Funmurphys: the Blog

Westward Ho

We drove to Colorado in our new mini-van for vacation. Yes, the Murphy Family is nothing if not utterly conventional. We live in the burbs. We have two loin fruit. I volunteer with the scouts and my wife sings in the church choir. If I were to go crazy and kill people, all the neighbors would say "he was always such a quiet man."

If you know anything about the drive from St. Louis to Denver, you know that there is plenty of time to contemplate the wonders of life as the heartland flows by. I can't remember any of that, so I thought I'd jot down random musings, insights, and amusing anecdotes from our journey.

Missouri is nicknamed the "Show Me" state. Billboard companies have taken us at our word and by golly show us every couple of feet along I-70.

When we passed a VW bug with Alaska plates before we even reached Columbia, my wife immediately started collecting license plates. No alphabet game for us (we could safely ignore the Flying-J stores whose signs are chockablock with otherwise rare letters). We came across plates from 48 states and several Canadian provinces. We bagged Hawaii on the way home when he cut me off at a toll booth leaving the Kansas Turnpike. Oddly enough, we saw a bunch of New Hampshires, but no Vermonts. Perhaps they're afraid to show their faces in the Midwest after that Howard Dean kerfufle in Iowa. No Rhode Islands either, but no surprise there.

Rural areas are now served by a multitude of porn supercenters along our nations interstate system. Sometimes the names were evocative like "Passions", and sometimes the names were utilitarian like "XXX". Cows and sheep can rest easier.

Whoever mapped out the route I-70 takes through Kansas City should be shot. I've never exited a road to stay on it so many times in my life before.

Kansas isn't flat, just empty. The green rolling hills without a tree in sight have their own beauty. Traffic on the highway dropped off noticably west of Kansas City, and there were stretches in central Kansas where the only man made object in view was the highway, and the infrequent interchange was with a dirt road. In the Missouri countryside, it seems somebody's house is always in view -- you can tell how long they've lived there by how many rusted out wrecks they have out back.

Wilson billed itself as the Czech capital of Kansas. I don't know if the people in Prague, the Czech captial of the Czech republic know this, but I'm not sure why we need a Czech capital for Kansas.

They are proud of their astronauts on the plains, as something like six towns along the way had signs letting travelers know that their favored sons were astronauts. I guess somepeople will do anything, no matter how dangerous, to get out of a small town.

We saw the World's largest Prairie Dog from the highway, but didn't stop at Prairie Dog Town in Oakley, Kansas even though it has farm animals with extra parts. I wanted to, but cooler heads prevailed. OK, the Fruit of the Murphy Loins let it be known that they weren't interested in either concrete or freak animals when they had all the modern comforts in the van.

They farm sunflowers in Kansas. Huge, beautiful fields of vibrant yellow right there for your enjoyment along the road. Makes me wish I could have gotten to Lompoc CA when the flowers where in bloom.

The Holiday Inn Express in Salina KS has a great free breakfast but a tiny swimming pool. The Fruit didn't even bother with the pool on the way home.

Cruise control is one of the great driving inventions of the 20th century. Not only does it allow you to put your feet up on the dash on a long trip, it lets you feel superior to drivers without it. Most people are predictable, they slow down going uphill and speed up going downhill. People on cell phones, however, go crazy and speed up and slow down based, near as I can tell, on whether they're talking or listening at the moment. Then there are the "sticky" drivers - when you go to pass them, they speed up so you have to take your foot off the dash, mash down on the accelerator to get by, and then slow back down when you finally manage to get ahead of them. Or they come flying up behind you, match your speed five feet from the back bumper, and stay with you for 150 miles before exiting. And it never fails that as you come up behind somebody going slower, somebody else comes up behind you going faster. Then the fun begins -- just how close will you come to the car in front before either getting in the passing lane or taking it off cruise.

Ah, the joys of the open road.