The area between Wichita and Colorado Springs is the land the internet forgot.  The majority of Adam’s & my “in drive” entertainment is to listen to the radio and research factoids that occur to us based on what we hear.  For example, I’ll say “Does Thin Lizzy mean something dirty?” and Adam will say, “I don’t know but it sounds like it probably does.”  Then I’ll grab the iPad and look up all the information I can find on Thin Lizzy and we’ll feel smarter.

Today, alas, our curiosity is destined to go unsatisfied.  I will never know if Thin Lizzy means something dirty because by the time our internet connection is restored, I will have forgotten all about looking it up.

We’ve had to replace gaining knowledge for ourselves with quizzing the kids to see if they are paying any attention at all to what we’re doing on this trip.  Adam will present trivia questions and offer $1 to any kid who can come up with something even approximating a correct answer.  He’ll ask, “Can anyone tell me what the flattest state in the United States is?”  Nobody can.  “The answer is Kansas.  The state we’re currently in.”

After a few minutes, he’ll say, “Can anyone tell me which state is the geographical center of the United States?”  They offer a whole spate of wrong answers.  Exasperated, Adam will say, “It’s Kansas.  The state we’re currently in.”

He muttered to me, “When I was their age, I could name every state capital and point out every country of the world on a globe.”  I said, “You sure mention that a lot.  Our kids know different stuff.  Yesterday Holden knew what an anemometer was.”  Adam made a face and said, “Well, he learned that in school.  It doesn’t count.”

Isabella will invariably say, “I knew that!” after each trivia answer is revealed and then Adam will say, “If you know all these answers, why don’t you ever say them and get the money?”  She says, “Well, I couldn’t think of the word but when you said it, I suddenly knew that I knew it.”

I call this the Jeopardy Syndrome.  That’s how I feel every time I watch that show.  I kinda sorta have the answer sitting in my brain behind a foggy cloud, and then the contestant will answer and I’ll think, Of course!  How obvious.  I knew that.  The trick is being able to pull all this information out on cue, when it actually counts.  That’s tough.

Our spirits are higher today.  Even though we’re ultimately headed toward a funeral, we have a few days of fun things planned before we get to Montana, and we’re putting Tornado Alley in our rear view mirror.  The mood in our car is once again bordering on optimistic.

Every time an Allman Brothers song comes on, I mentally kick myself for quitting guitar lessons when I was 12.  I hated those lessons and wasn’t any good as a musician.  Every practice session was a torture of boredom and loathing, and I quit the moment my parents let me off the hook.  The Allman Brothers always give me a twinge of regret, although I don’t want to bother learning to play now.  I don’t want to learn, I want to have already learned, which is an important distinction.  That way, right now, I’d be a master and could blow everyone away with my incredible skillz.  People would think I was marvelous and awesome, and would love listening to me play while also being jealous they weren’t me.  All the hard work and cramped, bleeding fingers would be long behind me.  So, I’m miffed at short-sighted Past Me, but just the same old lazy, uninterested Present Me that I was back then.  I think this is what they mean when they say that people never really change.

Just outside of Wa Keeney, Kansas, Josie farted …  rendering the interior of our car nearly uninhabitable.  For such a tiny girl, she can muster up a powerful stink.  Adam rolled all the windows down to air us out.   Once we could breathe again, he rolled the windows back up and Josie’s promptly broke, hopelessly stuck in the open position.  No amount of button-smashing was going to get it closed.

We pulled over at a gas station and Adam tried to remove the door panel to lift the glass manually, but discovered you need professional grade tools to accomplish that task.  All we have is an emergency tool kit that’s intended for tire and battery changing.  Since it’s Sunday in the middle of Kansas, no mechanics within 200 miles are open.  We tried calling a great number of them.

It looks like we’ll have to drive all the way to Colorado Springs (284 miles from here) and try our luck tomorrow morning.  Normally this kind of inconvenience stresses me out, but now we’re all just thankful it’s not a tornado-level problem.  A busted window can be dealt with.  A great irony, though; we’re on a long stretch of road where the farmers have recently fertilized their fields.  We’ve traded a Josie toot for hundreds of square miles of cow manure.  (It’s a fairer trade than you’d think.)

We keep seeing roadside signs advertising FREE LAND!! in huge block letters.  Turns out, this is exactly what it sounds like.  There is so much nothing out here the states are literally giving away free land to anyone foolhardy enough to take it.  They figure if someone can scratch even a little bit of something together, it will be an improvement over the absolute nothing that is there now.

Back in college, my friend Brad was the only one in our group who owned a working car.  He was therefore the person who got stuck with any and all driving duties, which was probably a thankless task from his perspective.  Grateful as we all were for free rides, that didn’t stop folks complaining, mostly because Fairbanks was so unbelievably cold and every moment spent outside unbearably miserable.  This led to many conversations like this: We’d be walking through an endless parking lot and someone (who had summoned Brad for a free ride home) would say, “Geez, Brad, where the hell did you park?” and he’d snap, “I had to park out in Buttfuck Egypt.  You’re welcome.”

As you may glean from context, this is shorthand for “ridiculously far away from where one actually needs to be.”   That’s what you’d be getting if you took some of the free Kansas or Colorado land … a spot out in Buttfuck Egypt, all for your very own.   For a person with that special Pioneer spirit who likes lots of elbow room, this could be a really sweet deal.

We’re safely checked into our rooms in Colorado Springs now.  The landscape here is stunning and we’re all really excited about driving up Pikes Peak tomorrow.  The Ford dealership opens at 7 a.m. and with any luck we can get the window fixed without cutting too much into our day.  Once again, we have no photos of today but hope to get some spectacular shots tomorrow.