Everything's Up To Date In Ames

Day One

As usually happens we got off to a less than ideal start. After we picked up our swanky blue Chrysler 300 from Overcoat we began the extensive loading process. It's a pretty roomy old-guy car with plenty of room, but we still didn't have enough room for everything. And just as we were pulling out we heard the rumble of thunder and sure enough, we were hit by a blinding rainstorm as we got to Guthrie.

Our mascot for the trip is a, well, stuffed turkey named Mr. Tom.

Our sweet ride had Sirius satellite radio in it, but we're an XM family, so we didn't know the stations. That's when I got the creative-family-fun-idea that we generate our own channel list by turning to each station listening for a few secs and then C.F. Kats or I would come up with a name. Some of the ones we came up with were Snag My Sari On A Synthesizer: A European Movie Soundtrack; Glo-ry! I'm Dizzy: A "Thank You, I Receive That!" Story; A Child's Garden Of Narcisses; The Hottest Thing I've Ever Tasted Was Silver Spring Jerked Chicken; Ponytails R Us; and finally the tragic Scotsman-sung ballad of loss and more loss rated the channel name Bobby Goldsbrrrrro's Kilt.

We did tire of that after an hour or so - they have over 200 channels by God - and somewhere east of Emporia, Kans. I slipped in my CD of number station recordings. Once they got over the eerie fear that grips you like the aural equivalent of a stroll through a deserted mental institution, the hypnotic recitations of numbers made them nod off. Although at first C.F. Kats did say, "I can't believe how easily everyone in this car accepts this!"

For lunch we decided to pull off at Emporia and get some sandwich stuff and have a picnic. We got the food alright and directions to 'the park', but upon arrival we were met by a toll-taking ogre collecting parking fees to park at the, well, park. Weird. There was a baseball toonament, but we just wanted to eat in the shade. No dice. So we drove for-ever until we found a cement-covered urban park/memorial to native son William Allen White. We all pretty well decided that we consistently find Kansas to be unfriendly even though that goes against conventional wisdom.

Our sojourn through Oz was rewarded, though, by a delicious QT raid just over the state line in Kansas City, Mo. Mmmm....cocaccino....

Skittering across the northwest tip of Missouri, we slipped into Iowa and uneventfully arrived in Ames, where we stayed in the stately Memorial Union hotel. Very cool. During the evening we strolled around Iowa State's Campustown area and ate some BBQ. The girls also got see Saturday night on the streets of a college town. And despite YHWH leaving the key in the door all night, we had a good night's sleep.