Kansas

We had a pretty good trip to Kansas, but I'm glad to be home. Dorothy's opinion notwithstanding, it's always pretty sweet to cross the state line back into Colorado.

The trip east was uneventful. We experienced the usual wind and the resultant mad dash of the tumbleweeds. And there were the occasional roadside elements that gave rise to brief conversations: "Look, that hawk is flapping his wings as hard as he can and is still moving backward in the wind!" and "Weren't those giant windmills a brighter white the last time we passed through?", etc. Scintillating stuff.

Actually, on the way home, Tanner tried to calculate the windmill blade velocity at the tip -- and came up with a value of right around 100mph! Even if you were Don Quixote himself, you wouldn't want to stand on the ground next to one of these behemoths. Though the splindles only rotate at a pedestrian 20 rpm, the enormous length of the blades means that the tip would roar past you like a Japanese bullet train and would scare the Spam out of you, even if it didn't chop your head clean off.

Cool.

Of course, there are one or two other sights along the road that grab your attention:
Whew! 8000 pounds is a LOT of prairie dog. (He's made out of concrete, which makes him a tad heavier than he'd be if he were flesh & blood...but he IS pretty darn big, regardless. And they even paint him once every 25 years or so, so Prairie Dog Town is a swell attraction. Seriously, everybody should go there once...just to make you appreciate your own life just a little bit more. And yes, those are llamas in the background of the photo.

Yeah, I know -- you're wondering what llamas are doing in Kansas. Oh sure, you expect to see meadowlarks and Jayhawks perched on every available tree branch, but not a bunch of Andean pack animals roaming the plains. Buffalo, maybe, and probably a Hereford or two, but no badgers, and definitely no llamas. Sorry, but I cannot explain it.

Anyway, the drive was the same as it always is. There was a slight problem when we got to Wichita -- I spent 15 minutes trying to convince a hotel clerk that I had indeed made a reservation, despite the fact that he couldn't find me in his computer. Such things are usually due to the clerk searching for an incorrect spelling, so I made sure to repeat my name, letter by letter, slowly and distinctly. Nope. Not there. I figured it must've gotten lost somewhere in some dusty forgotten corner of the Internet, so I asked him if he had any open rooms, and how much they were. He told me the price, and I commented that that was quite a bit more than I'd paid online...which is when we both figured out that I had reserved a room with the East Kellogg branch, not the airport hotel. Oops.

The good news is that my idiocy cost me nothing but the extra drive time. It did make us late to dinner, but since my brother and his wife were taking us all out to a fancy-pants place for my dad's birthday, a quarter of an hour here or there made no difference. [For those of you who are not familiar with the concept of "fine dining", it's all about sitting in the dark for a long time while obsequious dudes hover around behind you with vases* full of water and lemon wedges, hoping for the chance to refill your glass and get a large tip. They expect you to be there all night long, savoring the various unpronouncable sauces they lovingly drip atop your food...so if you're late -- no biggie.] Our waiter (a young fellow named Mason) bore an unfortunate resemblance to Quentin Tarantino, and the room was too noisy for anything other than shouted conversation, but the food was tasty and the company enjoyable. My dad even made an empassioned speech/toast, and there was much familial bonding.

* OK, I'm missing something here. For uncounted eons, water glasses have been refilled from pitchers, emmintently servicable containers that hold much water and ice, and dispense them easily. When did it become all the rage to fill glasses from these pint-sized flower vases (I think they call them "giraffes" or some such), and then have to refill those after every second glass? I am beginning to doubt that I will ever understand high society. Sigh.

And after that, we went back to Dad's house for birthday pie. Mmm.

Pat and Liane are incredibly generous people. In addition to springing for dinner for the group, they also did the bulk of the labor at my dad's house throughout the rest of the weekend. My sister and her daughter also helped a lot, as did my son. Since my skills tend to lean more toward data processing than successful usage of power tools, I spent most of the time working on my dad's computer, diagnosing errors and helping with file organization. Much was accomplished, no one was hurt**, and additional pie was consumed at pleasingly frequent intervals.

** OK, Julie did suffer a bit when she stepped into a flowerpot full of water. It had been buried in the yard and covered with fallen leaves, in much the way the Viet Cong used to create punji-stick tiger traps. But other than a soaked foot and some frutrating wait time while her shoe and sock tumbled in the dryer, Julie appeared to be no worse for wear.

One of the major outdoor projects was the erection of a couple of Greek columns in the front yard. I thought that perhaps they were planning to bid on holding the next Democratic Convention in their yard, or perhaps film a Star Trek Episode, but Judy explained that the idea was to provide a vertical structure upon which the local ivy could climb, thus creating a vegetation canopy to protect the front porch from the heat of the summer sun. OK.

I have no idea how fast ivy grows, or what it is about non-weight-bearing columns that attracts such growth...but it will be interesting to visit next summer and see how well the plan has come together. In any case, it gave Tanner an opportunity to learn how to assemble and tighten guy wires, in case he ever wants to create a Stonehenge stage set for the band or something.

Anyway, it was a lovely trip, and I think my dad enjoyed his birthday. But I'm home now, and thinking about Thanksgiving. I'm pretty sure it's going to be an awesome week all around.