Driving in Independence

Work colleagues and I were discussing how Hays, KS is so in the middle of the state, and I wondered if RA and I drove by there in 1986 on the first* leg of our Spring Break trip to Salt Lake City. A hitchhiker by the name of streptococcus had joined me for the first half of our journey, and I was relying on Formula 44D and Gatorade to help me survive so Kansas was just flat, flat, flat and a looong way from a bathroom. Don't get me wrong, Kansas, I'm sure you have a lot of great qualities; I just wasn't in any shape to appreciate them.

Twenty-two years later, and Mapquest puts this trip in perspective: San Antonio to Stillwater to Denver to Salt Lake City via Wyoming back to Denver via Grand Junction back to Stillwater back to San Antonio, all in 10 days = 3,400 miles. That floors me. That's the eastern border of Maine to San Diego. No cell phone, no Internet, and my parents really had no idea what I was up to until the hospital in Ogden called them with the results of the accurate strep test. My father didn't track me down until we had stopped in Denver on the way home. Apparently he talked to some rather high-up muckity-mucks in Salt Lake City's, uh, prevailing institution trying to find me.

The mere thought of that trek now in my life exhausts me, but I would also love to do something like that again. AND I also have to entertain the notion that my own daughter is not too many years away from undertaking a similar trip. I just wish I could go with her. There are so many good stories from that trip, and I can still, just barely, recall the independence of it.

*I drove from San Antonio to Stillwater, OK to pick up RA before beginning the next leg to Denver. Fun story: after conscientiously obtaining a temporary campus parking pass and parking my car in the designated parking lot, we left confident that my ride remained safe and legal until our return. Campus police wrote the ticket 18 minutes after we left. Didn't pay it: I didn't go to school there, and what were they going to do? Not let me graduate?

So, yes, we did drive by Hays. Twice.