On the Road

That time came early one Tuesday morning. As is sometimes my wont, I got off before sunrise. The early start and the interstate highway route I chose got me to Cincinnati at 2:30 p.m. well before my friend Jonathan got home from work around 5. So I had the first of many treats during my trip: a nap in the shade of a tree.

In addition to spending some time with Mack, Sam, and Jonathan (left to right in picture), I got a quick tour of the city, ate at Don Pablo's, and had my first ice cream of the trip. Such strong ("approaching medicinal" was our take on it) yet very tasty mint ice cream! A good start to the ice cream theme which happened to weave itself throughout my trip!

In St. Louis there was the partaking of more Ted Drewes' Frozen Custard (along with the cake shown in the picture above). In Topeka there was some brown bread and butterscotch ice cream. In Denver there was some butterfinger and… I'm drawing a blank… David, do you remember?



The drive continued the next morning along the scenic interstates around Louisville, Kentucky. I passed through the city spotting a large Presbyterian Church (in the USA) Seal which reminded me that the city was the site not only of one of the several PC(USA) seminaries, but also its national headquarters. My return route was tentatively planned to include Louisville on my trip's final Sunday (which turned out not to be, but was instrumental in my planning).

In Denver, I did a quick internet search at the PC(USA) site for churches in Louisville and printed out the resulting list. That Sunday morning sitting in my car in the parking lot of a Kentucky hotel, I looked over the list, but was unable to find a church associated either with the national headquarters or with the seminary. I ended up instead opting for a shorter route home stopping further east in the state for a service.

The church I found was Morehead United Methodist Church and the guest preacher was Rev. Solomon Muwanga, the founder of the Methodist Church in Uganda.



The weather turned drizzly as I approached St. Louis. This chilly wet weather was to accompany me into my time in Topeka. Plans in St. Louis were dictated by it and I decided against an outdoors nap. I didn't even want an indoors one. Spending time with the Berling household Jeffery (Skippy), Juliet, and their three children, Ian, Annie, and Jeffery, was preferable to napping. Maybe my brain suffered as a result of the lack of a nap, but I have difficulty reconstructing in my mind how my time was spent with these three active children. Snippets of things pass before my mind's eye: toys in the basement, Godzilla videos, a snowy day in Mr. Roger's Neighborhood of make-believe (one of my favorite shows, but I missed out on the Telletubbies), a computer game of some sort, tinker toys, some crawling around...

After a short morning there, I got to see where Ian and Annie go to school and then it was off with Skippy and little Jeffery for an afternoon on the town. An afternoon on the town in the cold drizzle turned into a tour of the Budweizer brewery. I tried to tell Skip that there used to be a team of the Clydesdales in southeast Louisiana, but could not prove it or convince him of that. I'm right aren't I?

That evening all four of the guys I know in St. Louis (who I used to work with in Washington) gathered for a cookout with their families that evening. The five children exhibited the energies of eight or more as they enjoyed vigorous play and the adults enjoyed an evening of food, drink, and conversation.

The next morning in the continuing cold and drizzle, I headed off towards Topeka.