It's flat and immense and the heat is intense

Well right now I am Sauced…wait, no, I mean I’m in a coffee shop called Sauced :-) I’m in the little artsy district in Oklahoma City called Paseo at the recommendation of the fabulous Amber, who I got to see today. This coffee shop is pretty much totally awesome, it feels a little like home! It’s just a funky little place with bumper stickers all over the counter and some very delicious chai! Totally cool. So I’m hanging out here for a little while (although I can’t seem to get the wifi to work so I’ll post this later) and then hang out with my next Oklahomans, Todd and the famous Olie.

So far I am totally loving Oklahoma! It’s great to make up for my last visit to OK several years ago when all I got to see was lots of flat, brown landscape and the little town of Stillwater where there’s just not that much to do. Oklahoma City is fun though. And I spent the afternoon in Edmond with Amber, Nate, and my new (old) friend Tyler who just got back from Semester at Sea! I met Tyler through a mutual friend when he wanted to get some information about SAS since I had just finished my trip, but he was in Oklahoma and at the time I was in Colorado so we talked via email and Facebook but today was the first time we’d met in person and now we’re both SAS alumni so…hence…my awesome picture! I look like a big dork but hey maybe I always do :-)

So let’s see today is Wednesday I think…so I got into Oklahoma on Monday evening and got the grand tour of Oklahoma City from Keith that evening, then Tuesday I wandered around the city on my own while Keith was at work and Steph was sleeping, due to her nursing job that requires her to be nocturnal!, so it was fun to just walk around and not really be in a hurry to be anywhere (except when I only had 1 hour on my parking meter and had to rush back and find my car to move it before I got a ticket!) but then I embarked on a great Oklahoman adventure on the recommendation of Keith: That’s right, I went to the American Banjo Museum!!! WHAT a hilarious place that is. It costs a mere $6 to go in and see the largest public collection of banjos in the world, complete with 300 banjos! I also came in right after a large tour group of old people who were getting a banjo performance in just a few minutes, so I wandered upstairs and got to see the performance along with lots of silly old people who sang along to the songs he played. After watching the performance and taking in just about as many banjos as I could possibly handle, I bought a cute little keychain souvenir and then headed out. But, of course, my life is now complete as I have officially seen 300 banjos in one building and learned a bit about their history. Whew!

Last night Keith, Steph and I made a delicious dinner and then called up Elizabeth and all went out for an evening of pub trivia! Our team (called the “Road Trippin’ Hippie”) did pretty well! We came in third, I think, in the end and there were quite a few teams. Most of it was probably due to Keith’s random but useful knowledge of things like the highest skydiving session and some knowledge about oceans and blues music…I knew a few answers though. We went to a very cool bar in which they had about 100 beers on tap. I tried to count how many but after about 50 I lost count and estimated 100. It was impressive, to see that many options of beer along one wall! I’m not a huge beer drinker but I felt that I had to try one so I got a “Snakebite” consisting of Guiness and cider and actually it wasn’t too bad! That was a fun night and it was great to catch up with old friends.

Today Steph and I went out for breakfast, after waking up to a huge rain storm. I guess the rain and storming is supposed to get pretty bad here today, it’s been an odd weather day. It’s pretty humid, but not too hot which is nice but there are clouds hanging above Oklahoma that just won’t go away today. It’s been raining on and off. Currently it’s not raining and the sun is out but there are clouds all over the place so in about 5 seconds the sun will probably go away. Speaking of ridiculous weather, I guess I just missed a huge hail storm here that happened Sunday night. Grapefruit-sized hail and some tornado warnings too! I’m glad to have missed that, even if it meant being in Amarillo. Anyways…let’s see what else have I done here so far..

Oh, I visited the memorial downtown for the OK City bombing which occurred 15 years ago last month, actually. The memorial was very cool, and very pretty, and sad to stand there and think about how such a random and senseless act of violence caused the deaths of so many people. I saw the memorial right at sunset, and then we came back to see it after dark with everything lit up, which was just beautiful.

That’s about it for things I’ve done so far, but updates on my trip and my car are thus:

-my car, Baxter, is still doing just beautifully. No problems yet (I’m knocking on wood right now) and despite Baxter’s slight dislike of humid and wet weather he’s still going strong and doing me proud. Yay!

-I head to St. Louis on Friday and that will be the first place I’ve never spent any time in at all, followed by several more such places, as well as the scenery will soon be getting a little bit foreign too. So far it’s all been pretty similar to Colorado (although it’s gotten flatter since I hit Texas) but soon enough I’ll be getting into the Midwest and then the east coast which is just a whole different place. I have, however, been to the east coast so I know what a beautiful place it is and I’m very excited for it!!

-I’m not entirely sure what my schedule looks like for the last couple weeks of my trip. I’ll be in St. Louis Friday and Saturday, then hopefully Milwaukee on Sunday and I’ll stay there for a couple days, then Chicago, then…who knows! I’ll need to make my way east finally so I’ll wander into New York and Pennsylvania and then visit friends in Vermont and New Hampshire, then finally Maine! I haven’t figured out yet though how much time I will spend in each of those places so we’ll see when I actually end up getting into Maine. I’m shooting for no later than June 5. It’s great to have the time to just wander around, see places, visit people, but have no real timeframe to stick to. I can leave a place early or stay an extra day and figure out places to stay as I go. I’m trying to keep up on warning people when I’m arriving though so as not to be TOO inconvenient :-)

Well that’s about all I’ve got for now. Hope everyone’s well, and please stay in touch!!!