Funny to think that I just spent a year in Wisconsin, and I hardly even touched my blog until I wound up moving back to Arizona. Maybe it's just that the desert heat brings out my cynical nature. Who knows. At any rate, here's a long overdue update.
As I was saying, I just moved back across the country to Arizona. For those of you who know how much I hate the desert and are sitting there pondering why I would ever make such a move after I spent so much time complaining how I couldn't wait to get out of this state, don't ask. Just don't, okay? For as much as I like to write, that's too long of an explanation for even me to go into, and it's frankly none of your business. Anywho, let's get back to my cross country drive. The trip took in total about 3 days of driving, at 10+ hours a day. Needless to say, the journey was a tad arduous. But what I never suspected was that the most brutal leg of the trek would be through the seemingly innocent state of Oklahoma. Who would have thought? But don't let the ruse created by the ostensibly benign musical of the same name fool you into thinking it's a happy-go-lucky place where the wind goes sweeping through the plains. That wind ain't sweeping anywhere without going through a toll booth or three. The entire state is riddled with them. Well, that, and spiders. It's really kinda creepy actually, all along the interstate you can see these trees just buried in spiderwebs, like giant sticks of arachnophobic cotton candy. Anyways, I'm getting off the topic. Toll booths. Why is this the only state I passed through that had a toll booth every ten minutes? I mean honestly, what makes Oklahoma's roads so special to warrant paying that much for them, when every other state seems content to let me travel along free of charge? Come to think of it, most everyone else must be aware of this ridiculous phenomenon specific to this state, for I saw less traffic passing through Oklahoma than any other part of my trip. I am extremely lucky I had a plethora of coinage floating around my car when I entered that state, or else I'm sure I would have had an Oklahoma state trooper chasing after me for pocket change before long. You couldn't avoid them. Toll booths to get on the highway. Toll booths to get off the highway. The signs directing traffic into the correct toll lanes were very confusing to follow too, so sometimes you'd end up getting off the highway in the wrong spot altogether, where you would have to pay a toll, and then you would have to pay the toll again to get back on in the right spot. I swear I ended up paying for the same stretch of highway at least twice that way. I never exactly figured out how they decided how much to charge at each toll booth either, because every one of them was a different rate, from 45 cents to almost five dollars. It's like a modern day take on an old fairy tale story. Most any fairy tale depicting travelers traveling anywhere eventually had at least one bridge the group would need to cross, a bridge inevitably guarded by a troll. This troll of course would not let them pass without either giving him something ridiculous, or correctly answering a riddle. I think it's little coincidence that if you drop the "r" in troll that you end up with the word toll, as this same principle still seems prevalent throughout the state of Oklahoma. Well, minus the riddle part. Actually, I would have greatly appreciated it, had they incorporated that aspect into their toll system as well. "That will be $4.50 sir. Unless, of course, you can tell me, what is the average airspeed of an unladen swallow?" I may have made it out of that state with enough money for lunch that day, or at least been somewhat more amused by this legal highway robbery. So anyways, here's a traveling tip from the TribbleHunter: travel through Kansas, travel through Texas, but stay out of Oklahoma. Between the spiders and the toll booths, you'll be doing yourself a favor, especially if you're an arachnophobic who never carries loose change.