![[picture of "Dangerous Pedestrian Crossing" sign]](okphotos/dangerous.jpg)
I spotted this sign at the Chili's parking lot. (How dangerous can Oklahoma City pedestrians be?)From August 31 to September 5, I went to Oklahoma to meet my net.friend Cheri. This is my "virtual postcard" for the trip.
I made a bunch of goofy notes about stuff going on as I was flying out. Maybe I'll add them later. For now, just a tip to anyone who has to make a plane trip but is apprehensive about it: Don't take a window seat by the wings if you can help it.
Southwest Airlines sure has fun. Let it not be said that they are a "No Frills" airline. [insert scan of SWA peanuts packet here]
The plane landed at OKC at 6:20, only five minutes late. I stumbled groggily off of the plane, trying to keep my backpack on my shoulder and not look like a geek. I didn't see Cheri right away and thought maybe she was late. Fortunately she found me (guys with beards are easy to pick out in a crowd). We gave each other a hug. Here I am... I really made it.
After a longish wait for luggage, we went out to the parking lot and she asked me to guess which car was hers. I figured a pretty safe bet was the only car in the lot with Nine Inch Nails, Smashing Pumpkins, and Sonic Youth decals. She told me about how she'd talked to her mom and told her I was coming to stay. For some reason Cheri also felt the need to tell her that I'd only be a couple of days before flying on to Texas (what this fib bought her I can't even guess). Her mom gave her a little something before coming to meet me, just in case: a can of mace. Charming.
After 20 minutes of driving around trying to pick a place for dinner (chronic indecision is one of those failings we have in common, like Dr. Pepper addiction), we settled on Chili's, one of those cooler-than-usual chain restaurants. We took another 20 minutes picking out food. I got a mushroom turkey burger and got full after eating half of it. Good stuff. Cheri kept spotting people she knew from Weatherford (odd since we were 60 miles away).
I spotted this sign at the Chili's parking lot. (How dangerous can Oklahoma City pedestrians be?)
We drove out to Yukon to hit Hasting's, a music/book/video store kind of like Tower. I scored some discs by Big Daddy and That Petrol Emotion that I hadn't heard of before (but knew I probably wouldn't find again).
We stopped at a gas station so Cheri could call her mom from a pay phone. It was surrounded by crickets. They were a little on the big side; actually, the way they were clustered together looking dangerous, they seemed to me like they could take an arm off if they wanted to.
Finally made it to Weatherford and unloaded at Cheri's place about 11:00. She made some phone calls, and I of course got sucked into goofing off with her computer (and typing some of this). We tried to decide what to do in the morning, and eventually elected to postpone that decision. We ended up watching Twin Peaks videos for a while before nodding off.
Yep, the Thomases were right. Oklahoma sure is flat. But apart from that and the lack of rain, it feels a lot like Oregon somehow. Of course I haven't run into any oil refineries yet.
Cheri and I drove out to Oklahoma City again, stopping at Schlotzsky's for lunch (evidently another of those Southwestern things). The ham sandwich I got was okay, but the "house" bread took some getting used to. From there we went on to the zoo.
![[picture of Giant Anteater]](okphotos/anteater.jpg)
We gawked at the Giant Anteater and all the other usual zoo animals, a lot of which were none too enthusiastic about the muggy weather. We also caught a ride on their little sky train. ![[picture from the sky train at OKC Zoo]](okphotos/skytrain.jpg)
Cheri was looking forward to getting a souvenir at one of the little while-you-wait-injection-molded-trinket machines, but none of the good ones seemed to be working. The baby kangaroos were particularly cute. (But, as my dad always likes to say, "All babies are cute." Cheri would be the last to disagree; she has an amusing obsession with Anne Geddes baby photos.)
Back further into the city, we stopped at a little independent record store on NW 23rd. Very cool... separate sections for things like bootlegs, dead musicians, and "'Cool' Country (Garth Brooks not in this section)." I picked up a "rare" Beatles interview disc (how rare could it be for a $4.99 disc in the used bins?) and Lords Of Acid's "Voodoo U" (which I may have passed up had I not listened to some of it at Cheri's earlier in the day).
![[picture of "Terry's Two-Way"]](okphotos/terrys.jpg)
This is another building on NW 23rd, a photo of which I'm including for Terry's amusement. On the same street, I spotted a Christian-owned pawn shop, which up until now seemed like an oxymoron to me.
We had dinner at an Italian restaurant called Zio's. The waitress was unusually chirpy. Cheri and I both got enormous servings of spaghetti that neither of us could finish. Oh, and a couple of glasses each of Dr. Pepper, of course. Cheri spotted more people she knew from Weatherford. (What is it about Weatherford that drives people to OKC for dinner?)
![[picture of Yukon sign]](okphotos/yukon.jpg)
If you were a city in Oklahoma, would you want to admit this?
We stopped at the Yukon Wal-Mart to buy a bunch of groceries, including new batteries for my beard trimmer (which, I discovered in the morning, was turned on ever since leaving Seattle). As I listened to some of Cheri's tapes on the way back, P. J. Harvey really started to grow on me.
I goofed off on the computer and Cheri fell asleep watching her tape of Pillow Talk.
![[picture of Cheri and I]](okphotos/larry-cheri.jpg)
Cheri's friend Tracie came over to chat, take some pictures (I didn't have a picture of Cheri and I until now), and check her e-mail. I took a picture of them that neither one liked (Tracie thought she came out looking like a grandmother), and they forbade me to post it on the Web, under penalty of death.
The three of us took off to get some sodas at Sonic ("America's Drive-In," or so their sign says, despite the fact that I've never seen it on the West Coast). I'm told they will mix almost any kind of soda, but I felt lost without a list of stuff they were willing to mix in. Cheri likes to get outrageous things like a strawberry cream Dr. Pepper, but I wimped out and settled for a vanilla cherry Coke. Pretty good. It was evidently happy hour, so the three sodas were only $2.75.
Cheri took us on a brief tour of Weatherford and SWOSU (mainly for my benefit). Cheri and Tracie kept recognizing people on the street they knew. Yep, it's a small town.
![[picture of Angry Johnny]](okphotos/johnny.jpg)
We drove further out into the country, where Cheri gathered a few wildflowers, Tracie found a new pet caterpillar (now known as "Angry Johnny"), and I took some random pictures.
![[picture of creek]](okphotos/creek.jpg)
There's nice country sights that remind me a little of the Northwest (save for the constant buzz of locusts and other insects).
![[picture of graffiti-covered bridge]](okphotos/graffiti.jpg)
Legible graffiti... what a concept. (This is the bridge over the creek.)
We drove back into town, picked up Cheri's and Tracie's friend Cole, and drove off to a theater to see The Crow: City of Angels. The theater's owned by Dickinson Theatres (just had to sneak that in since they showed a URL in their opening promo piece), and seating-wise it's big considering the community it serves (it would be considered sizable even in Seattle). I'd asked Terry about the movie the night before when I was chatting with him on IRC, and he was right: "Save your moola." Ah well, $3.50 matinee, couldn't go wrong.
We drove back and dropped off Cole and Tracie. I wrote some postcards and Cheri decided to put off her class reading assignment. We went off to a video store and picked up Last Exit To Brooklyn. Back at Cheri's, she cooked up a chicken dinner (which was fine, despite her worries about it being underdone).
Later she made strawberry daquiries and we watched the movie (really depressing but good). She was feeling restless so we also watched her copy of Babe (really cute and not at all depressing).
Cheri expressed fear that I was bored here. I did confess to being a little homesick. But it's peaceful here, and I like that.
A really spectacular thunderstorm woke me up in the middle of the night. There's something you don't see in the Northwest too often, certainly not of that magnitude. I wanted to watch it, but elected instead to cower under the sheets while it rattled the windows.
I've been sleeping in the living room, so Cheri woke me up again as she left the apartment for classes in the morning. I had a quick breakfast, finished postcards, goofed with the computer, and washed some dishes. I also snuck a listen to one of her Matthew Sweet CDs (maybe I'll need to get that too).
Cheri came back for lunch, after which I followed her to the campus library and she found me a computer where I could scan a bunch of photos while she went to her last class of the day. After that, I went to buy Paul's SWOSU T-shirt (yeah, Paul, I got it) and mail postcards.
After returning once more to Cheri's, Tracie popped in unexpectedly: "I am your Fairy Groovemother, and I bring you really cool s***!" Whereupon she displayed a variety of interesting mail order items to us, giving a few choice items to Cheri, including a printed T-shirt, a politically-correct bumper sticker, and a bag of mixed plant matter called "Kinnick Kinnick." This last item is billed as a "Traditional [Native American] Ceremonial Smoking Mix," and Tracie gave her assurance that it was perfectly legal (in that tone of voice that indicated she wasn't sure for how much longer). We also learned that "Angry Johnny" has been liberated once more to the trees.
We went to Southwestern for a short while so Cheri could finish up a paper at one of the computer labs. I commandeered one of the computers and tapped into the Net to chat with office cohorts back in Seattle and assure myself that things weren't disintegrating in my absence (or at least try to assure myself). The lab filled up quickly, and a staff person implored everyone not working on assignments to give up their machines, so off I went. Cheri was done anyway. I noticed with some amusement that someone else in the lab was looking at IUMA.
Dinner was at a Chinese restaurant called Kim Son. The waitress seemed a little lost. They had fantabulous sweet-and-sour chicken, and I felt guilty about not being able to finish it. My fortune cookie: "The heart is wiser than the intellect." (It also recommended 7-10-11-27-28-41 and 9-6-1 for lottery numbers.)
We went back to the Southwestern campus briefly, then to Braum's (a chain-type place that strikes me as a cross between a Baskin-Robbins and a deli) for dessert--meaning a basic root beer float for me. Yeah, I know, I'm really going out on a limb with my food choices.
We watched another movie from Cheri's collection. This time--it wounds my machismo to admit this--it was Como Agua Para Chocolate. Well, I knew I would end up seeing it someday. What did I think of it? Well, how much is it worth to you? Okay, okay, so I liked it.
We found a Web site called SeeOKC with some really funny commentary buried within some "underground OKC" pages. (Cheri, of course, knew more of the inside jokes.)
Another thunderstorm sprang up, which this time I watched for a while. There wasn't much thunder to speak of, just really spectacular lightning, arcing between clouds almost in slow motion.
A much more laid-back day today. Cheri had school and work at campus until 4, so I screwed around with her computer some more, then went to walk around Weatherford and meet her at the Southwestern library (where she works) at 4.
I left the apartment and--what's this? No sidewalks. Weatherford has no sidewalks? How did I miss this before? Probably because Cheri's been driving me everywhere. But I panicked. What do people do here when they walk around? Just go across the grass? Some of that grass is part of people's lawns. Hope they don't shoot me, I thought. Then I noticed some crosswalks painted on the pavement that seemed to point right up onto those lawns. Okay, Weatherfordians walk on the grass or something.
It also began to occur to me that it would have been a very good day to be wearing shorts, seeing as it was very sunny and the temperature felt like it was into the 90's (but this is from a Northwestern perspective, where anything above 78 feels like it's into the 90's). I was going to take a stroll down Main Street, but being overly concerned for my safety as a pedestrian, I decided to go straight to Southwestern instead. I got a little lost, but found my way eventually. I was drenched in sweat by the time I got to the library and met Cheri. The car air conditioning felt grand.
We picked up sodas at Sonic and a pizza at a pizza place (Mazzia's or something like that), then headed back to Cheri's to chow down, since neither of us had had lunch. Tracie also stopped by and had a slice or two. I showed off the "MOD" file (music) player I'd set up on Cheri's computer. They were talking about the stormy weather that's supposed to come through here tomorrow. Ack--I'm flying out of here tomorrow. And though I may be a little afraid of flying, I'm 10 times more afraid of taking off in a plane that's charging through a storm.
Cheri took off again about 8:30 to work from 9 to 11. I played with her computer again. "Fuji Golf" was a nice little retro-Windows game, even though I placed 40th out of 40.
After Cheri got back, she and Tracie and I headed off to Jerry's (it's sort of a southwest Denny's) for late-night munchies. Cole met us there too. I don't think any of us got exactly what we ordered. The waitress was a bit frazzled, being the only one on duty (Cheri told me this is normal). Oh well, my Denver omelette was pretty good.
I finished watching Aladdin when we got back. (It's okay. I didn't know Gilbert Goddfried was in it.)
I looked at myself in the mirror as I got up in the morning, and my hair was smushed so far to one side, I swore I looked like Ace Ventura.
Cheri took me to the airport after her one morning class (she skipped a couple just to do this; so swell of her!). It was a hot day, but still cloudy when we got to Oklahoma City. I hugged her goodbye and she left me to wait for the plane and twist my stomach in knots over the imminent flight.
The trip back had three stops instead of two--an extra one in Oakland. But there was a layover in Las Vegas which gave me the chance to stretch a bit and find something like real food (well, Burger King is close to it). To my surprise, I discovered that there really are slot machines even at the airport. I walked up to some and they sucked seven bucks out of my wallet without warning, so I ran away again.
The plane got to SeaTac at about 7:00. But before that, it had to turn around and approach from the north. It did a wide turn over Seattle and gave an almost-perfect overhead view of the skyline. There were even beams of sunlight streaming through the clouds over Puget Sound. A real Kodak moment... too bad all I had was a cheesy Polaroid. Sure is good to be home, I thought.
