very impressed!) So I arrived in Dayton at 7pm local time, after a 7-hour trip that started at 11am local time. I encountered three states today: Illinois, Indiana and Ohio. Among them, Illinois gets credit for being the state that seems to be most aggressive about discouraging annoying and unsightly billboards along the Interstate. Indiana was worst, and Ohio somewhere in between. The landscape itself was pretty much the same in all three states: mostly flat, with a few gentle rolling hills (very small hills) in various places. Not many cows, but quite a surprising number of cornfields and other cultivated crops which I couldn't identify. On the average, though, the corn fields in these three states were much smaller than the corn fields of Kansas. There were lots of wooded areas along the way, and it looks like the crop fields are planted to take up the open spaces between the copses of trees. It's almost as if the farmers out here don't want to cut down the trees to make larger cornfields. Another surprising aspect to the cornfields in these states was a noticeable lack of irrigation equipment. Kansas crops wouldn't exist without sprinkler systems. But I have no idea how the farmers out here water their crops. Maybe they get enough rainfall so that irrigation isn't required. Last night a cold front (perhaps I should reword that as a "cool front") entered much of this part of the country. When I left Edwardsville, my truck was telling me the temperature was 73 degrees. Late this afternoon, I think the temperature peaked at 78-79, which is at least 15 degrees cooler than the start of the trip! The weather was so nice that I didn't need the air conditioner. It's much more fun driving with the windows open! (I've been told that this cool weather even reached Tulsa!) Some of you who received last year's Cow Reports documenting my Tulsa to LA trips might remember my description of the largest cross in the Western (or was it Northern) hemisphere, located in Groom, Texas. Well, the folks in Groom may have some competition! I spotted a similar cross this afternoon! I think it was located in Illinois, but I can't remember for sure. There was a sign adjacent to the cross giving a web site address; I'll check that out and pass along whatever information I can dig up. I'm sorry that I don't have more excitement to relate, but today was a pretty boring drive. I'll do better tomorrow! On a serious note, today was 9/11, a year after the terrible event in New York. Phoenix and Viking were going to have a joint memorial event today, and a part of me is sad that I wasn't present to attend. On the other hand, I like to think that being on the road and traveling today was the best way I can respond, on a personal level, to Osama bin Laden and his associates. My way of telling the terrorists that they aren't going to stop me with fear and intimidation! Day 3: Edwardsville, IllinoisA word about the Report: I've changed the format so that the daily entries will now be listed in reverse chronological order, with the most recent entry appearing at the top of the page. This means you'll always be looking at the latest news when you open the page. Hopefully that will make the report a tiny bit easier to read. Before turning to the day's activities, a bit of humor that I overlooked in yesterday's excitement about the Arch: late Sunday afternoon, as I was approaching St. Louis, I took a rest-stop break. My eyes caught a newsrack containing copies of 18 Wheel Singles, also subtitled CountrySingles.com. The price was $1, but I had lots of quarters, so I bought a copy. Who knows, maybe I'll find an 18-wheel trucker lady looking for romance! And I'm always interested in learning more about the culture that I now live in. Reading through some of the personals has been a hoot:
Although some of them are a little scary, too:
To those of my SACS friends who might be following thisReport, you might want to take note that 18 Wheel Singles reports that September 15 - 21 is National Singles Week. Returning to current events, today was a short travel day; just under 30 miles from St. Charles, MO to Edwardsville, IL. My friend Gale met me at the motel and then we drove to Pere Marquette State Park, about 40 miles north of Edwardsville, upstream on the Mississippi River. Turns out there's a marvelous lodge with an excellent restaurant. Visiting the lodge on a weekday, after the close of the summer season, was wonderful since the place was very quiet and peaceful. (You might also want to take a look at the Illinois state's park web site.)
The main lobby is finished with a hardwood floor and as dominated by a massive fireplace:
Day 2: The Arch
I think the St. Louis Arch is going to be the high point (pun intended) of the trip! The arch is an awesome example of modern technology! The arch has it's own official web site, and if you follow the right links you can find some interesting information about the history and construction of the arch. But this is my personal look at this fascinating structure!
The photo on the left was taken from the steps of the Old Courthouse building, looking east towards the Mississippi River. The photo on the right was taken during our walk from the parking structure to the arch and is looking due south across the legs of the arch. Of course, your next question is probaly wondering how my friend Warren and I got to the top of the arch where you can see me waving at you from the observation window, right? Well, we took the stairs, of course! After all, it was only 630 feet! What, you don't believe that two middle-aged old farts could walk up the tower??? Well, you're right; we didn't walk, we took the tram. The tower has two independent tram systems, one running up each leg to the observation room at the top. (There are stairs running up the legs of the tower, as well.) The tram is a very interesting design, since it doesn't travel in a straight line, obviously. Imagine a ferris wheel, where you're sitting in a cage or basket of some sort that's suspended from the wheel by the top of the basket and you have a good idea of how the Arch's tram system works. The tram consists of eight "cars" that look like:
The cars are connected together by a mechanism that we didn't get a chance to see, but the cars are suspended by the top so that as they travel up the leg of the arch, you are always sitting vertically. Each car holds five people, not very comfortably since the cars are small! The base of each leg has its own little tram station:
You can see my friend Warren on the left; we had boarding passes for car #3. (The red scaffolding is just for decoration, I hope!)
No, the photo on the left is not a commode, nor is it the gas chamber at San Quentin. It's car #3, which took Warren, myself and three other visitors to the top of the arch. Load five souls into this little can and it looks something like the photo on the right. Here's Warren enjoying the copious headroom in our little stateroom as we travelled up the north leg of the Arch:
The tram ride takes maybe 5-6 minutes to reach the top of the Arch, and the ride is not bad. There's a bit of jerkiness as you leave the station, and some minor rocking back and forth during the trip, but nothing unpleasant; in fact, it was probably milder than the Ferris Wheel ride I took at Santa Monica Pier last year. Once you reach the top of the arch, you enter the cozy little observation room itself:
(That's Warren's butt on the right, looking out the east side of the arch.) The windows are glassed in (or maybe they're plastic), so you can't drop marbles or coins on the tourists 630 feet below. And to prove that I really did take the ride to the top of the Arch:
What can you see from the observation room? Looking directly to the west, you have a great view of downtown St. Louis:
The small, domed building in the center of the picture is the Old Courthouse Building, which is now preserved as a museum. Off to the left is Busch Stadium, where the St. Louis Cardinals play baseball. The rest of the buildings are government or office buildings, hotels and so forth. Here are some additional views from the west side of the Arch:
What can you see looking out the East side of the Arch? East St. Louis, which ain't much to write home about:
I'll close out our visit to the Arch with this photo of the North leg, giving you an idea of the size of the base of the arch compared to some of the people around the Arch:
After leaving the Arch, Warren and I went to the St. Louis Science Center. I thought the 1956 Nash Metropolitan was an interesting exhibit:
Finally, Warren, his wife Linda and I had a very good buffet dinner at a new riverside casino. Afterwards, we spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out how their fascinating fountain at the entrance worked:
These two photos really can't begin to explain how fascinating the fountain is. You see, the streams of water look almost like smooth, solid tubes of some sort. And from time to time you could see colors running along the stream! And while it doesn't show up very clearly on the right photo, where two streams of water intersected, you could see colors! It turns out that "Through the magic of laminar flow technology, Waterworks International's Laminar Nozzles create amazing glass-like rods of water that can be sculpted into an endless array of visual and interactive effects." You need to see it to really appreciate the effects! Well, folks, it's getting late and I need to get to bed. I hope you've enjoyed this look at the Gateway Arch. My next major highlight will be the Air Force museum in Dayton this coming Friday. I'm not sure that there will be major updates to this report before then, especially since I don't know what my Internet connectivity will be like for the next few days. But I'll try to keep y'all informed of my activities! I'd like to give special thanks to Warren and Linda for their hospitality during my visit to St. Louis, and particularly for allowing me to use their broadband cable Internet connection which made this photo essay possible! Day 1: Tulsa to St. LouisAs is usually the case with my trips, this one started late. I was planning to hit the road no later than 10am, but I was still tied up with some last minute packing, organizing my computer equipment and selecting the music for the truck's CD changer. The rubber didn't actually hit the road till shortly after 11am! Shame on me. Also, the night before, I had come down with my usual case of pre-trip blues. I've never figured out what causes this syndrome, especially before a pleasure trip. Why should I be depressed about something that's going to take me to new places I haven't seen before and visiting friends that I haven't seen for a long time? Last night I talked about this phenomena to one of my close friends, and the best that we can figure out is that I'm a guy that gets into nice, comfortable ruts and I just don't like things that drag me out of the ruts. Even if they are fun things! But once I'm in the truck, and the trip is underway, the blues just seem to disappear. But even here I've developed comfortable ruts, and I like to start these journeys with my eclectic collection of heavy metal favorites. Nothing brings a smile to my face and puts me in the right spirit for the trip like a little Alice Cooper followed by some Black Sabbath and a bit of the Outlaws thrown in for good measure!
About an hour's drive northeast of Tulsa, spanning I-44, is a rest stop containing what claims to be the world's largest McDonalds restaurant. I'm not really sure what criteria they're using, since I think I've seen McDonalds restaurants elsewhere that can hold just as many people. But this one does have several dining areas, so perhaps the size is a bit deceptive. It also has a couple of gift shops which you don't see in the average Mickey D's . In any event, the restaurant structure completely spans I-44, so it's able to serve both sides of the turnpike. (Actually, all of the rest stops I've seen on Oklahoma turnpikes are setup so that a single rest stop serves both directions, but that's usually accomplished by putting the rest stop on an enlarged median between both sides of the turnpike. This is the only instance where the rest stop sits atop the roadway.) By the way, I have it on good advice that this restaurant used to be a Howard Johnson's at some point in the past. Of course, y'all are really interested in the cows, right? The first cows of the trip were spotted in the general vicinity of Catoosa, which is located just northwest of Tulsa (and long before I got to the McDonalds). Additional cows were spotted at various locations along the turnpike, but I was surprised to find that Missouri doesn't have cows! At least not many cows, or the cows are all in hiding. I think I saw only a single small herd of bovines during the entire drive through Missouri. No, instead of cows, Missouri has billboards along the freeways. Ugh! Perhaps that's why I didn't find the drive through MO quite as pleasant as the segment through OK. Some of the billboards got very annoying. Along one stretch of the freeway, I would zip by a billboard every half mile or so telling me about the "Walnut Bowls" factory outlet. And we're talking about a stretch of road that was at least 20 miles long, which meant a lot of repetitive billboards!!! And along that same stretch if freeway were at least two similar sets of billboards touting at least two different knife stores! Fireworks and denture suppliers were also very popular billboard topics. Also, at various points along I-44 (not just this 20 mile stretch) I spotted billboards promoting a vasectomy reversal service in Houston. This outfit is very aggressive; I've seen their ads along other freeways and turnpikes in Oklahoma, too! On the lighter side, though, there were a few billboards that get at least a few points for being at least a little creative and were not repetitive enough to be obnoxious. A couple of billboards promoted a steakhouse called "The Feed Lot". That actually sounds like an interesting place to try someday. I came across another billboard that featured a picture of a baby with the caption "Who is my daddy?" and the words "D.N.A. Testing Service" along with a phone number. Returning to wildlife, I was a little surprised to note that both the Oklahoma and Missouri segments of today's trip featured a large number of armadillos. I've seen lots of these critters on my trips to Kansas, as well. However, in all of my travels I still haven't spotted any live armadillos. These critters seem to have a hard time staying out from in front of oncoming cars and trucks. One of my colleagues at Viking tells me that armadillos actually don't get run over very much. Instead, when an armadillo panics, it has a tendency to jump straight up. If that's really the case, then apparently it's not tires that contribute to armadillo road kill so much as it's collisions with front bumpers and radiator grills. Anyway, because of my late start I didn't reach St. Louis until about 6:30pm. But I arrived safely at my friend Warren and his wife Linda. We had a fun dinner of pork roast, corn, mashed potatoes and several other goodies, followed by several hours of great conversation catching up on what we've all been doing for the last couple of decades. Tomorrow Warren and I are off to the Arch and the Science Center. Should be fun! ItineraryGiven that the trip starts in slightly less than two days, I should have my travel plans pretty well figured out, right? Well, here's what I have right now:
It's been said that one picture is worth a thousand words, so here's what the trip looks like in map format:
The route from Tulsa to Mason, Ohio is about 820 miles. The trip breaks up nicely into two segments of about 400 miles. Each segment is an easy day's drive, with plenty of time for sightseeing along the way. (I've read that the world's largest McDonald's restaurant is located in I-44 somewhere between Tulsa and Joplin, Missouri. That's going to be my first planned photo opportunity!) |
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