I've never actually seen the musical. Maybe I should have before I came so I'd have known what to expect. It wasn't west Texas, but it wasn't good either, if you know what I mean. I'm probably a little jaded, having gotten used to the beauty of Colorado, but every other state so far has just seemed blah. Or perhaps I just couldn't appreciate the special beauty of this state because my noggin was jiggling like a bobble head doll. When were these roads paved? 1950? And who paved them? Drunken six-year-olds? Yowza.
I got into Oklahoma City with plenty of time to spare before date number three. I stalled for a while before meeting him for dinner at a place called Cattlemen's Steakhouse in the historic Stockyards City section of OKC. I was worried that my steak would still be mooing when they brought it to the table, being so close to the food source, but it was really good. And this guy had to be the nicest guy in the entire state of Oklahoma. I really do wish I could set up some sort of matchmaking service, because I know how hard it is to find a great match!
After dinner I went to meet my new friend Amanda who was letting me sleep in her guestroom. I'm using couchsurfing.org to find places to sleep in cities where I don't know anyone. It was around 10PM, which would be bedtime on a normal night for me, but Amanda didn't think Stockyards City was a good enough Oklahoma City experience, so off we went to a local bar. I kind of laughed at first, because it seemed to me like it was just a smoky little hole in the wall. Amanda's a talk-to-anyone kinda gal, though, so she was asking everyone where they thought I should go before I left town the next day. I got some good suggestions from Melissa, a Rachel McAdams look-alike, and her boyfriend Logan. They told me about the historic Skirvin Hilton Hotel, which is supposedly so haunted that the New York Knicks blamed their loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder last month on their stay there the night before. Amanda said she could take me down a slide in a downtown building over her lunch hour the next day. "It's a twisty slide, like the kind at McDonald's," she said. Sounded fun. But then she explained that it's the fire escape of a thirty story hotel. I asked when it was built. I didn't really want to end my fifty-state journey in state number three after shooting out the side of the rickety old thing and plummeting thirty stories to my death.
Melissa & Logan's cute friend Steve came in and they told him what I was doing. He asked if there was any chance I'd be coming through Oklahoma again at the end of the trip. Sigh. They all agreed that they would have loved to hear about this before I came to town so they could have helped me make arrangements . . . so how do I get the word out before hitting other towns? I need a PR agent. And if Steve would drive to Mobile next week to be date #9, that would be pretty great, too. :)