Going from Kansas City to Denver is a long drive and even more so on the map of America that I’m using. Still I don’t think it will take me two days of driving as I expected and as I told some people… I think it can be done in about eight hours.

As a little boy I can clearly remember my father one day bringing home a special type of sailor cookies. This was a backed though of about one centimeter thick and about a 6 or 8 centimeter diameter. As soon as I took a bite (which proved quite difficult) from this rock solid dry bread the tasteless substance absorbed all the saliva from my mouth and left my mouth dry. The substance slowly passed to my stomach and any feeling of hunger acutely disappeared.

The reason for the previous paragraph is that before my long trip to Denver I prepared myself my buying some bread for the trip. I bought round doughnut like pieces of bread and ham, cheese and lettuce. I wanted to make myself some BLT’s, but after the first bite I realized my mistake. The bread tasted like the ‘sailor cookie’ I remembered from my youth. The only difference being a weird sweet after taste.

Leaving Kansas was nice. Suddenly I entered an area will lots of little oil pumping machines. These little oil pumps looked funny and were like grown men toys.

Once in Colorado the little oil pumps had disappeared and now there was only grass… Enormous seas of grass everywhere.

Kansas City is a very boring place. The only good thing is that I finally bought a digital camera so the number of photos I take should increase. The weather is nothing special… gray skies and even some rain now and then. The weather channel is saying that it is an all time low for this area at this time.

I just cannot help myself, and I think it is a genetic thing, but I just notice. In the USA have notices a large amount of Hummers driving around. In Detroit I saw a car with very very big rims and, yes, spinners!

Furthermore I did not see any smart (small car) and of course not a single carver.

Speed enforcement using cameras is not common at all, and I haven’t seen any officers with laser guns either. I noticed that the police officers here like to just drive the entire day and every now and then pull over a speeding car. Still this has not happened to me. I did find out that in my own car when I’m passing over a freeway with little traffic that the kick-down will quickly raise my maximum speed. Although it’s not 180kmpu it does give a nice sensation to see the dial indicating the speed pass the maximum value.

Little Rock is a city with a little center, and around that center you can find a huge number of shops. One of the shops I visited was about the size of three football field and only sold fake flowers. A huge amount of fake stuff. Another business was similar to a Gamma or a Karwei, but bigger and sold everything for home improvement. I entered and directly notices little tractors that were for sale.

Eventually I did buy a nice cap. Once that emits light in the dark and which I will bring the next time we go snowboarding (if I have enough courage) :-p

I seem to have crossed a timezone while driving a few days ago because suddenly all my clocks (my phone and the clock in my car) are one hour early. It was a strange sensation because I only found out slowly. Normally you take the plane and you can correct the time beforehand. For me it results in one hour more of difference, what brings the time difference with Holland to 7 hours already!

Today I arrived in Little Rock. At first glance it looks like a boring little town, but still it seems to be the capital of the state I’m in. It does have it’s charm. The first thing that happened to my while I visited the post office was that the girl behind the desk took really a lot of time to inform me about all the interesting places to visit (there were not so many, expressing it positively) and she mentioned that at night Little Rock was a dangerous place with lots of weird people. Luckily I could always call her if I had any questions. :-p

Tomorrow I will probably continue my journey to the next place. I’m thinking of going to some of the big parks that are around here.

I, Robot rocks! Only too bad that now I need to find an Audi to drive and I need to get some of those very nice shoes.

More typical American things I have noticed..
· I just saw an overweight police officer on a motorcycle wearing cotton black pants, a shirt with short sleeves and an old fashioned flowerpot helmet..
· On the TV and on the radio they have a lot of advertisements for medicines.
· Next to the freeway there are a lot of advertisements for ‘Jesus’. But the advertisements don’t mention where you can get it.
· As I approach the middle of nowhere I notice that prices are dropping incredibly fast. For a small bottle of water I used to pay around 3 or 3 dollars but now I can buy an entire tray of bottles of water for only 1.50.
· Street artists are almost always accompanied by a big sound system.
· Those typical barrels with water, that are always there in action movies to make a big spash, right before leaving the freeway are really there!

This morning I visited Graceland and what can I say… Elvis lived here of course and that makes it a special place and the property is impressive with a big home and a very big garden, but the style of is all does not really agree with me and that’s about it.

The real tourist value is in the extreme Elvis craziness that affected the entire town. Souvenir shops everywhere selling Elvis incense, Elvis underwear, Elvis soap, Elvis flags, Elvis towels, Elvis t shirts, Elvis jogging pants, Elvis necklaces, Elvis earrings, Elvis glasses, Elvis books, Elvis DVDs, Elvis candy, …..

I did make a picture of his grave, but borrowing a little bone was not an option; the stone was way to heavy.