Road Trip '08 - Day 7

Jefferson City, MO to STL and back again
______ miles, ______ hours
Total miles so far:
Total time on raod: 39 hours, 11 minutes
States driven through: Missouri
Dead deer seen on side of road: 32
Dead mice: 1
Smokies: 52
Cranky Canadian Border Guards: 1
Royal Canadian Mounties seen: 0

Leslie’s flight didn’t leave until 4, so we were able to sleep late before attacking the final leg of Road Trip ’08.

I got up a little early and cooked us some breakfast: sausage and pancakes with our special Canadian syrup. It wasn’t up to say, Keeneland’s standards, but it was pretty darn good if I do say so myself.

Leslie made her flight no problem and I made it back home no problem.

A few stats:
My car drove: 2664.1 miles
We averaged: 28.6 mpg
We averaged 55.1 mph
We used: 93.5 gallons of gas

Road Trip '08 - Day 6

Cleveland, Ohio to Jefferson City, MO
______ miles, ______ hours
Total miles so far:
States driven through: Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri
Dead deer seen on side of road: 31
Smokies: 48
Cranky Canadian Border Guards: 1
Royal Canadian Mounties seen: 0

What a nice, sunny Ohio morning! It’s perfect driving weather, or at least it would be if three quarters of Ohio’s highways weren’t under construction and being patrolled by 8 gazillion cops.

Speaking of cops, I’m actually kind of digging the Ohio Highway Patrol’s logo.

I drove the first two hours, then Leslie took over, then I promptly proceed to almost choke to death on a Nerd Rope.

For lunch, we stopped off at the Cracker Barrel on exit 104 (Leslie’s fav). It was good, although the pre-meal game (“Skip the Tee”) knocked my self-esteem level down a few notches. Apparently, despite my high ACT score, I am an egg-no-raw-moose (I left four tees). Leslie, on the other hand, succeeded in removing all but one, thus earning the title “genius.” I wouldn’t put too much stock in it though; it’s just a wooden triangle’s opinion.

I climbed back in behind the wheel and Indiana and Illinois went by fairly quickly. Before you knew it, we were in Missouri and soon enough were pulling into my driveway.

My roommate moved out the day after we left and he didn’t clean his dishes or his bathroom before he left, but other than that and my now-overgrown lawn, Leslie seemed to like my house.

There was also the small matter of the mouse in the mouse trap, but better a dead mouse in a trap than a live one in her bed.

Road Trip '08 - Day 5

Niagara Falls, ON to Cleveland, Ohio
______ miles, ______ hours
Total miles so far:
States driven through: Ontario, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio
Dead deer seen on side of road: 23
Smokies: 28
Cranky Canadian Border Guards: 1
Royal Canadian Mounties seen: 0

I didn’t want to wake up today. My pillow and bed at our hotel was just too awesome. But alas, all good things must come to and end and we packed up shop and said goodbye the Falls.

We crossed the border and drove through New York, Pennsylvania and into Ohio with little fanfare.
Once we hit Cleveland, however, things got a little rougher. Downtown is all one way streets and exactly half of them are closed for construction. It made navigating to the Holiday Inn Express a less than pleasant experience. We finally made it, and it was a good thing because a few more minutes and I would have shifted in to Angry Brian Mode. You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum (hereafter referred to as “HoF”), our real reason for the trip (forget Syracuse), was only a seven-minute walk from the hotel so we set out to find it and bask in its glory as its waves of Rock and Roll goodness washed over us in an auditory baptism of guitar riffs and drum solos.

OK, so it wasn’t that dramatic, but it was pretty darn cool. So cool, in fact, that it warranted that 63-word sentence above.

The HoF (not to be confused with The Hoff) is a very large amalgam of a Louvre-like glass pyramid, some wicked spiral staircases and any building designed by Frank Gehry. It looks like it should be housing great works of art instead of the relics of rock and roll. Not that those aren’t art. You get my point.

We each paid our $22 and checked our cameras because of the HoF’s stupid policy. I’m not aware of the Hoff’s policy on photos.

If you imagine the HoF to be like visiting a Hard Rock Café on crack, you’d be wrong. First off, most rockers these days prefer heroin. Secondly, no one is pressuring you to order cheese fries. Thirdly and most importantly, this place is actually a museum.

From the very beginning, the HoF is very overwhelming and it’s hard to know where to begin. It’s not just a collection of guitars and drumsticks. It’s a very academic place, if you can imagine that. The basement level is especially so. It traces the birth and growth of Rock and Roll from the 40s all the way today. The displays were largely set up to depict the regional growth of Rock and Roll.

One of my favorite exhibits were interactive and allowed you to trace a certain artist’s influences. For instance, you could click on Janis Joplin and hear a certain song, then click on her influences and it would play two songs by here influences and mashed together they pretty much equaled Janis Joplin.

The other exhibit I thought was really fun offered you an interactive map and you could trace how different disk jockeys and radio helped spread certain subgenres of rock and roll through out the country, region by region.

I’ve never really been a huge Jimi Hendrix fan, but I really enjoyed looking at his childhood drawings (he was really into drawing football scenes) and reading some of his early poetry. Had he not become a guitar god (or choked on his own vomit), he probably had a future in art.

I really enjoyed that they reached back way further than your typical VH1 rock-umentary, mentioning hundred of rock and roll forefathers from the 30s and 40s.

The second and third floors were largely dedicated to the technology of rock (wax cylinders, records, transistor radios, TV, Walkmans, iPods, eletric guitars, amps, etc.

The fourth floor (it’s a porch, really) is all about Pink Floyd’s The Wall and is creepy.

Up the stairs to the fifth floor was a special exhibit about The Beatles’ movie, HELP! It was fun, but would have been more interesting if I had actually seen HELP!

One more spiral staircase and we were on the final floor, which housed a special exhibit on The Doors. I enjoy Break on Through, Touch Me, Light my Fire and of course Riders on the Storm, but beyond that Jim Morrison scares the crap out of me. While Leslies cruised the exhibit, I watched a concert performance and… wow… I can’t even describe it.

Our Rock and Roll odyssey at an end, we browsed the gift shop. Aside from HoF stuff, they also had a very large music selection. I escaped having only purchased some postcards and a fridge magnet.

My only real complaint with the HoF is that there isn’t a wing dedicated to Queen. Yet. Also, I’ve become keenly aware just how inadequate my iTunes collection is.

We went back to the hotel ordered some pizza and watched E!, marveling at how dumb it is and wondering what kind of idiots watch it.

Oh.

What else is there to say? Cleveland rocks!

Road Trip '08 - Day 3

Syracuse, NY

Today was Take-A-Look-Around-Syracuse-And-Pray-Leslie-Doesn’t-Hate-It Day.

Fortunately, she didn’t hate it. In fact, she really liked it and felt very much at home. We toured campus and it was very pretty. There were students lounging around on the Quad and it looked like a postcard. It made me miss OBU.

It was also ridiculously warm. According the Internet (and everyone knows what you read online is true), the average temp in July is 70.4 degrees. Of course, today it was 87 degrees. The Syracuse Physical Plant hasn’t thrown the switch from Winter to Summer, so we sweltered whether we were inside or out and about.

We met with the director of Leslie’s program (I can’t remember what it’s called, but it’s a lot of letters), Dr. Scott McWonderbeard. He was actually very cool and if I were enrolling as a grad student at Syracuse, I’d be excited that he would be one of my profs. He is an Okie and did his undergrad and masters at OU. He is also an ubergeek. Want proof? He has developed a board game he’s marketing in Germany about the action surrounding the bursting economic bubble of the 1750s Amsterdam tulip market. I’m not even joking. He was still cool though. I promise.

Two students from Leslie’s betrothed program gave us a brief tour of campus and answered Leslie’s questions while I sat back and marveled at the sheer volume of information they were spouting.

Syracuse bought us lunch at this fun Irish pub and I had a very good Philly chicken sandwich.

After our official stuff was in the can and Leslie officially matriculated, we bought some Syracuse swag in the bookstore and returned to hotel to clean up and rest.

We both had some postcards to mail so Leslie googled the nearest post office. My GPS directed us there and it turns out it is the single most secure post office on the planet. It’s all good, though, because we made it out with our postcard stamps and our civil liberties intact.

Next, we went to Carousel Center, which thinks it is a really cool mall. I’d give it a 7 at best. We shopped around Borders, counseled my sister to enter an OBU Guitar Hero tourney and caught the 4 p.m. showing of Smart People. It was pretty good, but it was hard to pin down a certain theme. I must, however, give full marks Thomas Hayden Church and Ellen Page.

After the movie, we came back to the hotel and ordered pizza as we watched TV.

BK out.

Road Trip ’08 - Day 2

Lexington, KY to Syracuse, NY
669 miles, 1o hours, 27 minutes
Total miles so far: 1175
States driven through: Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania
Dead deer seen on side of road: 14
Smokies: 18

This morning we woke up early and went to Keeneland, a racetrack/horse farm in Lex (recommended to us by the Todds). It’s nestled in Kentucky’s green rolling hills and it’s more like the sprawling equine-mecca I imagined Churchill Downs to be.

It is so large! I don’t know how many square miles this place is, but it’s easily bigger than my home town and easily has 10x the people, even at 7 a.m. on a Sunday.

We ate breakfast at the Track Kitchen and ladies and gentlemen, THIS is what God had in mind when He invented breakfast.

It’s a hole-in-the-wall kind of place, but it’s a large one. I assume it was originally meant to be a commissary for the trainers and staff at Keeneland before they decided to open it to the public. We each grabbed a tray and the kitchen ladies loaded up our plates with whatever our hungry little tummies desired. I had scrambled eggs, bacon, a biscuit, gravy and breakfast potatoes, but they also had sausage, pancakes, waffles, grits, homemade muffins and bagels, etc. It was very good and very, very hearty.

We wound through the barns and paddocks and worked our way to the Grandstand, braking occasionally for crossing thoroughbreds.

The Grandstand was closed, but we could still walk up to the fence and check out the horses training on the track. They were really impressive. I can’t imagine how exhilarating it must feel to be riding one of those huge animals as it rounds the turn.

We crossed into Ohio, but didn’t realize it because the jerks didn’t put up a Welcome to Ohio sign.

Cincinnati is very hilly.

Ohio was largely uneventful. It helped that I snored through large portions of it while Leslie drove.

She also drove across a small corner of Pennsylvania and on into New York.
The Empire State looks remarkably like Oklahoma, although their turnpikes are significantly more expensive.

We cruised through Syracuse and checked out campus. It is very stately and academic-looking. There were a lot of students walking around and it’s in a very nice neighborhood.

For dinner, we went to Dinosaur BBQ, just a few blocks from our hotel. I had a chili-burger and it was excellent. Leslie had the ribs and declared them the best she’s ever had.

Road Trip ’08 - Day 1

Jefferson City, MO to Lexington, KY
506 miles; 7 hours 49 minutes
States driven through: Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky
Dead deer seen on side of road: 8
Smokies: 6

Leslie’s flight into STL was early, so we got a nice head on the trip.

It rained about 75 percent of the drive through Illinois, Indiana and Kentucky. That didn’t keep us from stopping on the side of the road and posing for pictures at the Welcome to _____ sign.

We officially left God’s Time and are now operating on Eastern Time.

Since we were passing through Louisville, we placed a quick cal to the expatriated Kentuckians, the Todds. They, of course, were not home.

While in L-Ville, we took a quick detour and went to see Churchill Downs the site of the Kentucky Derby (to be run in a few weeks). It was HUGE, but it seemed out of place since it is smack dab in the middle of urban Louisville. We were about 45 minutes late to tour the museum and shop, so we settled on just taking some pix of the exterior.

Onto Lexington and home of the Wildcats, the University of Kentucky. Lex is very hard to navigate, but we found our way to campus. Leslie almost decided to switch from ‘Cuse to UK, but thankfully she talked herself out of it.