Objective: Drive about seven hours and camp at Kanopolis State Park in Western Kansas.
I woke around 6AM to find Jerica and Henry freshly showered and packing their things. A quick count confirmed that everyone was still alive and well, and I couldn’t find any itchy bed bug bites on my body, so the Econolodge seemed to have worked out well for us. Jerica carried Walter to the car while I took Oliver. It was sweet the way he clung to me in his sleep and buried his face in my shoulder to avoid waking up.
Henry complained about being hungry almost immediately, so we told him that if he could just be patient so we could drive a bit while the other two slept, we could get whatever kind of breakfast he wanted. This was a pretty safe gamble because we knew he was going to pick pancakes, which was the kind of place we were looking to go to anyway.
We passed a number of Waffle Houses while the kids slept, and they awoke just as we emerged from the greater St. Louis metropolitan area into the expanse of rural Missouri that stretched between us and Kansas City. With fewer and fewer options appearing on blue road signs, Jerica took to Yelp to find some sort of diner and ended up uncovering a real treasure in Dad’s Junction Cafe. The food was cheap and the decor campy, and the old waitresses loved the kids.
Though the tank was only half-empty, we filled it up in hopes of some uninterrupted driving, but nature called just as we were passing through Kansas City, where pulling off the highway was a little trickier than usual. We ended up stopping at a gas station in what didn’t look to be the most well-maintained part of town.
Just across the street was a cheap-looking grocery store, so while we were stopped anyway we stocked up on some supplies, and Jerica let the kids pick out some cheap toys. They cost just a few dollars but also about half an hour, as Oliver agonized over whether to buy fake money, fake lottery tickets, or fart noise makers.
I did some serious tongue-biting over wasting money on this crap, but in retrospect the kids really got a lot of enjoyment out of their junk. Henry loved the two soldiers he bought (though they led to some conflict, as he worried constantly about his brothers losing or damaging them), Oliver continued to carry the fart noise makers everywhere even though they broke immediately, and Walter howled if he lost physical contact with the big red ball he got (again, leading to some conflict in the car).
Conflicts aside, the toys did the trick and the kids were pretty good while we rolled through Missouri and Kansas. The plan was to camp at a Kansas State Park, but at some point Jerica had the sense to check the weather. “Looks like 40% chance of precipitation over night.”
“I can live with that.”
“Chance of thunderstorms.”
“That’s not ideal.”
“Tornado watch for western Kansas and Nebraska.”
“I’m going to draw the line there.”
“It’s just a watch.”
Once again, I found myself in the rare position of being less nitty than my travel companion. I triumphed in my push for a cheap hotel over camping in a tornado, and we drove on to Hays, Kansas, where we parked the kids at a McDonald’s Playplace while we explored our options. The point that finally won the day for the hotel was the possibility of getting an indoor pool. Of course hotels with indoor pools tend to be more expensive, but we found a promising candidate in the Hays Ambassador, whose many one-star Yelp reviews include the following gems:
“Do yourself a favor and stay away from this shithole.”
“I think I need a tetanus shot.”
“I have stayed in some shit-holes in my time, but this was by far the worst of them.”
We called it a maybe and drove over to investigate for ourselves. The Hays Ambassador was probably a really nice play to stay 40 years ago. It was indeed in considerable disrepair, but the staff were really friendly and helpful and the pool was big and nothing seemed dangerous about it – it was just run down. It even had an awesome water slide, though that was broken. Still, for $68 including tax, it was just what we were looking for.
We got a poolside room, and the boys, in an uncharacteristic nod to modesty, decided to duck behind the curtains to change into their bathing suits. What they didn’t realize was that although this hid them from the view of people inside the room, it put them on display to the entire pool area. They found this hilarious rather than embarrassing.
I didn’t have a bathing suit with me, but this wasn’t the sort of place to care if an adult male wore his underwear in the pool (in my defense, I had a pair that was just about perfect for this purpose, we’re not talking briefs here). The kids had a blast. Walter didn’t get in, but he enjoyed throwing his ball back and forth with people who were in the pool, and I can’t even begin to describe his delight when I demonstrated what happens when you push the ball underwater and then release it to rocket up into the sky.
After swimming, we took over the breakfast area for our dinner. The staff got napkins and plastic utensils for us and let us use the microwave to heat up our food. I do want to emphasize again how nice everyone there was, because it goes to show the importance of reading between the lines when looking at reviews. The Hays Ambassador really turned out to be perfect for our purposes.
“Oliver agonized over whether to buy fake money, fake lottery tickets, or fart noise makers.”
They always pick the fart noise makers.
Any road trip worth it’s salt has got to have fart noise makers, IMHO…
Andrew, you have my ultimate respect.
But here is an honest if profoundly ignorant question. You went on a mutli-day cross country trip with your cousin’s wife and kids. The plan was to camp out but as it turned out you shared a couple of nights at “no-tell” motels in the same room. I absolutely believe you and your cousin’s wife are pure as the driven snow. What I don’t understand is why your cousin or your girlfriend did not have a problem with this plan.
I am an old man, jaded, burned out and skeptical but still I cannot imagine a situation where I would put myself alone on the road with another man’s wife not to mention her minor kids.
Again, I am sure this never crossed your mind as obviously you have a heart of gold and I am an evil old bastard, but in times like this I wonder if I am crazy for bringing this up?
Believe it or not, women don’t really have a hard time keeping their hands off of me. You say “not to mention her minor kids” as though they were an additional enticement rather than an insurmountable impediment to any sort of liaison. She had enough trouble getting five minutes to herself even with me there to watch the kids. TBH I don’t know she and my cousin found the time to make the third one.
Jesus, my post was poorly written. My point was that if I went to my girlfriend and told her I was going to drive across country with my cousin’s wife (leave the kids out for now) both my girlfriend and my cousin, even if they trusted me implicitly, would have a problem with that. Sleeping arrangements be damned. The impropriety is in the image not the reality.
The kids: In your world, again I am not being a least bit of cynical, but I am honestly curious why is this OK. In my world this would be a non-starter. In my world no professional, African-American male with income and resources would sleep in the same motel room with kids who were not his own. You live in a world without fear or pre-conceived judgments, more power to you.
I get what you’re saying. I’m sure you’re not the only one who had this reaction. There are two points I’d make:
1. I have a long and unsullied record of fidelity in my relationship, despite the fact that I go to Las Vegas by myself at least once a year and we’ve lived in different places for months and even years at a time. So I think there’s a presumption of trust, which isn’t to say that I’d expect my girlfriend to be cool with my just deciding to go take a vacation with any old female acquaintance. Likewise I think I have a pretty good relationship with my cousin.
2. There was a good reason for this. If Jerica and I just randomly decided to take a vacation together, I think that would rightfully raise some eyebrows. In this case there were good explanations for why she was making the trip, why she would benefit from having a second adult along, why it couldn’t be her husband, and why it made sense for me to go.
“You live in a world without fear or pre-conceived judgments” – I’d say that I make an active effort not to worry too much about what people at large will think (I’m not very good at this, but I try). As best I can tell, both my girlfriend and my cousin were fine with this arrangement, it worked well for all parties involved, and beyond that I’m not too concerned about how it appears.
Regarding the second point about the kids, this really has more to do with my trust of my cousin and his wife. I assure that I don’t generally make a habit of sharing a motel room with other people’s children, and when I used to work in high schools I was conscious about not ending up in situations where I could be accused of impropriety and unable to disprove it definitively. This is just to protect myself against an unfounded accusation/lawsuit, but I think that Richard and Jerica are about the least litigious people I know, so this wasn’t really a concern for me in this instance.
I have been reading your blog and listening to your podcasts for a while now with great enjoyment, if with little understanding of the advanced theoretical concepts of poker which you and your guests so generously share.
My comment has more to do with the assumptions people make based on “race” and class.
My frustration had to do with the fact that as an African-American, “pre-conceived judgments” is not an arbitrary debate topic but a fact of everyday life. I have had to “balance my range” by conforming to certain societal norms in order to succeed in America. I am judged not just by whites but by fellow blacks who also judge each other based on stereotypes. Imagine being a black nerd who was born in 1953.
You have the privilege of not being subject to the same prejudices. This does not make you a worse person than me, but it does make you freer to act naively without worrying about the consequences. You obviously have a wonderful heart and are a good person.
At the end of the day, you put yourself out there as a public person on the internet, sometimes idiots like me will comment.
Point taken. I definitely didn’t mean to imply that your comments were idiotic – I wouldn’t have taken the time to respond if I thought they were. I guess the main point I wanted to make was that I don’t think I acted naively or without consideration for how this arrangement might look. Obviously most people we encountered on the trip assumed that Jerica and I were married and that I was the children’s father, and a lot of them probably would have found the actual circumstances a little weird. I’m sure you’re right that it would have been a more awkward situation if I were black, in no small part because it would have been obvious that I was not the children’s father. I’d like to think that most people would have just assumed I was a stepfather or at least boyfriend and still treated us well, but I know that wouldn’t be universally true.
I’m inclined to say that the question of trust specifically between my girlfriend and myself or my cousin and his wife has more to do with the particulars of those relationships than with our race, but I guess I don’t really know. Perhaps it’s true that on the whole black women trust their black boyfriends less than white women trust their white boyfriends, and this has something to do with pernicious stereotypes about black men?
per·ni·cious adjective \pər-ˈni-shəs\
: causing great harm or damage often in a way that is not easily seen or noticed
God, I love a good debate.