Day Three: Indianapolis to Kansas City

Well this is something I've never done. I'm typing this while sitting in the upper deck on the first base side at Kauffman Stadium. The Royals are up on the White Sox 3-1 in the 6th, but they just had their second runner caught in a rundown in the inning. I only paid $5 at the box office for the ticket, if you can believe that Fenway Park fans.

It occurred to me today that when you sit in a car all by yourself driving without any real stops, not much happens to write about. I haven't had any interesting interactions with strangers. Nobody has been rude to me, and nobody has tried to pick me up. I haven't even had any fast food to make fun of. I did stop at a Starbucks in Columbia, Missouri with the hope of getting some internet access, but all I came away with was a burnt-tasting coffee and still no funny stories.

So we're left with what I saw. I pulled into Terre Haute, Indiana just to get off the interstate and to say I'd been there, and I discovered it is the home to Indiana State University. That's where Larry Bird played basketball before being drafted by the Celtics. It is also the birthplace of Eugene Debs. Eugene Debs, you'll remember, was the multi-time Socialist Party candidate for president in the early 1900s. He was an imprisoned union leader in the late 1800s and real socialist, the kind who wanted a workers' revolution to overthrow the bourgeois power structure. The fools who call Barack Obama a socialist ought to do some reading about Debs and Marx to better understand what socialism is. Anyway, I couldn't find the Eugene Debs House and Museum, so no pictures of that.

I didn't get out of the car or even pause in Illinois--that I-70 is a numbingly boring road in these parts--and only pulled over to lean out of the window for a few pictures in St. Louis. Then on to Columbia, the home of the University of Missouri, and Kansas City. I've already got my campsite claimed at Weston Bend State Park, just up the Missouri River a bit from Kansas City, but I'll have to set up the tent in the dark. I was running a little late and had to get to the game.

Once I got into Indiana yesterday, and especially in Illinois and Missouri today, roadside signs and businesses started changing. As for fast food options, there are tons of Steak-n-Shakes, A&Ws, White Castles, and even a few Jack in the Boxes. Conoco and Phillips 66 gas is readily available, as are truck stops and "adult superstores." I imagine those last two items are probably connected.

And billboards...I haven't seen so many anti-abortion signs anywhere ever, even in the Deep South. Spinning the radio dial brings up one religious radio show after another; I grooved to some Christian rock for a while. Today I was assured repeatedly that Jesus is mercy, the Lord loves me and forgives my sins, and that all babies are precious, born and preborn.

With the upswell in Christian feeling comes, apparently, a vast increase in tattooed people. I couldn't begin to count all of the tattoos I've seen in the last two days. Every gas stop reveals to me three or four used up looking men and women with majestic body art. Sitting in the semi-filled Section 433, I count seven very obviously tattooed people, and I don't even have to try very hard. Let's see if you can see this one on the women several rows down.

I logged about 500 miles today and bought another $63 dollars of gas.