Today’s weather was a carbon copy of yesterday - perhaps even a bit warmer. Overall, glorious. I loaded up my stuff and headed to Jack Stack in downtown Kansas City, right across the tracks from Union Station. More about Union Station later. I bellied-up to the bar and promptly ordered a half rack of hickory smoked baby-backs, extra original sauce, cheesy corn bake and baked beans with burnt ends. My impatience was rewarded with a fantastic lunch, including a local beer, for $19.50. I told the barmaid about my utter disappointment when I arrived last night to lights out. She explained that everyone in K.C. goes to Kansas Motor Speedway on Sundays to drink Budweiser and watch Billy-Bob-Jimbo-Bubba-Baker drive around in circles for 10 hours, so there’s no point in keeping a restaurant open until dinner time because everyone here is passed out-drunk by 7:00. I’m pretty sure that’s what she said; anyway, that’s what I heard. I asked her what attractions I should see while in K.C. today. Her response was a blank stare.
After a very tasty lunch, I walked over a footbridge to Union Station and saw an endless train hauling hundreds of loads of coal passing by. Union Station is a beautifully redeveloped humongous train station and entertainment center that is completely empty. There was a model train exhibit that had huge displays of working trains on every scale from G-scale to Z-scale. It was really fantastic, but apart from the maintenance crew, I was the only person there - what a shame. As I wandered the station, I saw a U.S. Post Office and decided to send home a box of T-shirts and other stuff I’ve acquired on my journey. After boxing-up all the stuff and taping it shut, I stood in a line of 10 people for about 45 minutes. When it was my turn, they postman said it would be cheaper to send it via Express Mail; He actually wanted to unload all my shit and put it into a different box so I could save $2.00 on postage. I finally convinced him to just send it parcel-post for 2-bucks more. I now understand why UPS and FedEx make huge profits and the U.S. Postal Service is bankrupt.
I had a list of sights to see: WWI Museum; Jazz History Museum; President Truman’s Ranch house. It turns out that every museum in town is closed on Mondays. After riding all over K.C. I can say that it’s a nice city, not great, but very nice. And their Chiefs are the only undefeated team in the NFL! It was after 3:00 when I hit the road west through Kansas.
Kansas is a state that only its mother, Arkansas, could love. This place is extremely flat, like a… well you know what I mean, it’s very flat. The wheat and corn have all been harvested and the flat landscape is also pretty baron and brown. This place really needs a gimmick like a big stainless steel arch to draw-in some tourists. KS really tries hard though; they play-up the whole Wizard of Oz thing and they even have a winery named Oz. It all seems a bit feeble to me. Did I mention there are lots of bugs here? My windshield looks like an insect holocaust. In fairness to KS, I did see a number of historical monuments dedicated to war heroes who lived in this state. It’s also the source of 20% of U.S. wheat production, but these are not big drawing cards for tourism. One advantage of being extremely flat is that KS sunsets last for hours. As I rode west into the sunset, the sky remained orange, pink and faint blue for over an hour after the sun had set on the distant horizon.
After the sun finally set, I pulled-into a motel in Hays, western Kansas. I met a Vietnam Vet who calls himself Roadkill because he once killed a deer on his Harley at 70 MPH and he didn’t crash. Roadkill is returning to Denver after a meeting of his Vietnam Veterans Motorcycle Association in Indiana. We had a nice chat before I dismissed myself to check-in and watch the whacky second half of the Dolphins-Patriots game. Let’s just Say the Fish have a pathetic Special Teams.
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