A Trip to Missouri and We Only Got Shot Once

You guys should be so proud of me. I went on a road trip and it only took me three weeks to write about it. That's got to be some kind of record. Here goes....

We packed the truck before the sun came up. Blankets, pillows, cooler, backpacks, and a million cds. We loaded the beast into the back, filled up with gas, and left the Rockies behind. The trip from my house to my parents' is about 13 hours. One time it took me 15 because I was moving a truck full of belongings. And one time it took me 9 hours because, well...I drove 110 miles an hour. This trip was moving right along schedule though. We hit our half way point near Salida, Kansas and then...the truck began to shake. Shawn was driving and said something about the strong Kansas winds. We pulled over for gas a few minutes later and I noticed that the strong Kansas winds had blown the air right out of our rear tire.

It was well over a hundred degrees without a cloud in sight. Shawn, my little mechanic in the making, changed the tire while Rosco and I talked about the meaning of life, the Broncos, and drooling. We have deep conversations like that.

After an hour of figuring out Nissan's super easy tire changing system (that if you are not aware of, becomes Nissan's super giant pain in my fuckin ass tire changing system) we were back on the road. I had stocked the cooler with cucumber and sea salt, peaches, salami, french bread, and cherries.

There were crackers and granola galore. This was the first road trip that did not involve fast food of any sort. Although there were still plenty of coffee and energy drink detours, but I mean, it is Kansas. That shit will put you to sleep in a heart beat if you aren't artificially causing that heart to beat a gazillion times per minute thanks to Monsters and espressos.

So we made it through the hell that is Kansas, left I70 in the dust, and headed into the oddness that is Missouri. Odd, you ask? Yes, odd. Now don't get mad. I'm not knocking Missouri for its incestual ways. Or even for its lack of dental hygiene. I'm not even bringing up the hillbilly southern accents (in a state that is no farther south than Colorado). They have their gun toting toothless rednecks who live in trailers cooking meth with their cousin/wives and that's just fine by me.

What strikes me as odd are the town names. Peculiar, Climax Springs, Success (I disagree), Competition, Pumpkin Center. Granted, most of these towns have less than 100 people living in them, but still..its just weird. I mean...

Who wants to be the Pumpkin Center sheriff? Or the Peculiar proctologist? Ok, you got me, there aren't proctologists in Peculiar. There are plenty of folks who will stick somethin up your ass for the simple price of a Bud Light, but none of them can spell proctologist so...

We made it through the endless Missouri towns, turned down a small street entering the woods, passed what my dad calls "Deliverance Road" and were soon at the rents' house. The next few days were spent relaxing. Lots of relaxing. It was so nice. My parents have an amazing house in the woods with an even more amazing deck. Their house is surrounded by trees that touch the sky and butterflies landing on your legs. There's a hammock in the yard that swings for days.
Mom has a feeder in the woods to feed corn and seeds to the deer. They come around every evening to eat while you sit on the deck watching.

If watching the deer eat isn't your cup of tea...the feeder has other entertainment values. It has a timer on it, and at the same time every day, it releases a ton of food onto the ground below. Squirrels eat the majority of the food, but they are greedy little bitches and they are determined to figure out how to get inside the feeder to the Mecca of corn. One squirrel was hanging upside down from the opening at the bottom of the feeder, trying to claw his way inside, when the timer went off, and about four pounds of corn came flying out into his face knocking his thieving ass into the ground. This sounds cruel, but don't worry, he got up and ran away just fine, but it was quite possibly the funniest thing I have ever seen happen to a squirrel.

Aside from watching squirrels get their asses kicked by Miss Karma, we also did a little Missouri site seeing. We went to the water park in Branson, checked out the lakes at the Ozarks, and saw fireworks with the soldiers. If you don't know me, fourth of July is my favorite holiday. I cry for the troops every year during the grand finale and sing dumb patriotic songs on the top of my shaky lungs. Its just my thing. My mom understands...

Shawn, maybe not so much...

One of the things we wanted to do while home was tour some caves. We went to the Meramec Caverns because they are notorious for being a crucial hideout for Jesse James and his gang.

If the signs outside were any indication, we were going to learn a lot about Jesse and his gang.

Ummm....perhaps if you go to this cave, and get a tour guide who has worked their longer than 6 days, you will indeed learn about Jesse James. Perhaps you will even learn about the cave. Stalagmites, mineral deposits...anything about the caves. Unfortunately for us, we got the new tour guide who chose to teach us absolutely nothing, but instead spent the better part of our hour and a half tour attempting to beat box. He was not good at this. He basically just spit a lot and repeatedly asked us if he was a great tour guide. Apparently he took my answer to be a joke. It was not.

Dad was not amused. If you do not know my dad, this face means "I am not currently amused".
I didn't learn a single thing about caves on the tour, but I did learn that Shawn and my Dad like to stand in similar positions.

I also learned that these cave thingies are called "hanging mushroom coral reefs".

Okay, I didn't really learn that. But if I were a tour guide who didn't know anything about the cave through which I was guiding people, I would make some shit up like that so I didn't look like a moron. I'm just sayin.

After leaving the shit-tastic caves, we went on an adventure to find our own caves. Shawn and Dad succeeded. Well sort of. It involved climbing and sweating and darkness. You'll have to ask them about that adventure though. I was too busy looking at turtles with Mom.

The last day of our trip was my birthday. I wanted to throw a kegger, but my mom said no...so instead, we went tubing. Dad stayed home because, well, floating down a river doesn't tickle his fancy. Mom, being the little adventure taker she is, was super excited to tube. She found a rafting company online that offers tubing trips for pretty cheap.

The place seemed....interesting. They had a nice little van to drive you to your drop off point in the river.
In case you can't read that....FDIC stands for Fun Down In the Country. And we were definately down in the country. The neighbors looked real nice.

I was afraid to inquire about the lonely school bus.
When we finally got all ready to go, we quickly realized that nice van and even that nice school bus, were not for us. No, we were put into the back of an old pick up truck and told to hold the floats down so they wouldn't blow away.

Mom's face pretty acurately describes the "what the fuck" going through my head.
He could have at least put the tailgate up.

At first it wasn't so bad, nice and slow, quite scenic.
Then he started going faster. Much, much faster. And the beautiful scenery turned into hillbilly tent town.

Luckily the drive was pretty short, and our driver even carried our tubes to the shore for us. For a hillbilly, he was pretty nice.
We got into our tubes and started heading down the river. Not two minutes into our trip, I happened to look over at Mom as something splashed in the water. A second later, pop, another splash. We all instantly knew. As I turned my tube around to look up the shore, I saw two kids sitting in rocking chairs.....shooting at us!
Shawn says they were pellet guns which is apparantly something like a bb gun. I don't know what the hell they were....they looked like rifles and two children were shooting us with them. Mom screamed something about calling the sheriff but they didn't stop. Pop, pop, pop....one shot after another until Shawn got off his tube and began chasing them. They weren't afraid of the sheriff but they were damn scared of Shawn.

Now, I know what you are thinking. A little pellet here and there won't kill anyone, but a pellet will definately pop a tube and we were two minutes into a four hour tubing trip in the middle of God knows where with no communication device and Fuck! We were getting shot at!! Trust me, it was scary!!!

It took a good twenty minutes for me to calm the hell down and stop looking frantically into the woods for the children of the corn to pop out and kill me. Once I finally got my breathing under control, I was actually able to sit back and enjoy the ride. I make fun of Missouri quite a bit, but one thing I can't argue with is its beauty. I mean, its no Rocky Mountains but damn its gorgeous.

We finished the four hour trip an hour early because Mom wouldn't stop paddling and we were afraid if we split up we'd get shot.We made it back safe and sound. Cleaned up, ordered pizza, and ate WAY too much of the most amazing birthday cake I have ever put in my mouth. Seriously rediculous. Oh and there were two of them. Oh yeah! If you are ever in central Missouri, call up Gretchen Barnes and have her make you a cake. She charges a fraction of what she should and they are just insane. So anyway...

The next morning, Shawn, Rosco, and I hopped back in the truck and headed home. I don't think I've ever been quite so sad to leave Missouri. The trip home was uneventful in terms of flat tires and hillbillies, but it was rich in terms of eye opening conversations. Thanks for going on a great trip with me babe. And thanks for not letting me get shot.


And if you don't know my mom already, you should go meet her. She's seriously one of the greatest people you will ever meet and she is always down for some fun. She will outlive us all, and have a blast doing it...guaranteed.
Love you Mom!! Umm...if somehow you have actually found this blog and are reading it right at this very moment....please disregard most of the other shit that I write. Because its all fake. I totally never smoked with Moses. I swear. Shit.

Happy Momma Day

So last weekend, my sister and I attempted to be good daughters and surprise our mom for Mother's Day. We started making plans a few months ago and everything seemed to be going smoothly. We should have known better.

Our plane tickets were coming courtesy of Frontier Airlines. They have a deal set up with the restaurant I work at that allows me to get standby tickets for pretty cheap.

I've used these tickets in the past and haven't had any serious problems...except for that one time I went to Mexico and almost didn't come home...and then ended up in the hospital. But that is an entirely different blog. Considering the wonderful internets were saying that our flight had plenty of seats available, we weren't too worried about our standby status. Unfortunately by the time we got to the airport, our 7 pm flight was sold out and we were bumped to a flight at 6 oclock the next morning. For some reason, we thought it would be better to forget our flight to St Louis and go to Kansas City instead. We switched our rental car reservation to our new destination and headed to Kansas. The plane ride was...interesting. I don't know which part was actually the worst. I'd say its a three way tie between the drunk pilot, the ridiculous man in front of us yelling about alien investors funding 9-11, or the off duty pilot sitting behind me repeatedly telling his wife that the plane shouldn't be making those noises unless its about to crash.

When we finally landed in the wonderful Kansas City, we were informed that not only did our rental car reservation vanish, but so did all of the available cars. We had to switch to a new company, pay about double our quoted rate, but we finally got a car. After getting lost in Kansas City, a quick stop at Walmart to buy Mother's Day flowers, and a midnight trip to Wendy's, we were finally began our 4 hour trip to the rents' house. At about 1 in the morning, I started getting really tired and worried that I might have to pull over for a nap. About the time I told my plan to Casey, the universes aligned and did what they felt necessary to wake me up. Perhaps it was the full moon. Perhaps it was the thick forest. Perhaps it was the fact that Missouri is a scary ass place full of critters with a death wish....whatever it was, I quickly woke up when I realized there were thousands of animals waiting to be hit by our car. In the 4 hours it took to drive home, we passed at least 50 deer, dozens of opossums, about 6 skunks, 3 armadillos, and a few rabid dogs.

Somehow, we managed to stay awake, not hit any creatures on the road, and made it to the house just after 5 in the morning. Casey and I grabbed the balloons and flowers, smacked a couple bows on our heads, and creeped up the driveway.

Mom came out on the porch and screamed, cried, screamed some more, cried a lot more, and was generally pretty damn happy. Dad came out and there were a few congratulatory high fives for pulling off a completely secret trip without Mom having even a clue.

We spent Saturday just hanging out with our parents, went to the Ozarks for dinner, played some cards (which Casey and I dominate at of course) and enjoyed our short trip. Unfortunately, Sundays flights were even more booked than Fridays. We were pretty much guaranteed to never get back to Denver if we relied on our standby tickets. Mom and Dad ended up buying us tickets through United to get us home Sunday afternoon. In the end, our cheap plan to get to Missouri and back, ended up costing our parents around $600. For some unknown reason, they seemed to think Casey and I visiting for one day was worth that much. I think they are crazy. The trip home wasn't as eventful as the trip there. We drove back to Kansas City midday Sunday so there weren't as many animals darting in front of our car. Oh except for this horse.

He hung out in the middle of the road for a while until a man with overalls and no teeth came out yelling something about mangy horse glue. The horse listened to our advice and ran away as fast as possible.

We got to the airport two hours early as advised by every travel advisor in the world. Unfortunately these advisers have never been to Kansas City International Airport. I work at Denver International Airport, so perhaps I'm a bit spoiled when it comes to expectations when traveling. I am used to, well, people at the airport...security at the airport...running water at the airport. Ok, maybe Kansas has running water but...

Denver International:

Kansas City International:

We definitely didn't need two hours. Five minutes was plenty to get to our gate.

The airport may not have many passengers, but they do have a gift shop.

I didn't buy anything.

I have a feeling this man would have liked that shirt though. Twilight anyone?

We made it home, safe and sound. Mom loves us, and more importantly knows that we love her. And I have no desire to ever visit Kansas City again. Happy Mother's Day Mom. Sorry, Dad, Father's Day won't be this exciting. I may buy you a golf club though.

Angry Beavers and Coors Light

Last night, the boy and I made a trip to the Adam's County Fair. Growing up in Germany, I have high hopes for a fair. I imagine great beer, juicy brats, loud music, beautiful soldiers, and scary rides. Apparently, stateside festivals are a little different. They attract a type of person that I did not think resided in Colorado. I was wrong. So very wrong. I learned a lot about people, culture, and farm animals yesterday and I'd like to share this awakening with you.

We got to the fairgrounds around 4:30, which it seems was far too early. The rides were not running, the games were not playing, and the food was just hitting the grill.

We wandered around for a bit, got some bbq on a stick and crappy beer, and talked to a vendor about how my moisturizer is giving me cancer. After that enlightening conversation, we discovered the farmer's mecca at the fair. There were giant tents filled with animals, and people hustling about everywhere. After a few confused moments, we realized these animals were engaging in some sort of beauty contests.

The first animal I met was this horse. I took his picture because he reminded me of Matthew McConaughey.

Next, I discovered Olivia Newton John's fan club. I'm still not sure why these sheep were wearing spandex, but it was entertaining.

They weren't getting physical, physical...but they were looking fly and that's all that mattered.

Next, I met a pig who's either narcoleptic, or a lush. Or perhaps both.

About two minutes after taking that last picture, I was attacked by his cousin. Okay, maybe attacked is a slight exaggeration, but there was a large pig, running in my direction, and a boy chasing it with a stick. It was traumatizing.

Next, we moved on to the "Small caged animals" pageant. There were quite a few interesting rabbits. Did you even know there were multiple kinds of rabbits? There are actually rabbits who are small, and not just because they are babies, and there are also rabbits that are almost as big as my dog. Well, maybe as big as your dog.

This rabbit used his double chin as a pillow, which I thought was genius.

This bunny's hair was so crazy that you couldn't even find his face. Unless that's his butt. I'm pretty sure its his face.

This one was just cool.

He was for sale. I considered bringing him home, but then I remembered that rabbits eat your face while you sleep. So I changed my mind.

Next, I learned that if you kneel down and attempt to take a picture of a caged turkey, he instantly think you are going to pluck all his feathers out, stuff an onion up his butt, and throw him in the oven. This turkey was trying to make this process easier by fluffing himself up to make his feathers more accessible for the plucking. That was nice of him. Then he tried to bite my face.

It was about this time that I realized there was poo on my shoe. That's when we headed to the Monster Truck show. At the Miss Adam's County Piggy show, there were lots of wranglers, big belt buckles, and cowboy boots. At the monster truck show, there were many tank tops, receding hair lines, and not so many teeth. There was however this rebellious little girl who seemed to like beaded bracelets. The boy made jokes about raving skanks and Ecstasy. Who knows. Oh, there were also trucks. Big ones. Monsters, if you will.

After the show, I ran into this guy, twice. I took the second encounter as fate, and a reason to take his picture.

Before we went home, the boy won a prize for me...well more for our dog.

He was quite proud. He informed me that the stuffed animal was from the show "Angry Beavers". I made the angry beaver ride a tractor.

When we got home, Rosco was quite please with his beaver. Then he ripped its nose off and spilled his insides all over my living room. The angry beaver made me angry, so he now lives in the dumpster.

Well, that was my night. I learned a lot about animals, and poo, and trucks, and overalls. I learned that the boy likes to tell baby cows about his love of veal. I don't think he even eats veal, he just likes to tell stories to animals. And I learned that its perfectly ok to go to the fair in overalls and no shirt. G'night.