On the road again....still....

Hey everyone,

Jessica has uploaded more pictures to the trip facebook album so go check those out if you want to see us looking increasingly tired and out of shape. We've been on the road for one week! Here are some of the highlights from the last few days:

--We saw the Red Sox win in dramatic fashion in the 9th over the Rangers in Texas! The game itself was great, but seriously, we were disgusting after sitting through a 3.5 hour game in 100-degree heat--like how Rush Limbaugh presumably feels all the time. Why anyone would think a stadium wouldn't need a retractable roof is beyond me, and don't say tradition because I'm pretty sure Babe Ruth would have loved AC. Here's a picture of us in the heat:

--Because of the heat, after the game we decided to not wait for the crowded shuttle since our hotel was less than a mile away. However, despite the relatively short distance, Arlington is about as easy to navigate as the hedge maze from "The Shining," so we got turned around several times and gave up, hopping into a pedicab and the driver, a guy in his early-20's, promptly rode up a steep on-ramp to our hotel. Jessica felt awful about making him carry us up that hill, but I thought that $20 for less than ten minutes of work was a good deal all around. When we got back to the hotel, we took showers that were so long, we're told there's now a major drought in the Midwest.

--On Wednesday we drove through Oklahoma, which is not something we can recommend to anyone. The highway we took kept winding through small downs requiring 40 MPH or less, so the drive from Arlington, Texas to Springfield, Missouri took about 9 hours. It was a boring, hot stretch of interchangeable truck stops/fireworks stands/adult-themed stores, my favorite of which was called "Sensations," which presumably resemble early hepatitis symptoms. Of course, this assessment is based only on what we saw from the highway, but in our opinion, Texas > Oklahoma.

--Today we got up early and drove to St. Louis and watched the Cardinals play the Dodgers in another ridiculously hot open-air ballpark. The game was good, though, and Busch Stadium offered a great view of the city. This was the view from our seats:

--After the game, we visited the famous arch! As it turns out, it's not just an ordinary monument, but actually an entire museum, with a lengthy history of the Lewis and Clark expedition. I had no idea that the arch was basically a super-monument, a fact which you should all feel free to remind me about the next time I get several Jeopardy questions right in a row and you want to bring me down a peg or two. We also went up to the top of the arch and took some pictures, which was more difficult than it needed to be because a large group of Amish people kept walking in front of our camera, which I suppose is excusable.

Tomorrow we're driving to Wisconsin-Dells to visit our old Peace Corps friend Edward for a few days. We love and miss you all!

Thomas and Jessica