Day 4 of the Drive East: the tenacious banana, and a Royal game

We now know why the NBA's Oklahoma City franchise is called the Thunder. It rained hard -- HARD -- with thunder and lightning all night during our stay in Oklahoma City. By the morning, though, the rain was a light drizzle, the air was fresh and cool, and we were off to Kansas City.

We had some fun along the way. Jason's iPod spit out several Beatles tunes during the course of an hour. Melissa commented, "Wow, there's a lot of Beatles on this." Colin, a self-identified bug hater, started looking around frantically and patting himself down: "Where? Where?" We died laughing. Melissa could barely speak: "We're talking about the Beatles' music!" Colin was quite relieved.



The day featured more overcast skies and a few light showers, but nothing too dramatic. Oklahoma and Kansas were much more green than we expected -- but even though it was pretty, the view didn't seem to change much. It was like driving through a photo. For five hours.

We had just arrived in Kansas City and were driving to our hotel when a woman pulled up next to us, laughing hard and pointing at our vehicle. Yvonne rolled down her window to see what was up. The lady said, between gasps, "Do you know you have a banana on the back of your car?." Jason leaned over and said, "We know, it's been there since Albuquerque." She laughed harder.


Go back to Tuesday morning. Leaving the hotel in Albuquerque, Jason grabbed a banana from the breakfast area to eat during that day's drive. After packing the Suburban and getting on the freeway, Jason looked around for his banana but couldn't find it. He figured he must have left it in the hotel. Ten hours later, unpacking the Suburban in Oklahoma City, he found the banana on the back bumper. He was going to throw it away (it didn't look edible), but Melissa insisted he leave it there. So he did. It's still in the same place on the bumper, through more than 800 miles on the highway and a hellacious Oklahoma storm. I guess we'll see how far it makes it.

We ended the day at a Kansas City Royals baseball game. Our love of baseball is well documented, and there are few places we enjoy more than the ballpark. After four days in the car and hotels, it was pure therapy to sit at the stadium and watch the Royals beat the Mariners 8-2.

While the team may struggle on the field, Kansas City has the game experience wired. Tickets for good outfield seats were -- brace yourself -- $7 each. The kids got meal deals (hot dog, animal crackers, and a drink) for $5 each, while Jason and Yvonne had authentic Kansas City barbecue sandwiches. We also enjoyed the Royals Hall of Fame behind left field that featured a short movie on Kansas City baseball history and some great memorabilia. And the temperature was in the mid-80s with a cool breeze. Like we said, therapeutic.






We sat with some cool people, so we laughed a lot. Our biggest laugh came when Levi had just stopped drinking from his juice box and had it just in front of his face; Melissa asked him if he wanted to go with her to the movie again, and he was so excited he squeezed the juice box and sprayed himself in the face. After he realized what happened, he laughed with us.




Tomorrow we'll see a few things in Kansas City and Independence, then hit the road for Nauvoo, Illinois, and a day off from driving on Saturday. We're looking forward to a day off the road.