Col-o-rado
Today, in short:
Kansas is really, really huge. But the speed limit is 75 mph - and there's not a speck of traffic between Kansas City and the Colorado border. I find myself compelled by these kinds of places - who lives in Kansas City? Who manages the huge farms across thousands of empty acres? Does anyone ever visit the antique malls and podunk motels? We left at 7 am from Kansas City and drove out into the dawn, surprisingly lovely, green and red and hilly. The terrain grew flatter and drier by the hour, with fewer and fewer people and more and more abandoned farmhouses or tiny tree-ringed islands of civilization amidst fields as far as you could see. I wanted so badly to take off on one of the dirt side roads stretching off across the horizon just to see where they go and who travels there - it is just so wrenchingly empty. People at the gas stations were overweight and talkative. Metalhead boys and gossipy girls and old men in suspenders. I wish I could have taken their pictures.
Eventually we hit Colorado. Denver sucks. Ugh, traffic. Ugh, aggressive drivers. Ugh, sprawl. An hour before Denver my book on tape malfunctioned. I switched to radio - no good stations (even I have my limits when it comes to bad country radio). I switched to iPod. It died as we hit Denver. I switched to bad country radio. I became disgusted. I discovered an old Greg Brown tape, Dream Cafe, and put it in. It stayed in for the next 3 hours and it was blissful. I would marry that voice, that persona, in an instant.
Tonight we're in New Castle, CO, staying with family friends. They have a fabulous cat and fed us so very well. Stuffed and sleepy. Tomorrow's a long haul - 12 hours to Ontario, and then the great apartment hunt begins.
I'll give the full story of the trip, with pictures, when I get better internet access - I'm borrowing a computer at the moment and don't want to wear out my welcome. But I do have a few good pictures and a few good stories. Soon, soon!