Country Calm - Day 3

Well, the drive was relatively long from St. Louis, MO to Oklahoma City, OK, but for some reason, it didn't seem as such...well, let me rephrase that:  It didn't psychologically feel that long...physically, I felt like my feet had gotten taken out from beneath me on ice and I had hit the ice hard on my behind because I've been sitting too long...The scenery consisted of lot of deciduous trees with 90% of its leaves gone, myself wondering who would live in the plains of Oklahoma and Missouri when nothing else seemed remotely close except acres and acres of farmland, and how the driving speed limit was a nice, liberal 75mph, which is about 120km/h...however, not too many people exceed this limit (by much) as opposed to drivers on Hwy 401 in Toronto.  And another good thing...they have speed minimums, like 50mph (~80km/h), so that traffic is nice and smooth.

I was taken back by how the cashier looked at me at a McDonalds in southern Missouri when I asked for a side salad instead of fries - she looked at me as if I were from another planet in a blank stare...I was going to tell her that Canada was NOT another planet, but something tells me she would have given me the same blank stare.  I guess grease is something that comes complimentary and mandatorily in the mid-States, and cannot be substituted away for healthier foods...so I just took fries with my combo at McDonalds.  I also passed by Tulsa, Oklahoma, which I expected to be some small farming community, but it appeared to be a decently sized city...

Is it bad that I got gas at BP?  Well, I kinda needed it...but I'm pretty impressed that my measely Honda Civic was able to exceed 700km on one tank of gas - I guess highway driving IS pretty efficient.  I bet all car commercials only give their fuel efficiencies under ideal conditions such as this.  The gas station was pretty abandoned-looking there though, on a small exit off the highway in the middle of nowhere.  An elderly slender fellow with grey hair, coveralls and the look of days gone by under the sun whilst toiling in the field gave me a half-surprised look when I stumbled in the door to ask if there was a washroom I could use.  I don't think he gets too many visitors around there a day...I guess any customers are like the highlight of the hour.  Anyway, heading off to bed for an early morning so I can make the 6-hour drive to Lubbock with time to spare to visit the HR there to get some paper work done so I can be processed to be on their payroll and get forms so that I can apply to get a Social Security Number (SSN), something that may be needed in order to get a phone and possibly cable TV...then the day after, it's apartment hunting time!

I'm enjoying this balmy 23-degrees Celcius high right now - my dad tells me it just snowed back home in Toronto...Well, off to bed at a Country Inn & Suites, which is very new but oddly there aren't a lot of people around...(enter horror flick now)