It was so beautiful and so perfect in Kansas City that I almost considered staying there and ending my journey after just one leap. My long weekend was full of ball games, art fairs, extended top-down journeys in the Legoland Jeep (The only truck in the world held together with Velcro and zippers), and scintillating conversations in the cool, dry night air. The city was inspiring and grounding, a little oasis of sleepytown style that quickly became my home in the midst of all that corn – a soothing balm against the chaos of my mad wunderlust. It’s just what I needed.
Nevertheless, I was up early to another sunny, perfect, sleepy day and after waves of goodbyes to my host, I set my sights to the west yet again. But once I passed the city line, the instant I was safely on the other side, I was treated to a flood of mythic proportions. It rained for almost 12 hours in the Heartland in an annoying start-stop kind of way. Every time I sought shelter, tumbleweeds begin blowing across the asphalt. The minute I showed my face outside again, mobile homes were swept away in the torrent.
Halfway between Kansas City and St. Joseph, Missouri, I heard this odd tapping over the blaring radio and so, confused, I turned down the music to listen. It was all around me, like some mad regiment of insects marching across dried leaves. And then the water hit me in the face for the first time, cold and insistent.
Remember that car top carrier I have strapped to the top of my Tempo with every sort of material that can bind a large canvas sack to a slippery car roof? Yes, the carrier that is full of all the stuff that I really didn’t need to take? Good. Now, how could one really attach such a contraption? Why the answer is easy. You attach a carrier to your car with those little metal clamps that grab each window, four in all.
The only place near the doors or windows of my car that it will attach is right inside the door, against the little metal bar that lays underneath the weather-stripping. It was very easy. I place the little metals hooks on the metal bar and slam the door. The hooks can’t move because they are stuck in the door, and grabbing the weather-stripping. But hold the phone, Einstein. Weather-stripping is often used for, oh, I don’t know, weather-stripping? – you know, making a nice, tight seal of the door to the car to prevent heat and cold from escaping, or perhaps rain from getting in the windows. Now, if that weather-stripping were to be pulled away from the window by, for instance, little, metal hooks…
Within seconds, the rain was streaming in great rivers from every window, pouring in its glee over everything I own. So, naturally, I panicked.
I slid over onto the shoulder of the road, producing a cloud of mud and stones, and I brought my car to a very ungraceful halt. With complete and utter serenity, I exploded from the car into the blinding rain, avoiding freeway traffic and fell against my trunk, scrambling with the keys to open it. Trash Bags, I thought. Only trash bags could save me now.
Several hours later, bags covered the entire back seat and were tied to the bungee chords, stuck in the windows, hanging from the little metal hooks. Every bag was running with water as I had managed through my handyman skill to double the number of nozzles that sprayed moisture over my belongings. In short, my car had became a fountain. And still the rain came down and I cursed the carrier, the one that contains everything I could have left behind.
I stopped the car a dozen times along the shoulder of the road and braved the traffic in order to readjust, to salvage what I can. I thought about just throwing the carrier over a ravine and being done with it. I thought about throwing myself over a ravine and just being done with it.
But, I decided that the rain was not going to win this time. In complete rebellion, I made a quick turn off the freeway into Sioux City, Iowa and booked myself into a much too expensive hotel room, thus showing rain a thing or two. Ruin my clothes, will you? Well, I’ll just run myself over budget the first night on the road.
And here I am, listening to the eerie quiet outside, daring not to peer out the windows. All my clothes, to the best of my knowledge are wet. Two of the boxes are falling apart. I am dripping with water. My car smells like a wet dog. And now, I have to watch at least $30 of free Showtime in order to make this worthwhile and make my peace with the water gods.
Dryer times to you.
Route: 29N to Sioux City, Iowa