Day 4: Colorado - Kansas - Missouri... Mainly Kansas

Photos: http://alice-waters.jofish.com/galleries/2005/roadtrip/day4-colorado-kansas-missouri/day4-colorado-kansas-missouri.htm

After dinner with Beemer and the Boyz last night, we drove to the other side of Denver to avoid the morning rush hour traffic around Denver, which was probably a very good idea given the amount of traffic at 10pm. We woke up with Kansas in front of us.

Kansas was a long drive. It's as boring as everyone says it is. (Perlick: "I almost went to the Prarie Dog Town having seen advertisements for it for FOUR HOURS.") At least it's moderately pretty. But there's nothing there, as faithfully documented by your narrators. Note grain elevators, windmills, fields of... fields.

We ended up in Kansas City [Missouri] for BBQ at the famed far-and-wide Arthur Bryants. From looking at the photos, you can get a feel for why they sounded quite so confused when I called them to ask if we needed a reservation at about 5pm...

Day 5: Missouri - Indiana

http://alice-waters.jofish.com/galleries/2005/roadtrip/day5-missouri-indiana/day5-missouri-indiana.htm

We woke up on the east side of Kansas City, Missouri for a relatively civilized 360 mile drive to Bloomington, Indiana. I-70 in Missouri is a nasty road, lots of trucks, and it was a relief to pull off for lunch in St. Louis at the 9th Street Abbey, a nice restaurant in an old church.

Then we went and met up with Speedbump, his wife Liz and their kid Max, who is the single cutest kid I think I've ever seen. Just utterly gorgeous, and completely charming: didn't cry once in all the time we were there. We went out to dinner at a very good Afgani restaurant in downtown Bloomington, IN. Bloomington is a sweet town: it's about two or three times the size of Ithaca, but still has a college feel. Then Janet and I went with Josh to a rehearsal of AfroHoosier Funk, who play interesting African music: they were working on doing a live version of a popular South African piece called Oy! Oy!, which is clearly originally done with a Technics 303 originally. They're a clearly impressively talented group.

Day 6: Indiana - Ohio

http://alice-waters.jofish.com/galleries/2005/roadtrip/day6-indiana-ohio/day6-indiana-ohio.htm

The days are getting easier by this stage: another 350 mile day. We had a good late breakfast with Josh at the Runcible Spoon in downtown Bloomington and then hit the road to drive to Leper & Elizabeth in Oberlin, OH. Ohio is as religious as Kansas: note the Isaiah reference on the cornerstore sign, and the JESUS SAVES on the Heavenly Deligh icecream store. A pretty ride from the highway out to Oberlin, which is smaller than Ithaca: Oberlin College has about 2800 students, so about a tenth of Cornell, and without Ithaca College to keep the town numbers up. But it's a very pleasant university, and has some good food: we went to an extremely chi-chi-wannabe pan-Asian restaurant, determined to bring exotic new cuisine to the midwest: think combinations of vertical food with midwestern quantities of meat.

It was great to see Leper and Elizabeth: they have a stunning house with ceilings that must be about 22", which'll probably be under repair for next twenty years as they put in various new bits over time. So much fun, and saw some of the work Leper's been doing on ShotSpotter, which is just stunningly cool.

Day 7: Ohio - Pennsylvania - New York

http://alice-waters.jofish.com/galleries/2005/roadtrip/day7-ohio-newyork/day7-ohio-newyork.htm

A nice leisurely morning -- leisurely enough to hit the stunning collection at the Oberlin collection. It's amazing: a really good collection, particularly of 15-18th century European art. Brilliant.

We dropped by Erie, NY to see the USS Brig Niagra, once commanded by Janet's great great great great great grandfather. No doubt using goat skins herded by my great great great great great great grandfather, or something like that. Then back to Ithaca; I'm currently writing as Janet's a year.

We're running a bit later than planned: it's going to be about 7pm by the time we're back in Ithaca, and we'd been hoping for a bit earlier. Still, that's time to drop off our stuff and head down to Felica's by ten or so for a drink with the crew. The skies are looking on the dark and ominous side: so far, we haven't had to put the roof up once because of rain, which is an amazing record for a seven day trip -- particularly when you consider that parts of Kansas City, for example, were flooded under *two feet* of water three days before we got there. We'll see if our luck holds out in New York.

This last three hours across New York is just about as exhausting as Kansas, although it's all emotional: it's that "we're home!" feeling... but we're not, yet. But getting there.

Tomorrow I'm off to Aarhus, Denmark for a conference, then back via my big family BBQ in Lydbrook next weekend. Then it's classes and finishing up CHI papers for two weeks. Crazy times.

[PS! We made it 3200 miles without having to put the top up for rain ONCE!]