Tag Archives: Kansas City Chiefs

Lacrimosa

Lacrimosa – Wednesday Blog by Seán Thomas Kane

Today, one week after this city's great triumph and great tragedy, I've decided to reflect on the week now passed. — Click here to support the Wednesday Blog: https://www.patreon.com/sthosdkane

Today, one week after this city’s great triumph and great tragedy, I’ve decided to reflect on the week now passed.

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One of my favorite speeches of Peter Capaldi’s run on Doctor Who came at a moment when the Doctor finds himself in the middle of a war-game just beginning. On the one side are an alien species beginning their invasion of Earth, on the other the humans fighting for survival as we do. In a powerful bit of oration, Capaldi’s Doctor cries out that none of this conflict would happen if we would just sit down and talk with each other. I think of this scene often when I’m reading news analysis of our current moment in American history. We are at a point where we so vastly disagree with each other over the very facts of our nature and our world that we only talk with people with whom we agree.

Now there’s a key semantic note here: we talk to people with whom we disagree, yet we often only talk withpeople with whom we agree. One week ago, this city was filled with millions of people talking, cheering, laughing, and dancing with each other in our moment of jubilee. One week ago, this city basked in the bright, warm mid-February sky. 

I didn’t go downtown for the parade, instead choosing to watch the first hour of it at home before going to my parish church for Ash Wednesday Mass and a delightful afternoon walk on that warm day at the Kansas City Zoo. While I was at the Zoo, riding on the Sky Safari chairlift on the way back from seeing the chimpanzees, I heard over the staff radio that something was happening at the parade. A few seconds later one of my best friends, a regular Wednesday Blog reader no less, texted me about a shooting at Union Station. By the time I returned to ground at the other side of the chairlift near the cheetah enclosure I knew enough that I chose to cut my zoo visit short and return to the assured safety of home.

At that point, we didn’t know if the shooting, still ongoing, was a terror attack or a fight gone wrong. It turned out to be the latter, yet in the process 22 bystanders were injured and 1 bystander, Lisa Lopez-Galvan, was killed. Her name is now etched into the memory of this city. She is by no means the first Kansas Citian to be killed in a shooting in the past year, each Sunday at Mass my parish prays for the victims of gun violence killed in the past week, ultimately reading 184 names in the 12 month course of 2023. Still, this was the first time that such a shooting happened with elected officials from the Governors of Kansas and Missouri to the Mayor of Kansas City to State and County legislators from throughout our region were all present. There are reports of Chiefs coach Andy Reid and players from the team helping comfort other revelers shocked by the sudden shooting and leading many to safety within Union Station itself.

At the time of writing the Kansas City Police Department has reported that the two suspects in this shooting are juveniles who got into an argument at the end of the Super Bowl Rally and started firing at least one, if not two, weapons. These individuals weren’t talking with each other but instead were talking to each other. The circumstances of the laws which govern our society here in Missouri contributed to this situation, and I hope that the experience inspires change in the hardest of hearts in Jefferson City and Topeka. 

That evening, feeling shocked and dumbed by the experience of seeing our jubilee transform into a living nightmare I wanted to do something, anything that could help. At dinner, I compiled a list of all of the Members of Congress who represent the Kansas City Metropolitan Area with their DC office phone numbers and posted it to my Instagram story and Facebook profile. The following morning then, I dialed the three numbers of my Congressman Emmanuel Cleaver, and Senators Josh Hawley and Eric Schmitt. I spoke with a staffer for the Congressman and left messages with the senators’ offices.

  • Sen. Hawley (R-MO): (202) 224-6154
  • Sen. Schmitt (R-MO): (202) 224-5721
  • Sen. Moran (R-KS): (202) 224-6521
  • Sen. Marshall (R-KS): (202) 224-4774
  • Rep. Cleaver (D-MO): (202) 225-4535
  • Rep. Alford (R-MO): (202) 225-2876
  • Rep. Graves (R-MO): (202) 225-7041
  • Rep. Davids (D-KS): (202) 225-2865
  • Rep. LaTurner (R-KS): (202) 225-6601

In each case, echoing what Jason Kander, a local veteran and sometime Democratic political candidate, said on Wednesday night, asked each official to consider the repeal of a law called the Protection for Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA) which prohibits lawsuits against the gun industry over damages caused by their products. The judicial system is something which ensures consumer safety. Without this safeguard, we are at far greater risk as a society, and we’re a society with a government that has checks and balances built into our very DNA! Those checks and balances only really work if the different branches of government, and the people who choose those in government, talk with each other about the issues of the day which in some cases can determine life or death.

As the week drew to a close, I set into a new task and worked a good 21 hours this weekend at the Kauffman Center in what was truly a wonderful antidote to the grief I felt after the events midweek. To me it seemed that many people choose to come see the Kansas City Ballet’s production of Peter Pan for the escapism that the boy who never grows up embodies. We did our part, however small, to help heal our city and restore some of that jubilant spirit to our lives. Even so, on one of those nights after a long shift I drove home down Main Street and stopped at the Pershing Road light just before midnight. Even then, days later, with St. John of the Cross’s dark night of the soul feeling ever present around me at that scene, the red and yellow confetti still gently fell as it had on Wednesday morning.

On Saturday afternoon, I attended with my parents and grandmother a rally held by the gun control organization Moms Demand Action in Washington Square Park, located across Main Street from Union Station. It is a site I know best as the annual home of the Kansas City Irish Festival’s arts area, where among other works of great imagination, I talked myself out of buying a beautiful painting of the USS Enterprise-Dfrom Star Trek: The Next Generation during the last festival over Labor Day weekend. The speakers at that rally included Moms Demand Action organizers, Missouri State Representatives, Jackson County Legislator Manny Abarca IV, and our mayor Quinton Lucas. All of the speeches I heard were stirring, and like my relations there I felt the same call to action, even as the same confetti fell around us blown on the wind from the west across the park.

Writing this on Monday night just before bed, I’m surprised to think that by the time you read this blog it will have only been 1 week, a mere 7 days, since our jubilee became our nightmare in the place where our city celebrates great triumphs. To me, this last week has felt more like two weeks, the emotions have been too great to be contained by a single week alone. I sit here, writing, hoping these words speak with you, while listening to Alan Gilbert and the New York Philharmonic’s 2015 performance of Verdi’s Requiem. It seems to be the best soundtrack for this week’s edition of the Wednesday Blog, something which evokes the inherent conflict and paradox of human experience and human emotions. Giuseppe Verdi was, after all, noted for his anti-clerical views, yet his spirituality can be heard in every note of this great Mass of the Dead.

I thought briefly on Wednesday about what I would say if I were in the room with the two suspects in this shooting. Yet after a few moments, after all the anger, all I felt was sorrow that they made their decisions which led to the nightmare they wrought. When I listen to the Lacrimosa in Verdi’s setting, I think not only of Ms. Lopez-Galvan, but of those individuals as well who caused her death. How can we heal if we cannot recognize each other’s humanity? This prayer then, the words which Verdi set to music, as Mozart and Berlioz did before him, speak to both the victims and the perpetrators:

Lacrimosa dies illa

Qua resurget ex favilla

Judicandus homo reus.

Huic ergo parce, Deus:

Pie Jesu Domine,

Dona eis requiem. Amen.

Full of tears will be that day

When from the ashes shall arise

The guilty man to be judged;

Therefore spare him, O God,

Merciful Lord Jesus,

Grant them eternal rest. Amen.

Postscript

Dear Reader, this is now the second week in a row that I’ve released a follow up to the weekly edition of the Wednesday Blog, a sign perhaps that this format does not quite work as well for current news as I might wish. About 20 hours after I wrote this week’s post and an hour after I sent the recording off to Spotify to be published at midnight Central Time, I read a story from KSHB, Kansas City’s NBC affiliate which confirmed the two main suspects’ names, their charges, and some of their testimony from their own hospital beds where they are recovering from their own gunfire.

What struck me the most about this story, which has since been updated with more information and a mugshot of the suspect whose bullet killed Ms. Lopez-Galvan, is that the man in question’s testimony shows some sense of remorse. Quoting from the article written by KSHB’s news staff, “‘Just pulled a gun out and started shooting. I shouldn’t have done that. Just being stupid,’ Mays said.” Knowing some of the humanity of this suspect speaks to me of how broadly this shooting has hurt so many.

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Civic Pride

Civic Pride – Wednesday Blog by Seán Thomas Kane

In a week of great triumph for my city and impactful announcements, some words on civic pride. — Click here to support the Wednesday Blog: https://www.patreon.com/sthosdkane
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In a week of great triumph for my city and impactful announcements, some words on civic pride.

A city is as vibrant as the people who make it, and those who build on its strong foundations do well to recognize their forebearers. Cities are at the core of our concept of civilization, the city is the star about which a system of suburbs, exurbs, and ever more distant rural communities revolve. This has been true since antiquity, when the first human settlements were established for the mutual benefit of those who lived within them. Our cities today exist for similar reasons. It’s easier to live close to the places you work, eat, and play. It’s safer to live surrounded by like-minded people who in the best of circumstances will come together when a crisis emerges.

Cities are extensions of humanity; they can be organic in how they grow and function. The cancer and rot we’ve seen grow in our bodies that pose the greatest medical struggles today, mirrors the decay we’ve see in our cities in the last 70 years with urban renewal projects that removed vibrant urban life for new modes of living which prioritized distant suburbs and cars traveling far faster than one can walk in order to better connect our sprawl.

Our cities can find common passions in their livelihoods, civic pride in the things a city is known for making, and within the last 170 years in our professional sports. A central part of my love for my original hometown of Chicago comes from my memories as young boy in the suburbs of that city during the Bulls’ historic second threepeat and the Cubs wonderous 1998 season. Here in Kansas City the passion for our local teams, the Chiefs, Royals, Sporting, and the Current, is one common bond that runs throughout this city and its metropolitan region. We may agree on little else, but Kansas Citians agree on their passion for their teams.

This week then, Kansas City finds itself amid two pivotal moments in its recent history. On Sunday night the Kansas City Chiefs won their third Super Bowl in the last five years. This was also their second consecutive championship. As Quarterback Patrick Mahomes said in his post-game press conference, “the Kansas City Chiefs are never underdogs.” This success for the city’s football team remains in stark contrast to the Chiefs of my childhood. They made a playoff run during my first year living here, yet I remember listening to their early knockout defeat on the radio around New Year’s 2000. On the day that this is released, the Chiefs will parade down Grand Boulevard through Downtown & the Crossroads surrounded by what will surely be crowds of 1 million or more.

On Tuesday of this week, perhaps hoping to ride on the celebratory mood, the Kansas City Royals, this city’s Major League Baseball team, announced nearly 5 months late their choice for a new stadium site to replace the 52 year old Kauffman Stadium located next to the Chiefs’ Arrowhead Stadium in the eastern suburbs. In September of last year, the Royals had announced two preferred stadium sites, one on the east side of downtown along the east loop where Interstate 70 and US-71 round the urban core, and the other in North Kansas City across the Missouri River from Downtown in suburban Clay County.

By the time the official announcement was released the rumors of what the announcement would hold had already been circulating for a good 12 hours, and to the bafflement of many, the delight of some, and the dismay of more the team announced they’d chosen a third site now occupied by the Kansas City Star Pavilion and a host of small businesses bounded by Truman Road on the north, Locust Street on the east, 17th Street on the south, and Grand Boulevard on the west. This site would be conveniently located next to the local indoor arena, the T-Mobile Center, where Kansas City’s hypothetical professional basketball and hockey teams would play. The proposed stadium would also connect to a park that is in the planning to be built over Interstate 670 on the south loop, which would continue to run beneath the park and new stadium.

A city needs to balance the causes of all of its constituents, each organ working in its own manner with minimal conflict between them. The proposed site of this stadium brings out clear and obvious conflict with local small businesses, Crossroads neighborhood residents, and the transportation grid of this city. I support the south loop park project which would cover Interstate 670 and better connect the Crossroads with Downtown, yet by that proposal Walnut Street and Grand Boulevard would be blocked by the park, which was fine before a baseball stadium was proposed to go there. The stadium proposal blocks Oak Street, a vital, if less used artery which runs along the east side of Downtown and the Crossroads connecting to Gillham Road in Midtown and eventually Rockhill Road at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art and Holmes Road on the east side of Brookside, my neighborhood.

The proposed stadium also displaces many vibrant local businesses that are located within its proposed footprint and will likely displace further local businesses in the surrounding blocks with a large new stadium dropped in the middle of their neighborhood. To me, it seems as though the team went out of its way to choose a third option which would disrupt as much of this city’s urban life as possible. With that in mind, I’m inclined to vote no on the question of whether we, Jackson County residents should renew the 3/8th-cent sales tax that’s on our April ballot in order to keep the Royals from building a stadium at this site.

Yet, I’m not opposed to a downtown stadium. I’m merely opposed to this proposed final location for the downtown stadium. I would prefer the City of Kansas City include questions on the April ballot asking municipal residents whether we’d prefer this location or the location on the east side of Downtown, which was the team’s original preference in Kansas City, Missouri. That location is currently occupied by parking lots rather than local businesses. It won’t require the demolition of a few vibrant blocks of urban life like the Crossroads location would. The one downside to the eastern location is that it is further away from the Streetcar line, the Power and Light District, and the T-Mobile Center. Yet spectators attending games at the current stadium walk further as it is often than they would in that situation.

At the end of it all, considering the history of teams that do not get their way with public funding for new stadiums, I worry that the current ballot question will not serve local residents in the best way possible. We stand to lose a great deal if the 3/8th-cent ballot question doesn’t pass, as both the Royals and the Chiefs have signaled their intent to look beyond Jackson County for new homes without that funding. While I expect the Chiefs to stay in Kansas City, I have my doubts about the Royals. 

While all this is going on here, back in Chicago the White Sox and Bears organizations are also pressuring the City of Chicago and suburban municipalities for options for new stadiums as well. The Bears were all set on a northwestern suburban location in Arlington Heights until new pressures there have led them within the last week to muse about demolishing historic Soldier Field in favor of a new stadium in the old one’s southern parking lot along Burnham Harbor. Meanwhile, last week the White Sox released designs for a new stadium located 1 mile west of Soldier Field at an empty lot between Clark Street to the east, the South Branch of the Chicago River to the west, Roosevelt Road to the north, and 16th Street to the south. Over the summer when the White Sox initially found lukewarm reception for their own stadium rebuild, their leadership mused about either leaving Chicago for the suburbs or even going to Nashville.

My worry about the Royals, then, is that if they don’t get their way with the City of Kansas City, they’ll either move to North Kansas City, which would be all right but not ideal in my book, or worse out of town all together to a booming market like Nashville, Portland, or Austin. This city is proud of its teams, proud of its people, and proud of its local character. Let’s have clearer communication between all the parties involved in as momentous a decision as this new Royals Stadium as we can.I want to see a downtown stadium, just not on the site being proposed. One piece of the report from KCURthat bugged me more than others was that the Royals were unconcerned about the parking situation around their proposed stadium in the Crossroads because “as existing parking downtown can accommodate fans who drive to games.” This says to me they see all the expansive parking lots that remain in the Crossroads as permanent features of the area, and not temporary eyesores from a time when we thought it good to carve out our urban cores for the sake of suburban development. It says to me that the Royals organization wants to operate in the urban core but not be a part of the community.

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Following Up

I write these blog posts on Mondays and Tuesdays, and after writing this one yesterday afternoon I’ve since read more about the project. To put it simply: I don’t know what I think about this project. One glaring issue I still have is that Royals organization has a website for their new stadium but I couldn’t find it on Google. Rather, I found it linked in a Reddit post. All of the information I have comes from KCUR, KSHB, KCTV-5, and the Kansas City Star, as well as other individuals on Reddit and X (formerly Twitter). One Reddit user posted a side-by-side comparison of the proposed stadium and the current site.

Courtesy of u/acparks1 on Reddit

I’m still disappointed that the Royals are choosing a site that is presently occupied, and that in their FAQ they rely on current surface parking lots that dot the Crossroads for future game-day parking when we should be looking at redeveloping those lots and building garages to handle downtown parking.

Yet, I drove through this area yesterday evening on the way to a Fat Tuesday party, and I can see how they could make this site work. I still have many reservations about this project, but this morning, I don’t oppose it. I’m not issuing a retraction for several reasons: my original argument still stands on some of these issues, the podcast was already published at midnight, and I don’t have a backup plan. If anything, I want to make it clear how there are benefits and detriments to this plan. I wish the Royals site would acknowledge the impact their plan will have by closing Oak Street and displacing the businesses on the 1600 and 1700 blocks of Walnut, McGee, and Oak Streets, and again I wish they would discuss building more compact parking options than the swaths of surface parking that remains a blemish on our urban core.

I’m not happy about this blog post because I want to offer you a clear argument. Yet in this instance I’m not sure I can, there are too many factors involved. If we were looking at a spectrum with 0 as complete opposition and 100 as complete support, when I wrote the original blog post on Tuesday afternoon I was at a 35 or 40, still opposed to this project but not vehemently so. Now, I’m closer to a 55 or 60, supportive of it yet still quite cautious about what it could hold for our city.

Draft at the Station

Draft at the Station – Wednesday Blog by Seán Thomas Kane

Last Friday, I took Amtrak's Missouri River Runner from Independence to Kansas City's Union Station to see how the NFL Draft was affecting public transit in & around the Station. Click here to support the Wednesday Blog: https://www.patreon.com/sthosdkane
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The following post is a transcript of the audio from the podcast episode this week. I strongly advise you listen to this one rather than just reading it. Thank you, and enjoy!

Independence, Missouri: hometown of President Truman.

“I’m at Independence Station, the only person here, the station house is locked, looks like it’s been abandoned for a while. I’m about 50 minutes early for my train, nothing here, no seats. We’ll see how this adventure goes!”

That was on Friday, 28 April 2023 just after 12:30 pm on a cloudy but calm day in Independence, Missouri, one of the eastern suburbs of Kansas City. I got a ride out there so I could try taking Amtrak’s Missouri River Runner service into Kansas City’s Union Station located just south of Downtown. Normally, arriving at Union Station is a moment of awe and wonder at the grandeur of that Beaux Arts station, built in 1914, one of the great reminders of the time when trains were the fastest and most comfortable way to cross North America. Last weekend though Union Station hosted the NFL Draft, a big event where all 32 professional teams in the top American Football league on the planet gather to pick who among the top prospects from the college teams across the U.S., they want to offer contracts to and invite to start their professional careers with those teams. That about sums it up. I’ve known about the Draft for most of my life and have so far spent the better part of the past thirty years not caring about it.

This year though is different, the Draft has landed squarely in the center of my city. Union Station has been a stage for many important moments in my life, from my first volunteer job at the Kansas City Irish Center back in 2006 to the place where I began several trips back to my original hometown of Chicago onboard Amtrak’s Southwest Chief to birthday lunches and dinners at Pierpont’s and Harvey’s and even a date. So, for me it feels personal to have that most public of spaces be taken over for the biggest, richest, pro sports league in the country for the whole weekend.

“It’s now begun to rain. Some church bells ringing. According to the Amtrak app the train is about 10 minutes out from Lee’s Summit, which is about 20 minutes down the line from here further to the southeast. Here I am, hiding underneath the overhang of the roof of this station that’s still deserted.”

An empty platform under a gray sky.

As I waited a long Union Pacific freight train passed by the station on the further of the two tracks in front of the platforms. [train recording] It was carrying carriage upon carriage of double-stacked cargo containers that had come from one of the many ocean ports to the south and east of Kansas City, marked with the logos of a number of different cargo shipping companies including the Taiwanese Evergreen Group, whose container ship got stuck in the Suez Canal last year. At this point I was joined by a Salvadorean trainspotter who came down to the platform to take some videos of the train. We talked for a few minutes, or rather spluttered back and forth not speaking each other’s languages. I really need to properly learn Spanish one of these days.

“I happened to just meet a rather friendly Salvadorean gentleman who’s here for a conference. Charming. Oh, my Spanish is so terrible, and using French didn’t help. Train’s on time now, should be here in about eight minutes.”

Those eight minutes turned into 10 minutes as the River Runner arrived at 13:30 rather than 13:26, which by my book is alright when it comes to Amtrak delays.

[Sound of the Missouri River Runner arriving in Independence]

The Missouri River Runner approaches!

I let a handful of passengers disembark before telling the conductor my name, which he recognized from his passenger list, and boarded. The best thing about Amtrak’s service is even in coach on these state-run smaller services the seats really are quite comfortable. Plus, if you just want something to eat to keep you going, you’ll be able to find something in the café car. I was so thankful to buy a bag of really salty chips in there, my lunch for the day. There were probably about 30 other people on the train, most of them traveling into Kansas City from points east in Missouri, but some were on board going to the Draft.

On board the River Runner in coach class.

[Missouri River Runner ambient noise]

This meant that once we arrived at Union Station 20 minutes later, the passengers who disembarked were a good mix of excited at seeing the station taken over by the NFL and frustrated that the station was closed off for its original use, to welcome rail travelers into Kansas City.

The Amtrak platform at Union Station was occupied by a force of about 10 Homeland Security officers, who stared at us emotionless as we disembarked. We were directed by the Amtrak conductors to walk down the platform towards its western end and then to use a gate in the fence separating the railyard from the parking lot beyond. In that parking lot were more Homeland Security officers, stern faced and resolute. They didn’t need to tell anyone not to cross them or try to enter the station, it was pretty clear that wouldn’t be received lightly. Despite the emails that Amtrak sent out every so often in the days before the trip about how the arrival procedure would go there was still some confusion among the passengers as to where we were being taken. I tried to help, having studied the plans as thoroughly as I could to make sure I did what I needed for this trip to happen without a hitch.

Arriving at Union Station walking from the platform to the shuttle trolley party bus

“Well, it’s going to 25th St, it’s south of here, it’s going down here, past Broadway, and to the left.”

Amtrak Police officers then guided us towards a set of shuttles, in fact trolley party buses, that would take us to the drop off point at 25th and Jefferson, one block west of the IRS building’s Broadway entrance.

At this point, I should say that this whole idea began a few months earlier. I thought about going to the Chiefs’ Super Bowl Rally in February by train, catching the River Runner either in Lee’s Summit or Independence, again just to see what would happen when it got to Union Station, but on that cold, windy February Wednesday I forgot all about it and took the Main Street Max bus downtown with my Dad. On our return trip we got stuck in Midtown for a good two hours waiting for a southbound Main Street bus to pass us. A part of the plan, and the risk, of this Friday’s adventure would be seeing whether the Ride KC city buses would be running on schedule & on route or even running at all.

This time, I’d done more of my homework, so I knew if the buses weren’t running on time or at all, which in my experience as a former bus commuter in Kansas City is sometimes possible, I could be home in around 2 hours on foot. Sure, it’s a 6 mile walk south from 25th Street to my home in Brookside, but I had my best gym shoes on and lots of water available if needed.

Thankfully, I only had to wait for about 10 minutes before a southbound Main Street Max bus arrived at the stop on Broadway at 25th Street. I didn’t get any audio of this, my goal was to get on board and not be left behind or somehow make what was turning out to be the best possible situation into one that I’d come to regret.

I boarded my bus at 14:15 and was at my local stop without any trouble or problems. All that remained was a delightful walk home through the tree-lined streets of Brookside listening to the birdsong and fountains in my neighbors’ front yards.

[Audio from my walk home from the bus]

So, as it turned out, things worked out. One big difference I noticed between today and the Super Bowl rally a few months ago was the crowd control on Pershing Road and around Union Station all together was much stronger. I guess I could put it down to the NFL paying for stricter security than the City of Kansas City did, plus I read a story earlier this week that KCPD still owes the 350 officers who worked and managed the crowds during the Super Bowl Parade & Rally their overtime pay 73 days later. Not having thousands of people, myself included, walking down the middle of Pershing Road and Broadway to try to get out of that crowd that some have numbered up to 1 million people at the Super Bowl Rally really helped keep traffic flowing, and keep the public transportation network moving.

Far less chaotic on Pershing Rd. during the NFL Draft than it was during the 2023 Chiefs Super Bowl Rally.

I’m still frustrated, as were many of my fellow Amtrak passengers, that the Union Station organization sees itself less as a transportation hub, which the station was built for, and more as a big center for the city and a tourist attraction. I like all the things that Union Station has to offer, yet I think it would be better for our city if we increased our focus on the rail services that the station was built for and improved those services to be more frequent, and more useful for everyone in this metro. I’m glad that I chose to take a train into the station rather than try to get a train out of the station during the NFL Draft, for while I was able to disembark on the platform and board my city bus to go home all in the course of 20 minutes, the departing passengers were told to be at the platform 2 hours before their trains left, and were given trailers to wait in or else they’d have to sit outside in folding chairs with few amenities to speak of. It’s a solution, but it’s not great.

So, I’d consider Friday’s adventure to be a success. Truly, the only part of it that didn’t quite go to plan was my decision to leave home when I did, it took me far less time to be driven to Independence Station than I thought it would. Otherwise, I’m surprised to say it all worked. Would I do it again? Sure.

Some celebratory chocolate mudslide ice cream from the Tillamook Dairy in Oregon after the adventure was at an end.
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