Restin' in Wichita--or trying at least...

Day 22--Wichita, Day off

"The Day of Unrest"

Despite getting immaculate accomodations from the very generous Gil Stroud (Aaron Hopson's Grandfather), we spent last Saturday (7/5) in utter restlessness.  

Not to worry, however, we are feeling great now, but Wichita bit us in the butt, not only with a really high priced Greyhound bus ride (see day 23), but with sickness and sleeplessness.  For les  it was the former, for Aaron, the latter.  In absolutely no way did any of this have to do with Wichita itself, or the people we met there.  Our bodies were just tired.  

A section of Downtown Wichita, KS

As is our custom, we searched for a local coffee house and attempted to make it our home for the afternoon.  This one, "The Vagabond" was more of a bar than anything, which was fine, but soon we grew tired of the noise and cigarette smoke being blown around (just wasn't the ideal relaxing place, but the coffee there was still good!)

So here's the deal: At this point, we were a bit behind on our journey.  That's alright, and we actually figured there would be a point that we had to hop a bus, slow-moving train, flatbed truck, etc., so we weren't too broken up about it.  But, as we sat in our hotel room on Saturday morning (thanks again Mr. Stroud!), looking up different ways we could catch ourselves up (Amtrak, Greyhound, Jet blue, Uhaul, Enterprise, Budget, were a handful of the options we considered) we discovered that traveling, even a mere 400 miles would not be cheap.  

So of course, we decided to try to take matters into our own hands (and by that we certainly said a prayer, but I simply mean that we wanted to try "our" way out before our wallets would have to pay the literal "price").  We tried to hitchhike.  It'd would have saved us a BIG chunk of money, and we probably would have met a really nice family, or trucker, or lonely traveler (we're optimists, if you haven't noticed!).  

Les' excitement about being sick and attempting to hitchhike our way out of the state

Les had been doing a lot of reading out of "On the Road," by Jack Kerouac, and there were many things he wanted to try out as a result of reading the book.  So we set out down the highway and waited at an on-ramp for a while.  Then we tried a gas station, and then another on-ramp.  After about three hours we shrugged our shoulders and headed about 10 miles back into Wichita and plopped down at the Greyhound station, wallets out and ready to be violated.  

The Journey is the Reward (a DEFINITE theme we're learning on our trip)

We attempted sleep outside the Greyhound station, as our bus wouldn't be leaving until 3am Sunday morning, and after tossing and turning for a few hours, the time came to pay up, board the bus, and get out of Kansas.  

And that we did.