Since we were in the area yesterday, we drove to the Schreiman Orchards to pick up some peaches. I read about the place in the Star several years ago and we usually make a trip there several times a year to buy peaches and later in the fall – apples. For me it’s not just a shopping trip, I can get peaches and apples much closer to home, it’s an excuse to drive along  the Old Trails Road – one of the most picturesque stretches of highway on this side of the state of Missouri. Along the road you will find historic markers, museums, multiple wineries (but wait there is more), and at the end pick up a basket of peaches for the road.


People who make fun of my love of pickling should take a note that even I draw the line at the red beet and/or jalapeno pickled eggs.

Some day we should find a designated driver and tour the area. Seems like they are having an event on the August 15th.

Not that long ago a person’s love for technology required substantial physical strength. Nowadays anyone can show up on a date carrying a laptop or an iPod. Here is what it would have looked like about 25 years ago.

It was so long ago that this guy

still looked like this:

More old cutting edge technology can be seen here (ignore the Russian text).

Let me preface this by saying: I despise ugly video-bloggers. If you don’t look like this but still have something important to say, please do everyone a favor and type it; your wife lied to you when she said you were handsome, you are not. That said, my charity participation gives me a temporary excuse to use any means possible to collect the money and help out the people with prostate cancer.

So far my team has almost $500 collected and even more pledged. Thanks to your generous support and your sudden unexplained interest in Google Ads on this website I collected $50 so far and another $90 was donated to me and the team as a direct result of my various forms of begging for money on Facebook, Twitter and in person. As a cheap person I feel your pain, but extend your hand and feel the pain of prostate cancer (not there…little lower…still  lower…to the left…right here…ooooh) and you will understand why I defaced my own face by growing a mustache.

As the Month of Movember progressed along, my uncanny resemblance of a certain celebrity became obvious.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8W-dD-hSPgc

I am sure after seeing this you immediately recognized my mustache-double, but below is a clue for the slow ones among you.

The infamous portal to the netherworld, otherwise known as a pothole located next to the property tax-free oasis on the Admiral Street in Kansas City, Mo has finally been dealt with. It has entered the fifth and final stage of the pothole life-cycle: the metal plate cover-up (other stages are: birth, neglect, warning sign, and barricade). The metal plate is a permanent stage and no further development is expected.

The plate is artfully decorated with custom lettering where the top line reads “K.C.W.D” and the the bottom line can only be read with a mirror.

To quote the musical Oklahoma:

Ev’rythin’s up to date in Kansas City
They’ve gone about as fur as they c’n go!

Update: Always resourceful Hyperblogal suggests putting clown cozies on the metal plates to brighten up our streets a little.

I had always imagined Flint Hills to be a rocky desert-like area in the Central-Eastern Kansas where one could walk up to the nearest cliff and chisel away a piece of flint big enough to make a tomahawk. I guess I’ll add this to the list of many other things that didn’t turn out the way I imagined. Driving the Flint Hills Scenic Byway was somewhere on my list of things to do and it turned out to be probably one of the best, most relaxing day-trips from Kansas City, filled with nature, views, history, vast spaces that make you feel small and roads reaching all the way to the horizon. It’s hard to imagine covering these hills on foot, living on remote ranches, surviving without all the conveniences of the modern age. It’s fun to think about things like these while flying at high speeds in a comfortable vehicle with the windows down and the radio up.
The South end of the Scenic Byway is at Cassoday, KS, population 130, with just about as many signs proclaiming it to be the Prairie Chicken Capital of the World.

Prairie Chicken, also known as the “Tuna of the Prairie” are nowhere to be seen, probably busy hiding from the 130 hungry Cassodayans. The signs are the most photographed object in Cassoday.