The Boston Marathon is in 10 days. I suppose it’s time to taper… so I’m headed to Fayetteville, AR, for their Hogeye Marathon tomorrow.
En route to pickup a rental car in Tulsa for the drive, I’m connecting via St Louis.
Feel free to make your own arch comment.
ZING!
***
Tulsa.
Ten years or so back, I used to fly here quite regularly for work. I’ve been back a few times since, running the Route 66 marathon, catching up with a lawyer friend of mine, and stopping at a local chain restaurant for a burger and shake.
As I type this, I should’ve tried to grab lunch with Jim. Next time.
And as I type this, I DID make it to Braum’s…
After that early “calorie busting/loading” lunch for tomorrow’s race, I headed out to Arkansas. I must have missed a turn as I was expecting to get on the Will Rogers Turnpike to head East… and maybe that’s a good thing as I was on the ALT road that runs kinda parallel and crisscrosses the turnpike a few times. Each entry warned of “exact coins only” and I was low on change. Bills and credit cards I was flush with, and I wasn’t sure how the toll pass system works here at the moment. Usually I find the car rental companies and the toll roads are in cahoots and charge all sorts of “convenience fees” for the electronic or cashless systems that are springing up. But I digress.
Normally on the turnpike I would have stopped in Vinita, OK, home to the (now only possibly) World’s Largest McDonald’s. It was a must-do pilgrimage for me many, many time in the early 2000s. Sometimes people exaggerate their storytelling details saying things like, “I’ve been there a million times” or maybe just “I’ve done that five times…” But I feel confident that back when I was commuting from Tulsa to Miami, OK, I was at that McDonald’s rest stop no less than 11 times, be it for gas, food, to cry, to get a soda, or to take a phone call on my even-at-that-time-antiquated Virgin Mobile Pay As You Go phone. That was a tough job and there are a lot of bad memories tied up in that gig. Maybe it’s for the best I gave that place a miss this trip.
And had I not taken the proverbial “back roads” I never would have stopped at this convenience store. How is this not a national chain? Maybe it is.
I should note that the Locust Grove High School football team are the Pirates. Clear eye [sic], full booty, always plunder.
Oh, and for the team photo, they posed on a tank. Although I think they green screen composited the football field. It looks fake but maybe they just rolled a tank onto the 50 yard line. Pirates fight to uphold free trade by breaking the law!
***
The Hogeye Marathon Expo was held at the Northwest Arkansas Convention Center… which really was just a big ballroom attached to a Holiday Inn.
All in all, a fairly low key affair. I did kinda like the back of the tee-shirts for sale but if I didn’t buy a caricature of Sir Walter Raleigh last week, I wasn’t going to spend $15 on this:
And yet:
Swine-y.
How I love you, how I love!
My dear ol’ Swine-y Tee.
***
Confronted with a free afternoon, I checked my Roadside America to do list and was unimpressed with the tiny church (they recommended going on Sunday — by Sunday I’ll be in Phoenix). But I was suitably intrigued by Land of Terra, an outdoor art installation that sounded like it might sit nicely next to Steve and my trip to Santa Fe’s Meow Wolf.
Besides, it was 26 miles from the convention center and that distance seemed too much of a coincidence to ignore…
I’ll let the pictures MOSTLY do the talking…
Traffic is a universal problem. Even in the Land of Terra, we’re barely moving.
The Pig and I:
And now for stray shots from around the garden. Some might work better full screen so remember you can click on a thumbnail and see a bigger image. But be warned: once you see these, you cannot UNSEE them.
Some statuary sayings…
At one point I was trying to take a photo and the camera spun around to selfie-mode. Here’s me channeling my inner Annie Leibovitz … and failing to get the shot.
Lost in the Labyrinth. Eventually I just walked over the stones to get to the center. I don’t believe in the no-maze scenario.
Arriving at my hotel, I noticed a brochure that I felt obligated to pick up.
Sometimes we may be through with our past but our past isn’t through with us.