Holy Hell Folks!!!

Once I got out of Nashville, It was pouring, hammers and nails. The wind was freakin sideways. No fun at all with my trailer in tow.

For the rest of the day it was treacherous wind. I saw the bike on the back shifting a bit, so I stopped for a little adjustment. I about got blown over my car upon exiting. I had 50 mile an hour gusts coming at me. It was a really tough ride, and so I decided to give it a break in St. Louis.

I had high hopes, so I stopped at a Hampton inn. I may have even had daydreams that they were running specials for free rooms for traveling musicians. Sadly they were not, but the guy at the desk was nice enough to give me the triple AAA discount, but the price was still twice what I wanted to spend. So on to the Motel 6. There is a long story involved with this visit, but I'm sure most of you have been there, so I'm just going to leave a picture of my Internet access card to tell the story, look close. I wont go into the rest of the story, but yes, I screwed up. Even after the screw up though, I got a voucher for a free night at Motel 6. Rock!

I was off at a respectable hour today, I jumped on the interstate and within 15 minutes figured out I was kinda hungry. I stopped at the handy combo gas'n'food joint. My car ate, and I ate, but damnit.. I'm cutting out the McDonald's for the rest of the trip. No more fast food. My anonymous tells me bananas, and nuts and berries, yum. Missouri was a much nicer drive, so my mood today is infinitely better.

I made my way through the countryside, listening to the vast resources my ipod has to offer. Speaking of, Jonathon, ex-roommate from Nashville showed me an excellent little trick with my ipod, the "on the go" playlist. I play my songs in alphabetical order, and every time I something comes on that just makes me feel good about driving, I click back to the list of songs, and save it to this playlist. I will be doing this throughout the entire trip, so by the time I reach Portland, I will have amassed the single greatest collection of songs for the road trip. It'll probably be a 10 disc set of mp3's though, as I haven't even made it through the A's yet.

Kansas City literally came in a flash. I was through it before I even knew what happened. Thank god for my trusty friend Thomas, my English accented GPS companion. He let me know consistently,"in a 1/4 mile stay left, then stay right, then stay left. In an 1/8 of a mile stay right, then stay left." It was ridiculous. I never would have made it without you Thomas.

I finally make it to Lawrence, Kansas. Just on the other side of the state line. I picked my buddy Ben, whom I spoke of earlier, from school where he is studying to be a social worker. He transfers to K.U. later this year. Good luck, man. He showed me around the campus, and I forgot my camera, can you believe it? I finally get somewhere, and he throws me in the car to show me around, and I don't bring the camera. Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! (accompanied with a light pounding on the forehead). Anyhow, it's a very nice campus, and as for Kansas being flat, they found the one giant hill to put the school on top of. Very nice view, really. We went and had some pretty fantastic sushi afterward, joking the whole time that we were eating raw fish in Kansas, yes.. we were aware of this.

I am trying to get things situated for my stay in Boulder/Denver. I'm hitting the road around 9 am, God willing, and will be set to arrive around 6 pm. I will definitely have some nice pictures for you guys to see after this weekend. Take it easy, love you all.