Tick-Tock

See that maroon speck in the center of this photo. That's a bird's-eye view of the Korean-made four door I drove through "The Middle" taken the evening before I turned it in at Little Rock Airport. You thinks it looks tiny from up above but, believe you me, it seems smaller when you're sitting in it for five days.

 Meet me in 'The Middle'

I worked until midnight the night before the flight, then drove to my sister’s seaside home near by the airport and cat-napped in front of the TV for about 3 and a half hours. Rushed into a cab at 4 a.m. and hurried off to wander about, as my sister later labeled it, “The Middle.”

I had roughed out an itinerary for this five-and-half-day, six-state, 1000-mile meander. My original thoughts, several years and what seems about a half-lifetime ago, about seeing these states was to go up north toward the headwaters of the Missouri River, rent some manner of boat and float down the states’ watery borders, then east over into the Mississippi.

But I would miss Oklahoma by that route and eventually realized that a float is an foolishly romantic notion for this length of travel and it could be:

1. Limitless time-wise: how could you put a clock on it? Who am I, Lewis? Clark?
2. Perilous: floods, a random tornado, a leaky boat perhaps or maybe riverboat gamblers and hustlers, etc.
3. Very expensive: ahhh, the real rub.

  So with two budgeting restraints, time as well as treasure, along with no Oklahoma access, plans changed.

Flew the 6 a.m. Southwest shuttle out of Logan into Chicago’s Midway sharing the full plane with, among many others, the women’s crew team from the University of Alabama.
I clocked maybe 20 of them ahead of me in the check-in line decked out in school colors, crimson warm-up suits festooned with large white letters. They were heading south after the Head of the Charles Regatta held over the weekend in the Hub.
Dragging their duffel bags, the Crimson Tide was low, looking very tired. But the majority of these women were taller than me. I guess tall is good in a crew shell. Live and learn.
After about 45 minutes at a jam-packed Midway, I filed on to another full shuttle, lined mostly with businessmen and several large groups of swells returning from shopping weekends in Windy.
We landed at Omaha's Eppley Field just before 11 a.m. CST and so, bleary-eyed from lack of solid sleep, I set out to visit six states in just under five days.