Our trip started from the St. Louis Capitol and ended up in the Colorado Rockies
After attending the 7:00AM Mass at the nearby St. Louis Cathedral which has a lovely Romanesque façade and truly great mosaic tiles in the interiors, we left this beautiful city along the Mississippi River. We were headed for Denver and the Colorado Rockies, 756 miles away across the flat plains of the American Midwest passing through three States spanning almost one third the width of the continent. And we only had a full day to do it.
Following the straight-as-an-arrow Interstate 170, we passed by towns and cities like Warrenton, Columbia, and Independence in Missouri and Topeka, Abilene, and Salinas in Kansas. The road undulated over grassland that used to be hunting grounds for the Plains Indians. It wasn’t hard to imagine herds of buffalo thundering across the flat land a couple of hundred years ago.
Nowadays, it’s 18-wheelers that crisscross the asphalted highway. These huge rigs transported every imaginable thing that could be loaded on a flatbed trailer. They came in different sizes, shapes, colors and configurations. Single-cab, double-cab, painted, chrome-plated, Peterbuilt, Kenworth, Mack, Volvo – you could see them all. And it was quite fascinating to watch them moving at top speed with their precious cargo. I told the wife that when I retire, I’d like to be a truck driver and drive all over America. She’d be my sidekick and we could do some fun stuff in the spacious cab which would be our moving home.
We passed by the outskirts of Kansas City where road repairs were going on which backed up traffic for almost 2 miles and delayed us by almost 45 minutes. Making up for lost time, I put the pedal to the metal and whizzed by all the other vehicles on the road. The brand-new Mazda 626 engine quietly purred as it ate up the miles like nothing. Gladys cautioned me that I was driving too fast over and above the 75MPH speed limit. This isn’t Germany, she said. The autobahns there, which we drove on two weeks earlier, didn’t have such a minor nuisance called a speed limit. My fast driving usually became a contentious issue between us and we sometimes ended up not speaking to each other. I always argued that we were in the middle of nowhere with nary a shadow of a cop’s helmet to be seen.
The facade of the St. Louis Cathedral and its beautiful tiled interiors
Stopping by a large truck depot near Junction City at 2:30PM, we loaded up on gas (which cost an arm and a leg - $2.85 per gallon) and had a late lunch of Mexican enchiladas and fajitas. I was a bit tired so we stayed there for about an hour with me drinking as much iced tea as I could from the all-you-can-drink vendo. I hoped that the sugar would keep me awake and alert because sometimes, I felt like nodding off at the wheel. There were still some 420 miles to go – we were barely halfway.
Somewhere along the town of Russell, west of Salinas where the traffic thinned in the late afternoon, there was nothing else on both sides of the road but cornstalks as far as the eye could see. We had been following a lumbering trailer doing 75MPH for several miles already and I was getting bored and drowsy. By this time, we all had ran out of conversation and everyone was just content listening to Mariah Carey’s vocal acrobatics on the CD. It was the wife’s turn to choose the music – James’ “Poison Live” and my “Nitty Gritty Dirt Band” albums had run their full course earlier. So to perk up things a bit, I stepped on the gas and overtook the truck at 90MPH. Since there was nothing in front of me but a ribbon of empty asphalt, I kept the speed constant and turned on cruise control. The wind whistling though the open windows dissolved the ennui that had set in.
That was when I noticed a speck in the rearview mirror growing bigger and bigger. Wow, I thought, this guy’s driving real fast! It was a black Chevy and it pulled up behind my lane when it got near. Perhaps a minute passed before suddenly, what looked to me like the edge of a luggage rack on the roof came to life in vivid, flashing colors of red and blue. Cops! Automatically, my foot immediately hit the brakes. Gladys asked whether we were the ones being addressed by those blinking lights. Duh? Who else, I said - there was no one else on the desolate highway.
I gently pulled up on the gravelly shoulder of the road and the patrol car did likewise about 10 meters behind. The driver slowly got out of his seat, adjusted his Rayban sunglasses, tilted his state trooper’s hat and sauntered to our car, hands loosely gripping his belt, ready to reach for his gun’s holster in case of trouble. Watching everything on the side mirror, I thought, gee, this looked like the movies. Except that in this scene, I was the villain!
Gladys in the middle of nowhere in Kansas and me resting by a marker in Flint Hills where the buffalo used to roam
“Good afternoon, Sir,” he drawled pleasantly as though we were old friends who hadn’t seen each other in ages.
“Good afternoon,” I replied in a high-pitched voice, my tongue dry.
“Did you know that you were doing 89MPH on a 75MPH highway?” he asked. What was I to answer – correction, Officer but it was actually 90MPH! Since I didn’t have anything to say to defend myself, I just nodded, hoping he’d take it as a sign of innocence.
“Can I see some ID please?” he continued conversationally. I handed him my passport and international driver’s license, the car registration, and the Hertz rental voucher. The last one made me wonder what they would charge me for this mess.
“Tourists,” he muttered. I didn’t know whether that was good or bad. “So how long have you folks been in the States?” About two weeks, I said, volunteering the information that we came from Chicago where we landed and were on our way to Denver and the Rockies.
“Long drive,” he commented and went back to the patrol car where his buddy, whom I noticed just now, was busy with a laptop. We waited in silence with James suddenly remembering to buckle up in the backseat. The two cops must have gone through their records with a fine tooth comb because it took them a while before Mr. Officer got out of the Chevy once more. I tried to think whether I had done something illegal during my last visit. Dope? Counterfeit money? Terrorist contacts? No. Pirated DVDs? Hmmm, I squirmed, because I had a couple in my backpack.
Left: James at the truck stop, Right: Overtaking this truck spelled trouble
“Well, Mr. Filipino, I’ll let you off this time. I won’t give you a ticket but I’ll write you a citation,” he said as he handed me back my documents. I didn’t exactly know what the difference was between the two but I guessed that there won’t be a fine to pay. He wrote something down on his pad, tore it off, and with a flourish, handed me a yellow piece of paper with a heading that said: “Kansas Highway Patrol Warning – This does not require you to appear in any court”. Only God and a lawyer knew what that meant. I definitely didn't.
“The border is still some miles away so drive carefully,” he admonished. Then added, “From there until Denver, you can go 80MPH. Have a nice day!” All I could say was “Thanks!”
In a moment, their car made a quick U-Turn and was gone, leaving us all alone in that long stretch of cornfield with the setting sun and the gathering dark clouds. A storm, it seemed, was brewing in the distance.
Heaving a sigh of relief, I slowly drove off, guiding the car back on I-170. Gladys turned to me and said with smug satisfaction: “What did I tell you, Mr. Schumacher?”
