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Lawrence, KS
We got up early as Becky had to go to work (work? what is this work?) and we wandered off to find Massachusetts Street - Lawrence's main drag. After misinterpreting the simplest of directions we finally made it to Mass and parked ourself in the nearest coffee establishment, which proved to be a poor substitute for Stumptown and The Cup. In the afternoon we went to a sit-in bakery and ate their bread whilst taking turns using the mainframe (sorry, I mean laptop) and reading our books. We met with a couchsurfer called Rachel that evening in her awesome apartment - a converted munitions depot of the 1800s - and in the evening went to the Jazz Haus...which served neither Jazz or House, preferring Punk and Indy. The Indy was actually pretty good, despite the singer being propped up on a crutch with a broken foot he still cavorted and whipped round the stage. The punk band was very loud. We assume that that ticks all the necessary boxes for good punk.
We slept in the next morning, STILL using the internet (not whilst asleep, although that would have been far more efficient) and went out to another café in the afternoon (its a hard life). Here we met with our 3rd couchsurfer, Kim, a tiny blond Texan, who lives in a classic (or what we assume is classic) midwestern house - cream wooden exterior, wooden doors, wooden floorboards and a covered porch for drinking on. Sadly the porch lacked a rocking chair, a shotgun and a dog called Jessie but we work with what we have. That evening we went to Casbah, where we ate burgers and truffle fries. Truffle fries are to fries what a lover's embrace is to a broken leg. We're barely even exaggerating. After that we went to yet another bar and dissolved the night away in a whirl of friendly Americans, and one greek/geordie/wisconsinite, with correspondingly the weirdest accent imaginable. We finished the night off drinking bourbon on the porch.
Forcing eyelids open with trembling fingers we achieved conciousness. Today was game day! Mark accidentally purchased tickets for a Kansas State (Manhattan, KS) game, rather than the University of Kansas (Lawrence) so we hightailed it off to Manhattan, to support the rivals of all the friends we had just made.
Football!
After the previous evening's high-jinx and some time zone confusion (times for games in Kansas are listed in Washington time. Why?) we missed the all-American tailgating experience. Tailgating is turning up many hours before the game, drinking beer and barbecuing piles of meat. Making it to the game is a secondary consideration. Failing as Americans we turned up 20 minutes before kickoff, taking our seats with 50,000 other people for the opening game of the season: KSU Wildcats vs. UCLA Bruins.
American football has several differences from the real kind: rather than turn up and spend a depressing 2-3 hours in a rain-soaked wind-lashed stadium of nightmares watching your team trip over their own bootlaces, you spend 4 hours slowly roasting on a bench as a spectacular sound and light show is shoehorned into your brain by an army of players, spectators, marching band, dancers, cheerleaders and an unashamedly biased commentator.
We found it hard to follow the game - 4 hours of real time (and 1 hour of game time) later, we were just about getting to grips with the announcer's 'FOURTH AND 8, WILDCATS ON THE BRUINS' 29'.... 'that's good... for WILDCAT!', to which the entire stadium responds 'FIRST DOWN!' and whips their arms toward the endzone. Wildcats beat the Bruins in an exciting last quarter involving 3 touchdowns and 2 field goals! Mark had never seen his team win at anything before, so was stunned with a plethora of strange, positive emotions. All in all football is as over-the-top and American as it could be. It isn't just gigantic men crashing into each other. It's not just a game either. Its a veritable show, drama, spectacle, day out and for some a way of life.
We returned to Lawrence, flushed with a victory we had no part in and spent a last evening in Lawrence, relaxing with Kim and her housemate Katie in a café/bar called Henry's. Or Harry's. Or Hattie's. In the morning Katie supplied us with delicious FREE pizza from her pizza place, and Joe had a t-shirt printed (the iconic Golf Mk3) at the awesome ACME t-shirt shop that Kim works at. Our favourite t-shirts there read "Kansas: Racing Utah into the 19th century" and "Kansas: Protecting the world from Missouri".
Eureka Springs, AK
We drove down from Kansas City (half of which is in Missouri for some reason), through Missouri and into Arkansas. Arkansas is not completely dissimilar from northern rural England in appearance (apart from the sunshine); the hills were rolling gently and unlike California were covered in modest trees of sensible heights, with small fields scattered among them. The main difference was that most of the road traffic were moustacheioede bikers, riding chrome steeds the size of small cars, wrapped in flaming headbands, harley t-shirts and black boots. Another difference was that the trees lining the road were drenched in thick spiderwebs, wrapping up the branches to make them look like cotton candy. There was no camping available in Eureka Springs (perhaps the film of spiders covering the state are something to do with that) so we were forced to crash in the Joy motel, and were privilege to some drunken Texan bikers' conversation that went something like this: "I'll give you $200 to let me knock you out".
Once you break through the heavy crusting of motels, Eureka Springs is a genuinely old-style town, sporting many victorian-era buildings, complete with tall fronts and jutting-out wooden balconies hanging over the streets. Something like an old western town, but constructed of painted brick and stone rather than wood, if that makes any sense. It is also the gay capital of northwest Arkansas, although you wouldn't believe it from the rumble of bikers littering the streets. Then again, we saw bikers eating in "Peace, Love and Cheesecake", so who are we to assume anything?
The Future
The next day strike out for Memphis, TN!
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