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monday ◀
12.6.99 ◀
eight.a ◀
country lane that people once used to travel between Lawrence and Kansas City. In 1977, the fast-as-fire four-lane K-10 was laid down, and Old K-10 lost any thunder it once had.
Old K-10, also known as County Road 442, is a narrow and should be
Wanderlust, academic indifference and a tacit wish to be away from Lawrence put a map in my hands, a pack on my back and my feet on the old road to Kansas City.
When you don't have a car, or you have a car like mine — a hissing, white '86 Cutlass Sierra with a blown head gasket that won't be repaired — your avenues of escape dwindle. You can beg a ride from a friend once or twice.
Or you can walk, which I did. Or tried.
You can pay for a ride.
An adventure needs a destination, no matter how arbitrarily selected. I picked my home in Overland Park
my selected. I picked my home in Overland Park.
"It's a dangerous thing," warned Mike Krentz district office coordinator for the Kansas Department of Transportation. He has spent a lot of time walking alongside the highways surveying
About 25,000 cars run down the new K-10 each day, according to KDOT numbers.
"It's a bunch of cars going by faster than they should," he said.
The retired K-10 would have less traffic. I wore my worn Nike
running shoes, blue jeans and long underwear. I brought water and money and a friend's cellular phone. For some reason, I brought some dried cherries. I brought a friend for conversation and for carrying the backpack.
Carole Zebas, professor of health, sport & exercise science, said that I'd probably be able to handle it.
"The general rule of thumb is that the body absorbs about 1.5 times its own body weight with each footfall," she said. "It doesn't take Einstein to figure out that over the course of some very long mileage on a regular basis the body would be stressed."
But one time wouldn't kill me,
The name Old K-10 doesn't show up on maps, so I called my Dad, who forwarded me directions that his friend had emailed him.
"I got to say it would be downright foolish and risky to be even beside a road in the dark earlier
than 7 a.m. or later than 5 p.m.," my Dad wrote. "I'm sure me or Mom can be available to give you a ride if you poop out."
I do not poop out. But I did consider the advice about walking in the dark. With ten hours of walking time, if we set a pace of 3.5 m.p.h., I banked we could make it. It's about 35 miles to Kansas City on foot.
If we left in the pre-dawn light, we'd even have time for a sit-down lunch.
I went to the Web site mapquest.com and printed the map of Old K-10.
Bad idea or not, Friday morning I cut class and headed out on foot.
I passed a man in front of a pile of woodchips, smoking a cigar.
I passed the Sunflower Nature Park and the Sunflower Ammunition Plant.
I passed over the Wakarusa river, walked near a vineyard, saw cows, horses and quail.
On foot, when the sky holds on to its rain, everything becomes ominous. Furrowed and straw-fluung farmland borders Old K-10 once you make it out of Lawrence
it's a pretty quiet road until you lurch in the wake of a rocketing concrete mixer. New K-10 is usually visible and just audible, about a half mile away.
But when the wind picks up, or the light dies down to a pitch, clouds congress and signal downfall and disaster.
A slow brown toad crept outside the Desoto McDonalds, where I rested my legs and ate a perfect vanilla ice-cream cone. Outside, a dandelion bloomed yellow beside the highway, and irises had flowered in a roadside garden when they should have been dormant or死.
But the disaster I kept thinking would happen never cgame.
It never rained. A bull mastiff dog approached growling, but paused at the end of its property.
My friend and I made it as far as Kill Creek Road, about 20 miles from Lawrence, about ten miles from my home, and then daylight departed.
Demoralized, I called my mother about 5:00 p.m.
My feet were tired and legs were sore, but my body could have made it. But the road we were taking was busy enough that walking at night could have been fatal.
I was disappointed. I like to finish what I start.
We drank coffee and waited for our ride at a place in Desoto called the Maine Place. The owners set a thermas of coffee on our table and told us to have our fill.
On the walls were pictures of the owners and their child. There were vinyl tablecloths on the tables and artificial flowers in vases.
The Maine Place served four hoagie sandwiches with the same ingredients, except for the meat of choice: turkey, salami, bologna and ham. It also served chili dos.
They rolled silverware and smoked cigarettes at the other end of the dining room while we waited, the only customers in the store.
Some plans seem miscalculated from the start.
They'd been open for two days, the man said.
When we left, I was convinced the Maine Place was doomed.
Like walking to Kansas City. There just isn't enough light in an autumn day to walk the whole thing.
Driving back to Lawrence the next morning, we took Old K-10 to see what we had missed. Up unto Shawnee Mission Park, the road is charming, full of pretty farms and twists and turns. After that, it becomes nearly unwalkable, without a sidewalk or a shoulder.
We drove past the Maine Place. The parking lot was full, the tables were crowded with people eating breakfast.
The restaurant wasn't doomed after all.
On a different day, different things are possible.
On a longer day, a person could walk it, I think. In May or June, maybe we could reach home. I think I'll try it again.