Driving Sucks

Right now, I’m sitting in a comfy chair inside the Washington University medical school in St. Louis. Earlier today I woke up on an inflatable mattress in Omaha. Between now and then I drove for 7 hours, only stopping to get gas in Columbia, Missouri, home of Mizzou. I drove around the campus for a couple minutes, it was nice and really big. Not as nice at CU though, it’s still my favorite.

I’m already getting sick of the 1250 songs I put on my Blackberry before I left California and it’s only been 4 days of driving. On the plus side, at least I get reception in the Midwest, I had nothing between Reno and Denver.

I got to STL around 4 today and since I had some time to kill before Lawrence got done with school, I went directly to the gateway arch. After driving around in circles looking for parking, I finally found a garage and made my way over the the Arch. It’s cool because it doesn’t take a genius to figure out where to go, just go to where the bottom of that huge steel arc meets the ground. No worrying about getting lost. The arch is MUCH bigger than I had imagined, the thing towers over you when you stand below it. I walked past security under the foot down to the underground lobby of the museum (which was free) and bought a ticket for a ride to the top. It cost only $10 so I think that’s a good value. The elevator stop was really weird, we had to wait on a flight of stairs essentially and wait for the thing to stop at the bottom. Once the doors opened up, a bunch of people ducked out of the little pods they were in and we got in. There were 5 little seats in the circular pod-shaped car. The ride up only took a couple minutes, but it was weird since the pod kept tilting as is was going up. When we got to the top there was only a little hallway sized observatory with windows for peeking out. I snapped a couple photos and stayed up there for a few minutes, but I wasn’t really feeling it since you could feel the arch swaying in the wind. Not cool. I took the first available ride down and was glad to be back on terra firma.

The coolest thing to me was the gift shops, I’m a sucker for a good gift shop. They had all kinds of historical things about America, not just St. Louis. I bought some replica documents for a couple bucks each (the Constitution, the Declaration, and the I Have a Dream Speech) and also a book about Lewis & Clark for kids. I’ll probably bring those with me to Spain and give them to the English teacher as a gift.

Earlier this evening my buddy Lawrence and his wife Gabby took me to a pizza joint called Pi that Obama visited not long ago. It was pretty bomb I must say. I've had more pizza on this road trip than in the last 3 months combined!

Tomorrow I'm off for Tuscaloosa, Alabama!