April 6: Kansas earnings

Distracted driving #1: Kansas tilts

Distracted Driving #2: Kansas is flat

After my feverish night in Tuscarora, Gail armed me with a bag of fresh-baked bran muffins and I headed straight for a drugstore in Elko. I didn't feel very well at the outset of my 800-mile drive but that's what off-brand No-Doz and flu medication are for. Next stop was Denver, where I would stay with my cousins, but I'm one of those hybrid-driving mileage slowpokes and with all the medications coursing through my system I had to keep pulling over to pee so it was nearly midnight when I found myself in an opaque fog, in the middle of the Medicine Bow National Forest, going 20 mph while semis passed me at, what, 100? They have the road and the placement of stray deer memorized, apparently, but I didn't, so I gave up on Denver and cousins and pulled over and spread my queen-sized memory foam mattress pad (Craig's List, $60) over my luggage in the back seat and curled up and slept, very well thank you, and woke up six hours later and kept driving. By the time I crossed into Kansas I felt perfectly healthy - whatever was wrong with me, I must have scared the shit out of it. 

Driving through Kansas, it occurred to me that once I landed in Lindsborg, I would have to play the Tchaikovsky concerto for my teachers, Lee Becker and her husband Allan Harlock. So at the next rest stop, I found a little picnic shelter and spent 20 minutes practicing. On my way back to the car, a large man in a plaid shirt and wide white visor stepped out of his Winnebago and handed me a dollar.