I should've listened to them...

I made the my final trip to see Scott in Oklahoma City last weekend. Only five more weeks until he's back in Omaha for good...not that I'm counting or anything.

Highlights of the weekend included the following:

• eating a bavarian-creme filled Dunkin' Donut
• getting measured for a road bike (Sandy is persuading me to enter the dark side)
• watching college football in a sports bar downtown (even if we were, by total accident, wearing Texas orange on a day they played Oklahoma)
• visiting the Oklahoma City bombing memorial (sobering...a very tastefully, well-done memorial)
• and, of course, just getting to spend time with the love of my life :)

I also enjoyed several good audio books on the drive. The Last Lecture is a 4.5 hour reminder to fulfill your childhood dreams and keep sight of what really matters because you never know when life will be cut short. Keep a box of tissues handy.

Living the Uncommon Life (or something very close to that) was the other audio book of choice. This Max Lucado book had me so absorbed in thought about what I want my life to be that I was 45 miles east of Salina before I realized that I should be 45 miles north of Salina at that time! Who knew that not one but two four-lane divided highways/interstates ran through Salina. Not this girl!

Now if you know me at all, you know that I am somewhat notorious for not being able to follow directions well (I'm the only Koehler without an internal compass) and for getting lost. On our first trip to meet up in Wichita, for example, I was so lost that I almost cried on the phone as Scott tried to navigate me to the hotel. That particular trip, a coworker had offered me her GPS, to which I foolishly responded, "Thanks, but I'll be fine. I've got MapQuest directions. It's Wichita. It can't be that hard." Famous last words. Scott also saved me, via phone from Texas, from getting on the wrong Interstate coming east out of Denver.

This trip, on Sunday, as we parted ways, Scott offered the atlas to me. Confidently I replied, "No, I'm fine. I just go north from Wichita until I-80." Which is true, if one stays on I-35 through Wichita. I, though, was so deep in thought about the direction of my life, that I neglected to see the signs indicating multiple interstates converging, and, as luck would have it, got on the wrong one.

So there I was, in central Kansas without a map or GPS, desperately not wanting to go any further out of the way than necessary because the drive back from a trip always seems to take infinately longer than the drive there. Luckily, my good friend Stacey answered her phone at work and naviagted me north through Manhattan and some less-often-seen areas of eastern Kansas. Perhaps next time I should listen to those wise advice-giving people in my life...and perhaps now I should add "road atlas" to my Christmas list.