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A MIDWESTERN ADVENTURE
KANSAS CITY AND BEYOND
October 5, 2005 - Laura and I hit the road in the early evening, and
once we managed our way through Austin's traffic woes, we found
ourselves on I-35, the road we'd travel on for around 700 miles until
the Antioch exit just miles short of downtown KCMO. Darkness fell
well before we even reached Waco, and we trudged through with a stop for
gas and some heavy rain in southern Oklahoma until arriving in Oklahoma
City at two in the morning.
| We stopped off for a pit stop and
checked out the
National Memorial for the bombing that took place there ten
years ago. I visited it during the day three years ago and was
impressed, but the silent night and crisp air provided the perfect
stage to soak up the memorial in all its quiet beauty and solemn
understatement. As we crossed the road to the memorial, we
were soon approached by an armed security guard, who was quickly
joined by two others, one of which gave us a personal guided tour of
the site, pointing out the exact spot Timothy McVeigh parked the
Ryder truck, telling us some of the victims' tales, and the creation
of the park. It's a shame that
New York's plan for a Twin Towers memorial falls short just like
Boston's holocaust
memorial, which features
walking on grates over steaming, glowing embers. |
Oklahoma City's bombing memorial is pretty
impressive, especially at night. |
After our Texas blood started to freeze in the new sensation of cold
air, we got in the car and my blood started to race as we were about
halfway to KC. I barrelled on through silent night, propped up by
a plethora of CDs that easily could have been carried on a single iPod.
Laura convinced me she needed to sleep and we found a cheap room for
five hours of sleep just south of the Kansas border.
And refreshed and on the road again, we ended up meeting a fellow Texan
at a rest stop outside Wichita. He offered to play the role of the
rabbit, and much to Laura's chagrin, we were paced into the heat of KC's
traffic at a cool clip passing most ever y vehicle on the road.
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