Happy birthday to Lizzie

August 7th is a magical day, upon which many fabulous people were born, including my lovely sister (Happy birthday, Sis!) and my dear friend Lizzie. Happy birthday to my wonderful travel companion and my life long friend. Here's to many more trips to many more states, and to many more surprise handfuls of horse shit.

It's Boots and Chaps, It's Cowboy Hats

We are going to miss the rodeo. Day three was the most crowded, and we arrived to packed stands. Most of the events had top place finishes, with the cowboys, cowgirls and the animals performing masterfully. The steers often got the best of the ropers, and one poor cowboy got his head stomped by a bull after being thrown, and had to be carried away.

Cowboys, though... There is a reason why they are the subject of so many romance novels. So cute. Seriously--I felt like a total creep the whole time, but, dang. That's all I have to say about that (obviously not.)

After the events (during which a surprise grasshopper popped on my leg, eliciting a mini-scream-of fright, where upon it pinged over to Lizzie, and then back to me, until I realized it was only a grasshopper and not to be feared) we went to the dance, kicked up our heels a bit, and then meandered back to get drinks. There Erin struck up a conversation with a nice man who probably regretted talking to us, because somehow we ended up cheerfully commenting on how his blood type was the universal blood type, and that he'd probably wake up in a bathtub full of ice because we were going to steal his kidneys to sell on the black market. We reassured him that we really liked him, so we'd leave a phone within arm's reach. Then we invited him to come visit us in Boston. Strangely enough, he seemed interesting in coming up some time. (Honestly, if one tried to pick up the trail of conversation from point a to point harvesting your kidneys, I'm sure the whole matter would seem perfectly normal.)

We bid adieu to Brock (his name, really! I told him we needed more Brocks in MA) and then sloshed through the mud toward Erin's truck. On the way we saw a dude hanging with his friends, except his pants were at his knees, and he was peeing on the side of his truck. Questions:

a) Why are your pants down? Can't you pee through the zipper? You are a boy.

b) Why are you letting your business hang out in front of your dudely friends?

c) Why not use the toilet which is a two minute walk away?

Erin hooted at him with a jaunty "yee haw!" and I yelled "NICE PEE!"

When we got to our truck, we discovered that someone had picked up a wad of mud and horse shit and had hurled it (drunkenly, probably) at the passenger side window. It was stuck in a horrid, mucky blob to the window, so we crawled in carefully. Too bad I had the memory, as Erin would say, of a gold fish, and stuck my hand right in it while slamming the door shut after climbing out at Erin's folks' house. Ah, nothing like a handful of horseshit and mud to close out the rodeo. Yee haw.

Red Cloud--the geographic center of Douchery in the Contiguous 48 States

As aforementioned, there is quite a bit of rocking out whilst driving. This sometimes leads to the occasional wrong turn, and this time our failure to pay attention took us up north into Red Cloud, Nebraska.

NERD ALERT!

Red Cloud, Nebraska, was home to none other than Willa Cather, whose books I really, really love. I know it's not her most popular, but I am a huge fan of "Song of the Lark," in which the prairie features heavily. You can definitely see the influence of the prairie on her work, and from the picture on the left (which is of the Cather memorial prairie) it's easy to see how it can burn its way into your heart. However, the denizens of Red Cloud were less than impressive.

We were pretty hungry at this point, and went to a little bar and grill. We didn't know whether it was a seat-yourself establishment, so we sat at the bar, figuring it would be the easiest. The bartender, Cody, came over, barked "What d'y'want?" and then slapped a pink flyswatter right next to my hand, promptly smushing a fly on the bar. (He did this several more times.) We'd been driving for a while and had some serious biological imperatives to deal with, or we would've left, so we both ordered a diet pepsi (slam, slam here you go, grunt, "WHAT ELSE?") and then we asked for menus. (Slam, slam, what you want?) I tried to make small talk, but Cody was not interested, and by the time Lizzie and I had hit the ladies' room, our food had been unceremoniously dumped in front of us.

While this was going on, there was a huge crowd of people talking politics, and they were so hateful and ignorant that I suddenly lost my appetite. There's room for all sorts of political leanings, but racism, sexism and homophobia shouldn't figure in. The whole environment was hostile, so Lizzie said "Sir, can we have the check?" to Cody, who screamed at her "DON'T CALL ME SIR." and we paid and took off, heading back south. You are no Neighbors Rosicky, people.

Thrift+Patience=death

Not too far away from the geographic center of the contiguous 48 states is the world's largest ball of twine. The title of this post is a play on the sign outside the ball of twine, which is Thrift+Patience=Success. I was informed by my friend Lisa that the man who constructed this ball of twine died from emphysema from the fibers he inhaled while putting it together. The poor man died constructing a ball of twine. Sure, it is the largest ball of twine, but, as Lizzie evilly suggested, we could outsource the production of an EVEN BIGGER ball of twine, which change Cawker City's claim to fame to "Second Largest Ball of Twine in the World" and then poor Frank Stoeber would have died in vain. Cawker City doesn't have much else going for it. It's "Ball of Twine inn" (Thank goodness we're staying with Erin's folks, or Lizzie and I would've been like "ha ha let's stay there, wouldn't that be fun?" and the ball of twine inn was more depressing than the shack'n'up inn from Mississippi--we would've wanted to die) "Ball of twine commerce center" "Ball of Twine antique shop," Etc, etc. Without the ball of twine, poor Cawker City would probably disappear from the map.

Also, fun fact, the ball of twine STINKS. Erin mentioned that it stunk before we left, but it was really something we had to experience before fully appreciating it. Ugh. Frank, how did you not wear a gas mask during its construction? I stopped construction on my own string ball, because if I'm going to blow out my lungs, it's going to be from singing loudly in the car on our road trips. (That is Lizzie's favorite part of our trips, rest assured.)

Please don't kill us with lightening

Dear God,

Lizzie and I are very sorry about the photo in the previous post. We are contrite, and no one thinks we're funny anyway. Please accept our sincere apologies.

Geographic Center of the Contiguous 48 States

Today we had many adventures! We went to the duck race in the morning, and then Lizzie and I took off for the day while Erin stayed at home to catch up with the rest of her family who had arrived for the last day of the rodeo. First stop was the Geographic Center of the Contiguous 48 states. Now faithful readers of this blog will know that Lizzie and I went to the 4 corners a few years back, and faithful readers will also know that one of our favorite commenters, my Dad, has vociferously contested that achievement, as new surveying has led to the discovery that the actual 4 corners border is a few miles from the monument. (Screw that, we are not going back there.) Since our 4 corners experience was a lie, we figured the next best thing we could do was hit the geographic center of the 48 contiguous states.

It was about a 45 minute drive from Phillipsburg out to Lebannon, where the site is located, and on the way we spotted a sign on the highway that was like "OMG GEOGRAPHIC CENTER." We screeched to a halt, ran out, ready to take our picture with the sign, but then we read it, and it was like "Hey, just kidding, the actual Geographic Center is like, three miles away in a park." We (maturely) took our pictures flipping the sign off, and then continued on our way.

We made it to the real geographic center, and it was seriously awesome. There was a monument (of course) and also a Baptist chapel, where we celebrated our geographical acheivement by taking respectful photos in said chapel

Put all your ducks in a row

Today was duck race day. Erin, Lizzie and I were led to believe that we had a hot tip on a duck that was absolutely sure to win the race. We placed our bet, confident in our pick, and it turns out we was robbed. Some little duckie's gonna be sleeping with the fishies tonight. Well, you know what I mean.