These United States

California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, ... and home. Finally finally home, after over a month of travelling, the latest being driving from San Francisco to Columbus with Oliver (with a whole two days reverie in Columbus between Shanghai and San Francisco). As much as I would like to, I don't have anything all that coherent to say, so I'm going to have to try to the bullet-format blog post ...

• There is a lot more traffic on I-70 in St. Louis and Indianapolis than there is in Utah.
• Hotels west of Denver are expensive.
• The Mojave River looks pretty much like you'd expect.
• Hoover Dam: Expect Delays, 2003--2008
• What's in Kansas isn't all that bad; there just isn't much. Also, the slogan on the tourbook: "Kansas: As Big As You Think." And here we were hoping we were wrong ...
• There are lots of ADULT SUPERSTOREs in Kansas and Missouri. The ones I wanted to visit were usually coupled with "JESUS SAVES Pornography Destroys" signs. Isn't free speech grand?
• Limon, CO: Left In the Middle Of Nowhere
• If the TripTik suggests going around Kansas City instead of straight through on I-70, you should take the suggestion.
• Illinois and Indiana are really similar, except Indiana has worse construction delays.
• There is a lot of empty space in this country. I hear all of this stuff about how the population is rising exponentially, but we really do have places to put them all, and it can't be that big of a problem, as long as we can feed them all and someone fixes the energy problem. Oh, and global warming, that's another thing we should fix. Not that I think people should be having so many babies per se, but I'm just saying, the US of A is still fairly large. I have also become much more aware of how little I know that I would like to: exactly how much land is unused in this country that could be used? How much is used for farming, how much for animal raising? How much would it cost to make trucking a purely local venture and make long distance transportation of goods be left on the trains? Would that really help the environment? Just how much of a water problem is there? I want to know numbers, and I am just now figuring out which questions to ask.
  
• The new cool thing for cars to have is fans on their rear bumpers. They are shiny and spinny and very distracting.
• Lanya has a kitty who likes to meow. And who bit my nose.
• Delilah is incredibly easy to find on the radio, regardless of location.
  
• Las Vegas is shiny. In more ways than one.
  
• Bailey's Chocolate Bar in St. Louis is totally my kind of place, especially since it was Lanya's treat.
• The City Museum, also in St. Louis, would be an excellent place to have some sort of event, like a wedding reception or a ring premiere.
• The Glenwood Hot Springs in Colorado seems like it would be a fun place to go ... at night ... in the fall or spring when it's cheaper and there aren't kids around ....
• Check the hotel room before you leave. Really.
• Despite all of the talk about how different we all are, the United States is amazingly homogenous. We just need to communicate better is all. "I'm right; you're wrong," isn't exactly effective.
  
• It's very strange to be exclusively with one other person for a week and then to all of a sudden have them not be around.

But now I'm home, and there is work to do. I currently have no trips scheduled. It's quite a relaxing feeling.