I’ve been driving for 14 hours so forgive my jumble.

I have everything to say but no ability to put it into grammatical, syntactical framework.

Some notes.

I’m staying in an area of Kansas City called Westport (wikipedia says more). It’s interesting, surreal, houses of the era of my own (late nineteenth century?) flopped up cheek and jowl with Chili’s and Domino’s Pizzas.

For the first time in my entire adult life — I’m not exaggerating — I had to stop and ask directions from a stranger. One, the entire freeway I was supposed to take to get here was closed. Two, the Google Maps directions I had printed out neglected to explain that this particular left-hand turn I was going to need to make (critical) was a TINY TINY street. Third, the street I needed to make said left turn from is wide and speedy and dark and full of people who know where they’re going. Fourth, and most importantly, the streets around here intersect at such bizarre angles that it actually reminds me of England, it’s so navigation-boggling.

Plus, I really hate Kansas. I drove into it today with an open mind and an eye to find something redeeming and failed completely. I don’t need to be lectured about the evils of abortion from freeway-side signs. I don’t want to have to pay a toll to go from Topeka to Kansas City on I-70. West of here the freeways are, well, free. I did see one beautiful thing today, which I was not able to photograph. There is one tiny slot of Kansas that is theoretically still Prairie landscape, and today it was on fire. I presume it was a planned burn. The grass is low this time of year and the flames were only a few feet high, in a winding arc across the landscape. It was dusk. Phenomenally eye-catching.

I drove so long and so hard today (850 miles) that I literally only took one photo, with my Lumix. I had stopped for lunch in a sad diner in bleakest eastern Colorado. That’s all I had time for.

I really should eat something. A DQ Blizzard for dinner does not do wonders for the health.