Repiped, arch

So my mission Monday morning was to get the broken off tailpipe replaced.  The night before I had found a nearby Midas that was supposed to open at 7:30 am. I figured in an ideal scenario I get there first thing and am out of there in a few hours.

So I arrive at the Midas about 7:20.  There is an employee already there sitting in his truck and smoking a cigarette.  I figure he was just hanging out until 7:30 came so I just laid back, I didn’t want to bug him before working hours.  He then got out and walked around the building, to open it up I assume, however he returns to the truck, gets back in and talks on his phone some more and smokes another cigarette.  He is on the phone a long time and I continue to just pace the lot.  It was now 7:35 and the place was still not open for business.  I finally make my way over to the guy and asked if something was wrong.  He said that the key he was given to open the building was not working.  He was trying to get ahold of someone else to come open up. 

Oh ok, well how long will that be.  “It will take him about 20 minutes to get here”  Ah shit.  Well I explained to the guy my problem.  He proceeds to tell me that their welding machine is not working and they can’t do exhaust work right now.  He referred me to some other location that was relatively near by.  He said it was on the corner of two streets.  Not being from the area I pulled up my Google map view with all the pushpins for the various Midas locations.  He pointed to where it was.  Ok great, I’ll just punch that address into the GPS and head there.

So after a 15 minute drive or so I am approaching the location where this place is supposed to be.  The area is very congested with traffic, trying to scour the vicinity for a sign while trying to monitor all of the traffic around you isn’t much fun, especially in a big party van.  I drive right past where it looks like the place should be on the GPS but I see no Midas anywhere.  I turn around and head back the other way just in case I missed it. No luck.  I went back and forth around that intersection several times looking for the damn place.  Nothing.  Time was ticking away and I was getting pissed.

During my wild goose chase Ali texted and called me to ask how it was going, expecting that the van would already be in the shop.  Having to explain the situation just frustrated me even more.  Finally I pulled over in a parking lot and called the number for the place that was listed in Google Maps.  It was a private residence!  It was then that I also noticed that the place had an “unverified” status.  Great.  I then pulled into a convenience store parking lot and asked the clerks if they knew if there was a Midas around there. Nope.  They let me use the phone book to look up the other locations.  I wrote them down and then looked them up on the Iphone to see which was the closest.

I called the location that was sort of on my way back to the hotel.  Yes they were open, yes their welder was working, yes I would be there asap.  I didn’t get to the shop until probably 8:20 or so, I was quite flustered by my original plan being blown out of the water.  I explained to the guy behind the counter that I needed to try to get this fixed asap since we were in the middle of a road trip.  He seemed to think they could take care of it pretty quickly.  The report came back as the van also needing a muffler in addition to the missing tail pipe, nice.  Oh well whatever, the $250 repair quote sounded reasonable, I gave him the go ahead to fix it pronto.  In total I was out of there in less than two hours, not too bad.  By the time I got back to the room and checked out we made it just under the 11am check out time.

So the entire reason we went through Memphis was because Ali said it would be cool to see Graceland.  When we looked it up we were surprised that Graceland was not far away from the hotel, we were there in a matter of 15 minutes.  As we pulled into the lot we were straining to read the signs on the parking security booth.  It cost $10 to park but as we read through the various signs we saw the No Pets Allowed line.  Well f that, why pay $10 to drive into the parking lot and drive right back out.  So I swung a U-turn out of the line and instead we parked and took a few pictures of what we could see.  I felt bad that we didn’t get to see more of Graceland since Ali was the one who wanted to see it.  She said she was fine with it,  the price you pay for having two furry companions along.

So now it was off to St. Louis.  The drive there was uneventful. The most interesting thing we noticed was the weird way Missouri identifies exits with letters instead of numbers.  An exit would be called Z or D or in one case DD OO.  I’m not sure what that is about.

  It took about 5 hours to get there from Memphis.  We were hitting St Louis close to rush hour so traffic around the city was pretty slow going. The place we were staying was actually north of St Louis so on the way there we drove by the football stadium and the Gateway Arch.  The plan was to get checked into the room and then double back to see the arch since it was open until 10pm.  We checked in, unloaded our junk and then headed right back out.  I punched Gateway Arch into Google Maps and then took that address and loaded it into the GPS.  Once again Google Maps sent me on a wild goose chase.  We wound up going through various back roads that obviously was not going to get us to the arch.

We stopped and did a new search.  This time I used the points of interest feature on the Magellan GPS.  Finally we got some accurate information and arrived at the arch sometime after 6pm.  As we walked up through a beautiful park that surround the arch we got our first up close look at the structure.  Now I have been to the arch 25 years ago as a kid so I remember it being cool and massive but I didn’t remember just how cool and how massive.  Wow.  It is such an impressive structure.  I told Ali I wanted to take the ride back up to the top.  She was fine with that since had no desire to go up into it.  She said she would just walk around the park with the dogs.

I went down under the arch where the various exhibits are located.  If it was just Ali and I, I’m sure I would have taken a lot more time to see all of it.  Knowing Ali was outside with two dogs pulling her around made me head right to the ticket counter for my ticket.  I went up in the north tram.  The cars you ride up in are tiny.  There are 5 seats in each but even with 4 people in them you are all touching knees.  A claustrophobic person would not do well.  The cars appear to be the original ones from the 60’s, other than a fresh coat of paint, not much seems to have been done to them.

The ride to the top took about 4 minutes, it sort of felt like a cross between a ferris wheel and the part of a roller coaster where you get pulled to the top.  Once you arrive at the top you climb a stairway to get to the observation area at the top of the arch.  Up top there are tiny little windows where you can look out over St Louis on the one side and the Mississippi River on the other.  Because of the shape of the arch you literally lay across a carpet covered wall to look out the windows. 

While I was up there I called Ali on my phone and directed her to walk to an area where I could see her and the dogs.  I then did the best I could to zoom in on them from above and snap a few pictures.  The views were very cool but after 10 minutes or so I probably had seen all I was going to see so I headed back down. 

Ali and the dogs were waiting for me on a bench.  I told Ali she could at least go down under the arch to check out the gift shop while I watched the dogs.  While she did that Nicki, Sadie and I found a comfortable spot under the arch and just laid down in the grass.  It was sort of awesome looking up and seeing the arch and then looking around seeing the various people running, walking and playing.  Eventually Ali came back up and we started the walk back.  I can’t tell you how many times I looked up and just admired that arch.

Right near where we parked was a small, old social district with lots of restaurants, music and outside seating.  We thought one of the places might allow us to eat there with the dogs.  As we walked towards the place we were accosted by a guy saying he was homeless and asking for money.  Instead of blowing him off I said “I’ll get you on the way back”  surprisingly he was ok with that and said “Alright” ( he wasn’t there on the way back but I had 4 bucks rolled up in my pocket ready to give him)  We found a place that had a nice diverse menu, reasonable prices and homemade beer. 

Both Ali and I needed to wash our hands.  We were directed through a door and up some stairs.  As I climbed the stairs past the mounted heads of various animals I arrived to what was an eerily quiet and deserted area.  It smelled musty and very old.  There was an unused dance floor and another large room that was dark and empty.  It gave you a very creepy feeling like something out of a horror flick or perhaps somebody was doing crack in a dark corner of the room.  Well I used the bathroom and headed back downstairs without doing much more looking around.

Our meal was good and the dogs behaved well.  Lots of people wanted to say HI to them although I don’t think any of them were black.  It seems like many black people are scared of dogs, especially black dogs.  They veer away in fear on a regular basis.  When the pizza delivery guy came the other night, who was black, when I opened the door with two barking dogs by my side he jumped back a good 15 feet, you should have seen the look of a fear in his eyes.  I don’t know what the reason is.

Anyway like I said the meal was good, music was lively and the ambiance was just about perfect.  It was a great way to end a day on an up note after it started in such a stressful manner.  The stress wasn’t quite over though.

On the way back the GPS once again got us in trouble.  This time it pointed us off onto a side street instead of staying on the highway.  It then told us to make a left turn which I started to do to only see the street was blocked off so I spun the wheel straight again.  All of a sudden we found ourselves in a VERY scary looking neighborhood.  There were no cars in the street.  All of the buildings looked very old and mostly abandoned.  As we passed a group of people on the left they were looking at us funny.  I had images running through my head of them throwing something at the van.  Then I realized why they were looking at us funny.  I was on the wrong side of the road.  Between the lack of cars and my head spinning left and right looking at the desolate surroundings I hadn’t noticed that I was not on a one way street like I thought.  Woops. 

We continued on this street for a few miles being freaked out most of the way.  As soon as I saw an opportunity to get back on the highway I took it.  Once we got back I was EXHAUSTED.  After showering I was asleep in a few minutes.  Today we wind up in Wichita Kansas.

Oh one party van note.  Like I mentioned before the fan on the van has been problematic.  All of a sudden the air will stop flowing out of the vents for no reason at all.  Well yesterday we realized that the fan isn’t stopping, the van is switching the output of the fan by itself.  Evidently the controller for the vents is flaky.  It will randomly redirect the flow to the defrosters and then just as magically return airflow to the vents a minute or two later.  It’s more of an annoyance than a problem at this point.