One Night in Joplin and The World's Your Oyster

Day Two of the drive was bookended by some impromptu choices, with varying degrees of success.

After waking up and gassing up the car in Georgetown, KY, I started down the highway rolling around some suggested tourist stops in my head. My friend Danny had recommended the Castle Post, a giant castle in the middle of the Kentucky horse farms, while Wade, a Kentucky boy himself, recommended the Woodford Reserve Distillery tour. Though both stops were in Versailles, KY, I had decided against both during dinner the night before, figuring I didn't have the time for a 30-45 minute distillery tour before a nearly 9-hour drive.

As I began the day's drive, however, I rethought my options, only to be cosmically nudged by a road sign for Versailles a few seconds after I began second-guessing. Feeling encouraged, I took the exit, pulled off the road momentarily and dropped the Castle into my GPS as the first destination. The drive out to Castle Post wowed me, with the bluegrass hills rolling from one farm to the next and trees thick with bare limbs lining either side of the country roads. The Castle itself was quite shocking, rising with its imposing outer walls from yet another hillside, but I didn't bother stopping to even snap a picture. It was 10:10 at this point and I still wanted to knock off the Woodford Tour and get on the road.

Curious about the price of the tour, I quickly pulled up the Woodford website and, though I found the ticket price, I also learned that tours were on the hour. I would be too late for the 10 and 45-50 minutes early for the 11. Unfortunately, I couldn't spare the time and so, cursing myself for going to the Castle first, I dropped in the address for the night's hotel and began my day's drive. Sometimes the game-for-anything trait just doesn't pay off, but as I learned last night, it comes back around.

During the big drive yesterday, I leaned heavily on audio, chopping up the drive into singalong segments and digestible hour-long podcasts. I even spent 30 minutes on hold with the Maryland Health Exchange to cancel my sabbatical medical coverage, smiling whenever the automated voice told me I could avoid a long hold by visiting them online. Hey man, I've got nothing but time.

Blue skies opened up over the flat fields of Indiana and Illinois until at last the Gateway Arch crested the horizon, soaring above St. Louis. When I intended to drive to LA in 2014, I meant to take nearly the same route I'm taking now and I expected the experience of actually driving beneath the shadow of that Arch to be a highlight. I was not disappointed.

The remaining four hours of Missouri don't hold anything particularly interesting beyond cheap gas, so I'll skip ahead to Joplin, MO, my stop for the night. I had decided a few hours before stopping that I wanted either karaoke or trivia for the night. I had felt the weird high of performing karaoke for a room full of strangers before, while my friend Joe had checked off the highlight reel experience of walking into trivia on the road, winning, and sliding the house cash to a local as you vanish into the night.

Running dry on karaoke, I spotted a trivia place for the evening, so after dropping my stuff off and changing, I found myself at JB's in downtown Joplin. As I drank my first beer, alone at a high top, I saw eight or so groups forming at the scattered tables facing a sizable concert stage. Though preparing myself to take on all comers and eager to use the team name "Harmonica" in homage to Once Upon a Time in the West, I was suddenly approached by a guy my age or slightly younger who, in lieu of an introduction, simply asked, "Hey, do you want to join our trivia team?" Despite my goal of a solo win, it felt obnoxious to turn him down, so I agreed and moved my jacket and beer over to his table.

My new friend introduced himself as Dave and we traded our backgrounds while hovering awkwardly over my adopted table. I had seen him come in with a girl earlier and once she returned from chatting with another table, her eyes flicked to Dave shouting, "Dave, who is this random person?" Dave, unfazed, said, "Ian, this is Kelsey. Kelsey, this is Ian," and sat us all down. I spent the next ten minutes or so before trivia started pushing out as many "I'm not a random loner creep" vibes as possible, so that by the first round, I think we were getting along fine.

We put in a good showing for most of the night, coming from third place after one round to first place at about the midway point. One round was the puzzle round, which included a handful of Rebus puzzles and a math puzzle with a 3 x 3 grid of mathematical operations seeking the numbers 1-9 such that each row and column came out to the correct number. As we'd already talked about my actuarial job out west, the latter got pushed to me and after an initial panic as the first team to finish would get 50 extra points regardless of correct answers, I tried a few different combinations before saying "I got it!" Dave and Kelsey swiped the paper from beneath my hands and immediately went to turn it in, ignoring my question of whether we should check the work. We were the first to turn it in AND we had everything right. While the other teams worked, the host came over to ask how we'd finished already and Dave and Kelsey outed me as their road-tripping ringer. Sure enough, once all answers were in, the host shared my secret with the rest of the room, to scattered reactions.

We lost, in the end, to a team beside us whom Dave and Kelsey knew, leading us to congratulate them with introductions all around. As it happens, their two teams typically go out after trivia, so I was invited along. Seeing as the general openness had served me well so far, I agreed and joined the three newer guys (Frederick, Chad, and Drew) on a two block walk to the next bar, where I was told there would be...KARAOKE. Everything was happening.

At the bar, Chad, a psychologist, bought me a local beer and told me about the various other bars in town. Frederick, a local recruiter, asked me about my trip as well, our conversation fighting with the belting starlets on the karaoke stage. Dave and I started discussing what we should sing when I realized the DJ had a tip jar. I had planned to get money for the tolls today anyway, so I asked Dave when I could find an ATM. He offered to take me to the bar next door, which had one, so we told the others of the plan and went back out into the night.

Despite his seeming helpfulness, Dave had a deviant streak, and when I let him do the talking to ask about the ATM, he instead ordered us two beer suicides. What are beer suicides? Well, as a child, a suicide was making one soda out of all available fountain drinks.

Guess what a beer suicide is?

The result was surprisingly tasty and, more surprisingly, only $5. As we stood, sampling our horrible aberrations, I asked the bartender about the ATM. Her response: "Oh, no, we had one, but someone punched through the screen, so the bank didn't bring us another one." Thank god the place was dead, as it sounded like the Double Deuce on a normal night.

After we spent a while over our concoctions, the rest of the gang joined us, figuring Dave had gotten us up to mischief. They got themselves drinks and we gathered around a table, talking more about my trip and their various backgrounds. I spoke a lot with Drew, who in addition to being an accountant, does a lot of work with the local Democratic party. He described the intricacies of Missouri politics, particularly how the state positions can often be carried by Democrats due to the big city populations but that individual districts can be completely locked up by social issues. Nonetheless, he described having stepped away out of frustration for a while, only to return because he couldn't help but try.

All in all, from the conversations, I realized that, in a random stop along my way, I had managed to find "my people." When I shared the thought out loud, Chad said, "What did you expect? You sought out a trivia night?" We laughed and chatted until almost one in the morning (though after our suicides, I stuck with water for the next few hours), and then parted ways. I quickly facebooked each of my new friends (though I had trouble finding Frederick), thrilled to have had such a friendly night in the midst of this big journey. Somewhere, I hope Tony Hawks (not Hawk) is proud. Felt VERY "Round Ireland with a Fridge."