End of the road!

After my Appalachian adventures in Kentucky and Tennessee, I recrossed the Mississippi and passed through the gateway into St Louis, Missouri. St. Louis struck me as a really great town, with just the right mix of interesting culture and general pleasantness. In some ways St Louis is to Chicago what Philadelphia is to New York – a very similar city in a similar geographical situation, only a little smaller and toned down. Apparently the Chicago mofiosos of the old days used to use St Louis as a get-away pad when they wanted to escape the pressure of their big-city work, and perhaps recover from the bullet wound in the leg they got at the latest shoot-out.

I spent my time in St Louis meeting some awesome couchsurfers, sampling the local “frozen custard”, checking out the expensive-but-awesome Washington University, and seeing all the cool neighbourhoods. These included the artsy “Loop” (which, incidentally, is also the name for down-town Chicago), the Italian “Hill”, and Forrest Park, which is one of the biggest urban green spaces in the country (several hundred acres larger than Central Park in New York), and which hosted the World Fair around 1906.

One of the enormous palaces that was constructed for this World Fair is now a museum, and it has a whole exhibition about the Fair. I have seldom spent a more fascinating 45 minutes. I’m not sure, but I believe that the World Fair in St Louis was part of the same series as the ones which were the raison d’être of the Crystal Palace in London and the Eiffel Tower in Paris. These things are incredible. A city would spend about a year creating an extraordinary setting, in St Louis’s case about a dozen Buckingham-sized palaces, and invite delegations from pretty much every country in the world, as well as each of the 48 states (as they were then), and then people would come in massive crowds for about eight months straight to sample all the incredible things that were being created and put to use across the globe. Imagine living in a time of such breathtaking innovation! Why don’t we have these things anymore? Has humanity lost its love of progress?

The other interesting thing about St. Louis is that it’s pronounced Loo-iss. In Kentucky I had arrived at Louisville talking about Loo-iss-ville and was sternly corrected by the locals, since apparently it’s Loo-ee-ville. So naturally I assumed Missouri would have a St Loo-ee. Oh the fickleness of Midwestern phonetics! Then again, Kentucky calls its famous horse race a “Dir-bee” (instead of “Dar-bee”, which every English person knows is the right way to say it), yet its whisky is “Ber-bon”, despite being spelt b-o-u-r-b-o-n, which I would assume should be “Bor-bon”. Go figure.

Slicing straight across the middle of Missouri, I entered the glorious state of Kansas, which I was very excited about. I couldn’t wait to see endless fields of mind-numbing crops stretching without a single topographical blemish to every horizon. So you could imagine how upset I was to find not only not a single stalk of wheat or ear of corn, but an extremely detectable up-and-downess in the landscape. The road didn’t even go further than the human eye can penetrate before changing direction.

Fortunately, my bitter disillusion was immediately cast away when I reached the fantastic city of Lawrence, home to Kansas University and…erm…Kansas University students and…well…some other buildings I guess. Now, you may think that being in Kansas, the state which famously banned the mention of Darwin or his theories in classrooms, the students at the state’s premier university would be a bunch of stiff-collared puritanical fun-killers. Actually, KU is just about as bohemian and crazy as anywhere that can’t be seen from the Golden Gate Bridge. Some of the people I met were sincere nutters. One of them was telling me about their next-door neighbour, who was apparently a one-eyed, shirtless man with seven rabid chiuauas who was known to sit on his porch gripping a machete. Is Lawrence the best-kept secret of the Midwest? I certainly had a great time, and the university gets two thumbs up.

Despite lots of grey clouds on my first day in Kansas, and the fact that I spent every second praying fervently for God to send a tornado, no freak winds disturbed my stay in the Dorothy State, another disappointment. Still, when I left at least I could say I wasn’t in Kansas anymore, and I can officially do so for the rest of my life. This is probably the best reason for visiting Kansas.

I spent one night in Kansas City, which, confusingly, is mostly not in Kansas, but across the border in Missouri. I had a great hostess, Babette, who took me to the quintessential KC barbeque experience at Arthur Bryant’s restaurant, which proudly had pictures on its walls of John McCain and Sarah Palin patronising the establishment during the 2008 campaign. You know it’s authentic when politicians who publically wield guns do publicity stunts there.

The other authentic experience I had in KC was a baseball game, my second of the trip. With the home team losing 7-8, this was almost four-times more high-scoring than any game I had seen so far. There was a pretty cool fireworks display afterwards, although this wasn’t impressive as the baseball game which had taken place in St Louis while I was there, which managed to get Big B-dog Obamarama himself to throw the first pitch. I missed out seeing the world’s most powerful man by a mere $600, the average price of admission. The reason for the big occasion was that it was the yearly “All Stars” game, when the best players from all the teams in each league (charmingly named the “American League” and the “National League”, as if there were any other countries that played baseball) form two teams which play against each other. I’m not sure why they do this, because even though they are supposed to be the best in the country (or the world, as they want us to believe), they are still incapable of scoring more than three or four runs per team.

If I had been excited about Kansas, it was nothing compared to the sheer thrill I felt at the prospect of my next stop, Nebraska. Of all the big, utterly pointless states in America, Nebraska has to be the most random. All other ones have at least something going for them: Utah has the Mormons, Iowa decides primary elections, Colorado has a river, Kansas has the Wizard of Oz, the Dakotas have each other, Nevada has no gambling laws, Idaho has a cool shape, Montana has a Canadian border, and even the desolation that is Wyoming – a perfect rectangle several times larger than the UK but home to only a few thousand people – has Yellowstone. But Nebraska? I am convinced that if the state were to disappear off the face of the earth, it would be months before anyone noticed.

Well, at least I can confirm it actually exists as of now. I spent most of an intriguing day exploring the town of Omaha (in the words of the Counting Crows, “somewhere in middle-America”) with Bennet, one of its couchsurfing citizens, who was – I kid you not – a supporter of the Nebraska separation movement. It’s actually not too shabby a city, with a cool restaurant district made from the bricky ruins of old warehouses, a nice-enough river side, and some sweet cafes and vintage stores. Just don’t talk to anyone about Connor Oberst, they all hate his guts.

After Nebraska, I traversed the entirety of Iowa during the night, arriving at daybreak back in Chicago again! What fun! I met up with me ol’ mates that I hadn’t seen in, oh, it must have been several days, and we hit up Pitchfork music festival, where I experienced all the delights of bands such as The Thermals, Japandroids, Walkmen and a curious rapper called Pharaohe something. The highlights were some awesome European electronica from M83, some even awesomer European shoegaze rock from legendary Danish group Mew, and of course the spectacular headliners The Flaming Lips, who were probably more notable for the massive cannon-shots of confetti, the chorus of dancing frogs, and the lip-synched music videos on a huge screen behind the band than the music they actually played. Also present were my friend Steve from DC and his brother Michael who I’d stayed with in Cinncinati, who get special mention for getting me free tickets.

Anyway, after spending the next day recouping with some of the festival goers, I headed north to my Very Final Stop of the Whole Trip, none other than Minneapolis, one of the famous Twin Cities of Minnesota, a state mostly famous for an odd accent which I think is purely fictional because I didn’t hear it at all while I was there. I had some great hosts, and enjoyed the interesting delights of the town, which is a really nice place but hopelessly cold in the winter. Highlights included a local open-mic night where I saw some ridiculously talented performers, and a basement gig at someone’s house which included a touring band from Pennsylvania called Hop-Along, which was really really good and you should all go listen to now: www.myspace.com/hopalongqueenansleis.

Well that about brings up to date. Sorry for such a tediously long final update – at least you won’t have to read anymore. I’m sitting in the waiting lounge of Minneapolis’ Lindbergh Airport just about to board a domestic flight to San Francisco, where I’m going to decompress for a couple of weeks before returning to the lovely Isle of fair Britannica (may her name be eternally glorious), where the sun is always shining and the tea flows plentifully from the electric kettles, and the streets are paved with Daily Mails and the vomit from last night’s binge. Apparently we now enjoy representation from our very own British National Party who were victorious in an election while I was away, I wonder what else has changed.

Hearty thanks go out to my incredibly supportive boss, Harriet Plyler, who has been coordinating things from her HQ in Florida, and to the Good Schools Guide itself for making the trip possible. Thanks also to for the support of my family back in England. Hopefully the articles that I’ve written on the road (which will be receiving some touch-ups in the coming weeks to make them GSGI-worthy) will have been worth it all. Stay tuned for a some more conclusory blog posts, and also for more updates on what’s happening with Uni In The USA in the coming months – we’ve got a few more plans up our sleeves!

Finally, massive thanks to the huge number of other people who all helped me along the road – couchsurfers, relatives, complete strangers and old friends (including those who stayed in touch with me from England along the way!): from the tranquil coast of Alabama to the ghettos of West Philadelphia, from an LA frat-house to the beaches of Lake Michigan, I cannot stress enough how much you have all restored my confidence in human kind, and how heartwarming all your friendship and generosity has been for me. See ya all on the next adventure!