We’re On A Road To Nowhere

That Time I Spent A Lot Of Money On Gas Part 7: Kentucky to New York and Losing My Car Near Niagara Falls

After I’d had my fill of bourbon (and wine; I’d done a wine tasting too—it was tasty), I decided it was finally time to head back toward I-90. I crossed Ohio on the alliterative route of Cincinnati to Columbus to Cleveland which put me back on I-90 for a small stretch of northwestern Pennsylvania and hugged the Canadian border towards Niagara Falls where I managed to lose my car. Up to that point, rest stops were small areas with a moderate amount of parking in front of one or two mid-sized buildings housing toilets and maps. The fancy ones even had vending machines. About an hour into New York, the rest stops turned into sprawling malls with retail shops, restaurants, grocery stores, gas stations, and expansive, car-swallowing parking lots. I entered a rest stop intent on steak and eggs, consumed said steak and eggs and then promptly exited on the opposite side of the rest stop onto a completely different, yet identical, parking lot. I confidently walked toward the sign I parked in front of, congratulating myself on choosing such an easily recognizable marker, and then stared in awe at the complete lack of my car.

(Life-like re-imaging of the scene.)

Thankfully, I’m not too big of an idiot and figured out my snafu after about 3 minutes of scanning the parking lot and repeating, There is no way someone stole my car to myself. My repetitious mantra was not just me trying to convince myself, by the way. I have a fair amount of electrical problems with my car, so between the trick to the ignition switch, the trick to the gear shift, and the trick to keep the car running, there really is no way someone could have stolen my car and gotten very far with it.

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Part 8

Take You There

That Time I Spent A Lot Of Money On Gas Part 6: The Kentucky Bourbon Trail

The Bourbon Trail was mostly this:

followed by this:

And then some more of this:

Notice how the pictures are getting more blurry? Alcohol may have been involved.

I did manage to crash a family reunion (wherein I was adopted by a large Austrian family) and I avoided being kidnapped by a boisterous bachelor party in a party bus. To be fair, I pseudo-crashed* the bachelor event too, so I shouldn’t have been entirely surprised at them wanting me to join them for shots in the bus afterwards.

I had to hang out for a while after the Bulleit tour. I had a few more than the allotted samples.

On my third day in Kentucky, I was heading to the Makers Mark Distillery and marveling at the surprising lack of racist-type rednecks (and chiding myself for falling to the stereotype which I presumed might be a problem the further east and south I got from Seattle) when an old pick-up pulled in front of me flying two huge Confederate Flags from the back. I tried to get a picture but the truck took off like the driver was a big Dukes of Hazzard fan and all I managed to snap was a blur of blue and orange and a giant dust cloud. Driving through that small town was super uncomfortable since it matched all my stereotype movie images of a scary racist town where I would meet my doom. I didn’t meet my doom, but I did meet plenty of angry glares; maybe they just don’t like European import cars.

*There was room for one more on the bachelors’ Bulleit tour and instead of waiting for the next one, I agreed to join the bachelors (much to their delight).

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Part 7

Here Is Where Time Is On Our Side

That Time I Spent A Lot Of Money On Gas Part 5: St. Louis to Louisville and the Trans-Dimensional Insects

Leaving St. Louis into Illinois, I went across the relatively new Stan Span. It was a fairly impressive structure and a picture of it would go very nicely here but 1) I didn’t notice any place to pull over for a picture while on the bridge and 2) that might have been because I made the mistake of looking up at the cable supports and was too busy getting the weird jibblies in my gut parts. Here’s something I found on the internets from the bridge’s designer HNTB::

Stan Musial Veterans Memorial Bridge

I skipped heading north to Chicago because I’ve already done that and at this point in the trip, I was bee-lining for Louisville. Somewhere in the middle of Missouri I knew I’d be staying a couple of days between Louisville and Lexington to do the Bourbon Trail, so I found a hotel located between the two cities on my handy-dandy phone and made a reservation. (My phone wasn’t really handy-dandy for large portions of my trip–usually when having GPS would have been really, really helpful.)

I went vroom-vroom east on I-64 through Illinois and Indiana. It wasn’t that late at that point, but I only passed a dozen or so cars in both states, so I’m pretty sure I somehow ended up in an alternate dimension. The alternate dimension was very noisy. As I zoomed along in the dark, I could hear very distinct insectile chirping even over my blaring stereo and engine noise. I turned off my tunes and rolled down my window and confirmed, yes, that was indeed the sound of insects. Other-dimensional insects. Huge, man-eating, other-dimensional insects. Like in The Mist. I rolled my window back up, hugged my bug spray and hoped none of them would jump in front of my car since they were quite obviously the size of cattle.

[If you really must know, after Googling “loud-ass bugs’, “really noisy insects” and “the fuck is making all that noise”, I managed to narrow down that I likely heard Brood XXIII of the Magicicada neotredecim.]

About 5 hours later, I managed to cross into Kentucky unaccosted. If any cult kids from Nebraska managed to follow me to that point, I’m sure the other-dimensional insects ate them.

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Part 6

I Don’t Care

That Time I Spent A Lot Of Money On Gas Part 4: Nebraska to Missouri

Through Nebraska on I-80 isn’t much to write about, but the highway is pink and mica-sparkly, so that’s kind of cool in a Jem and the Holograms way. Every time I was moderately tempted to turn off the highway and explore a little town, I thought, Nah; I’ve seen Children of the Corn. I did end up stopping a few times, but I can’t tell from my notes where. Even reviewing a map isn’t helping much. There was a Target. I did not get sacrificed to He Who Walks Behind The Rows.

Heading off the interstate in Lincoln in favor of state routes dumped me in Iowa for just long enough for me to decide I couldn’t remember a single city in Iowa (I know; Des Moines) before seeing “Missouri Welcomes You”.  And then “Welcome to Kansas”. And then “Missouri Welcomes You” again. I felt very welcomed. I’m pretty sure all that took less than one hour. And then I was on a major interstate again (I-29) heading towards Kansas City. I calculated the distance in my head and decided I’d probably lost any religious fanatical children who found my four decades of living to be blasphemous and stopped in Kansas City for a bit.

A stop in Kansas City was going to have to include barbecue…until I stopped to re-gas my car and use a toilet and I walked into the Holy Mecca of roller foods. (Or, if you prefer, the Stonehenge of roller foods, the Okubo-ji of roller foods, the–uh–Wailing Wall of roller foods.) I realize a safer choice would be to choose a non-religious-pilgrimage analogy, but then it wouldn’t convey the level of devotion I have for all things junk food. I don’t know what roller grills are like in the convenience stores where you’re from, but in Seattle, they’re often about a shoulder width wide and about as much deep. In this glorious place, there were rows upon rows of 7-foot-long roller grills; roller food as far as the eye could see. A virtual ocean of diarrhea-inducing foodstuffs. And I wanted it all. I could always nab some barbecue in St. Louis.

[Case in point, I was on a roll here (HA! See what I did there? Not intended; I caught that on the editing re-read) with the writing when I decided to take a break and consume about 7 servings of something crunchy and salty and packed with artificial flavors. Now I can’t remember what I was going on about.]

About 4 hours later in St. Louis, I once again was distracted by junk food while otherwise mucking about and exploring the city. I never did end up getting my barbecue.

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Part 5