Tuesday, 19 August, 1997 17:38

Yesterday... we got to Abilene about 13:00, not having left very early anyway; we had an uneventful but pleasant trip. Karen and I entertain ourselves well on car trips, it seems that we don't often get the other's undivided attention, and when we do it's wonderful.

Abilene is about 90 miles west of Topeka, just a little bit further than KC is to the east. It's a pretty small town, smaller than I remembered it being. Maybe around 25-30 thousand? I should look it up, I guess, but it doesn't really matter...

We stopped first at the tourist information center, picked up brochures/maps/etc. The center seems to be staffed with volunteers, mostly little old women, with a little old man thrown in there every little once in a while. This was a recurring theme wherever we went in Abilene.

After the TIC, we went across the street and down a ways to the Eisenhower center. We started to go into another museum, but noticed that it was going to close early for the parade.

Parade?

Yeah, the Rodeo was in town, and it's the week of the Central Kansas Free Fair.

So we just went to the Eisenhower Museum, stopping at several other places on the grounds, such as the Place of Meditation, where Ike and Mamie and their first-born are buried. Beautiful building, stained glass windows, polished granite all over the place...

Anyway, the museum was fantastic. Shortly after we got there, we separated, and I didn't see Karen again for an hour or more. While I was prowling inside, thunder shook the building. I found a window, and it was pouring. I looked at my watch... yeah, the parade should be starting right about Now.

The rain continued after Karen and I met up in the exit after about two hours of fascinated wandering. We ran to the van, only getting partially soaked in the process. We decided to go ahead and get a room, just in case the rodeo was going to present a problem with the reservation. As we were checking in, I asked the girl if the attached restaurant was a good place to eat. She sent us across the street to the Sirloin Stockade. We drove, since it was still pouring.

Well, Karen and I hadn't eaten since, oh, about 08:00, and it was now around 17:00, and we were famished. The Sirloin Stockade had a special on, a $.99 steak if you buy their buffet. I normally dislike buffets, but I was there, and I was hungry... so I had a full meal from the buffet, then had a few select seconds, then had a 10-ounce steak. All of the food, unfortunately, was wonderful. If it would have been merely good, I could've stopped myself. As it was, I couldn't, or at least I didn't.

And I paid for it the rest of the night. Karen was much better about quitting eating before she got sick than I was, so she was able to laugh at my miserable self-inflicted condition.

After eating, Karen and I went back to the motel and laid around for a couple of hours, with me groaning and Karen still laughing at me. Then we decided to go for a walk, it had finally quit raining.

The area of the motel is not friendly for pedestrian traffic. Nevertheless, we walked about 3/4 of a mile, then turned around and started walking back. We stopped at a liquor store and bought Karen a bottle of wine; they didn't have much of a wine selection (after all, this is Abilene, Kansas!) and she picked out a bottle for less than five bucks.

We walked along a ways further, almost to a Baskin-Robbins store. I was getting ready to suggest going in for dessert when we heard what sounded like a shotgun blast. There was a Subway Sandwich Shop across the street, and a young male employee ran out the door holding his head and screaming bloody murder. He immediately stopped and ran back in. We could see through the window that he ran to the other end of the store and then back again. There appeared to be someone behind the counter running, too.

Karen and I stood there with our mouths open; then we decided to go investigate. We could now see no movement in the store at all. As we cautiously approached the door, a young kid about sixteen dressed in shorts and a t-shirt pulled up and parked. As he approached the door, I yelled at him to wait a minute. He gave me a puzzled look and opened the door.

Talk about anti-climatic... there were two teenage boys behind the counter, faces red as beets, sheepish grins on their faces.

We walked back to the motel, and sat up watching TV for a while. My adrenaline level was way up there for a while, though, it took me a while to get calmed down.

I have no idea what that was all about, other than two kids having fun while the boss was away. Maybe they blew up something in the kitchen, or put a raw egg in the microwave...

We got up relatively early this morning. I had not slept well again, and I had managed to wake Karen up several times during the night. Neither of us sleep well except in our own bed... is that a sign of age? Anyway, we availed ourselves of a couple cups of free coffee and checked out of the motel.

Went to McDonalds for breakfast, since we didn't have too much time before the main event of the day... a train ride on The Abilene & Smoky Valley Railroad.

We got there early enough to get tickets and we boarded the train. It is a kinda-partially-restored hundred-year-old dining car, a flat-bed cargo car with rails and benches, a caboose and a diesel engine. We rode in the dining car for the first portion of the trip, about fifteen miles, until we got to the town of Enterprise, KS. At that point, the engine decoupled and went on the siding to the other end of the train. It could have ran the route just as easily in reverse, since we never went over fifteen miles per hour, but I think that was just part of the show.

We rode back on the flat car, leaning on the rails and admiring the typical August Kansas Scenery... a field of mud, followed by a field of corn, another field of mud, a field of alfalfa, a field of maize, two fields of mud, a field of beans... you get the picture. We also crossed the smoky river twice... it was flowing rapidly, a rich muddy river, carrying that Kansas farmland topsoil down to the Mississippi delta... the area received four inches of rain yesterday and early this morning.

After the train ride, we went to the Dickinson County Historical Society Museum and the Museum of Telephony. It was interesting, and they had a switchboard like the one that Karen used on her first job in Parsons, Kansas. I could see that she was slightly miffed that something that she knew well is now in a museum...

We decided to eat before we left town, and landed at a place called the Riley House, a restored old mansion, and had a good relatively cheap lunch. Then we headed back to Topeka.

We found that Tyler was absent when we got home. We also found out that Steve and Matt and Packy and Lacee had been over last night partying. Right now, we don't know any of the details, since there is nobody reliable to question. Lacee did tell Karen that Tyler was sick, though. Karen asked her why he was sick, and Lacee said, " He was sick from too much cigarette smoke!"

Not that it really matters: the house wasn't trashed, and nobody wound up in jail...

OK, that's enough for today....