Today I walked around Kansas City, Missouri much of the day. It was sunny and balmy, and the whole place seemed incredibly green after the last few days of desert and prairie.
This city apparently was designed to emulate the grandeur of European cities. It was built with large tree-lined boulevards and a plaza built to resemble Seville, Spain. It also has the most fountains of any city with the notable exception of Rome. Quite the feat for a heartland city in the US.
Near the geographic center of the continental US, this city really spans the border of Kansas and Missouri, bringing the people to a clashing, like the saying "the wrong side of the tracks". Many of the Kansas side folk seem to have a distinctly holier than thou air towards their Missouri neighbors. Unfortunate. But the University campus is beautiful. And the students seemed friendly, and much less white bread than I've seen in a while.
I spent some time in a cafe called Muddy's. It was pretty comfy. Right across the street from the campus, it was dark inside and full of students. It also had tables under the awning outside for those of us who preferred the sunlight.
Driving through the different parts of the city was more like visiting separate cities in that every part I saw was so very different in aesthetic and population. The plaza looked Spanish and was full of shoppers and war protesters carrying signs saying things like "If you're pro-life you can't be pro-war" and "Oil Royalty = Pilate, Bush Inc = Herod, All Innocent Dead = Jesus... You = ?". The campus cafe was dark and hip and full of clusters of students around laptops, it not being late in the semester enough for books. The WWI memorial was huge and white and had a crowd of people with red white and blue tents and long-tailed trick kites crowded around old looking army vehicles. Many of these people were in various service uniforms, glaring at me in my bright red spaghetti strapped tank top. The Old Kansas City center was brick, well kept, and empty. All of the neighborhoods seemed so disconnected, far apart and different.
Ennis spent eight years living here, so he was able to be a good tour guide with a lot of interesting facts and history.
Tomorrow we'll be spending the morning in St. Louis, climbing the Archway to the West and getting breakfast at a waffle house. Then We'll be headed for Tennessee where I'll be staying with Oleg for a few days. He's actually gotten me a ticket to NYC so that I can still connect with the contacts I have there and in Cleveland. I'm pretty excited about the whole trip. The flight is nice cause it allows me more time with some Nashville friends, but still, I'll miss the Atlantic seaboard this trip now. Oh well, there's always next trip. After NYC I hope to keep my feet on the ground so I can enjoy as much of the country as possible.
By the way, if you guys think I'm on a wild adventure, you should check these people out! They're pretty awesome, huh? I wish I could hook up with them. I wish I had a valid passport still... I should fix that as soon as I get back...
And now, for the continued adventures of Irwin's cloud robot:
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