Getting there (and back)

We got our first taste of the distance between Maryland and Kansas last week. Honestly, the drive itself wasn't all that bad...it took two full days. The first night we stopped in Dayton, OH for dinner with a friend/co-worker (the corporate office of my employer is located there) then slept in Richmond, IN. Richmond is the kind of town where you stay if you want to escape the bright lights of Dayton, and you're not quite sophisticated enough for those fancy motor lodges in the suburbs of Indianapolis. The return on our $40 hotel room investment was MASSIVE. Allison went to "Hoosier Pete" to buy a morning cup of coffee for 49 cents, only to frantically burst out of the store moments later in fear. We opted for McDonald's instead, where I was greeted by a cashier whose t-shirt read "Sure, I'll share my fries with you. (Not!)". I promise to get a picture next time. We passed the time throughout the two day drive by rotating music with some books-on-tape, which I would recommend to anyone driving long distances, or anyone reading this blog from jail with access to a CD player.

Once we checked in at her temporary address in Kansas, Allison and I headed out on the town of Manhattan for a few days of errands and discovery. Like I said in the last post, I was pleasantly surprised by the overall scene of the place. One interesting stop on our journey was the Manhattan Town Center mall:


Wait...what?! I guess it's comforting to know that I can't LEGALLY be assaulted with a firearm at the mall, but there's all kinds of stuff wrong with this picture. I mean, it's a MALL...did you really need to bring your gun? I especially like how they posted a notice on each door - you know, to make you feel more safe. Fortunately I didn't see any "No Hand Grenades" signs anywhere, so I went inside packing heat in case anyone commented on my fat thighs while I tried on board shorts at PacSun.

Here's my next installment of How People Talk in Kansas...this one may be hard to explain, but try to follow along. Whenever you do something that causes the other person to wait for a moment (even if that moment truly is just one second long) they say "you're fine". We went to State Farm to get Allison's insurance info transferred, and I overheard a guy pausing for TWO SECONDS to get his drivers license out of his wallet. The woman behind the counter told him "you're fine". I handed my credit card to the waitress at breakfast, then realized that it's the kind of place where you pay at the register on the way out. Before I could even mutter a syllable (I must have had that "my bad" look on my face) she said "you're fine". It's a really good example of the accommodating nature of the folks in Kansas, and it's also extremely annoying once you notice it.

But I couldn't stay in Kansas forever. Allison starts Orientation on Monday, and I gotta get back to work. Somewhere along the way, I got the bright idea to book a flight home on Sunday at 6:10 AM out of Kansas City (2 hours east of Manhattan). No sweat though...a quick search of FlyKCI.com rewarded me with a ground transportation option via the RoadRunner airport shuttle for a relatively low price (I wasn't going to let her drive me to the airport in the middle of the night...those highways are DESOLATE). This is where things went downhill. The shuttle was late of course, and the driver resembled Dobber from Coach - you either get that reference, or you don't. Dobber loves his job, but isn't good at it. In fact, he is one of the worst drivers I have ever witnessed. Remember, I was on this shuttle at 3:00 AM, and hadn't slept yet. I was nervously chugging an Aquafina, and within minutes my bladder was lighting fires in the lower half of my body...I had to pee like no one has ever had to pee before. Dobber ran a red light in downtown Topeka and I wanted to throw up. The boy in the seat ahead of me was listening to some dance/rap combo on his headphones at a volume that felt like a subwoofer was beat-boxing on my liquid-filled abdomen. Dobber drove 80 MPH through fog with the high beams on, and I thought I was going to pass out. I was moments away from putting my pee-into-the-half-full-water-bottle plan into action when he broke the silence with a creepy "Welcome to Kansas City International Airport" introduction to me and the 7 other sleeping passengers.

One thing we learned on our journey across America is that there is no shortage of material for blogs...