Adventures in downtown Kansas City

For the first time in my life, I hitchhiked.


It's something I have always wanted to do and it worked out finally yesterday in downtown Kansas City. My friend Ryan and I went there early because he had a meeting before we met up with the rest of our group for the Royals vs. Cardinals game that night, and so I figured it'd be a perfect chance to tour a little bit of the city before I had to meet up to go to the stadium. I got dropped off at Crown Center, which is where his meeting was at, and started walking north to try and find Westport or the Plaze, which were the places that my Kansas Citian friends recommended that I check out. After about 5 blocks or so, however, I still had no clue where I was to go. So, I asked two people if they could give me directions as to where to go. They informed me that I needed to get to 43rd street...and I was only on 19th (so in summary, that is no where near close enough for walking distance they said.) After chatting for a little while, they offered to give me a ride to where I was going, and I graciously accepted their offer.
As we walked to their car, it was interested talking with them! I mean, it wasn't any out of the ordinary conversation, but I really enjoy meeting strangers and hearing about their lives and just chatting with people. It seems like in today's society it is taboo to talk with people you don't know. It was good to have a chance to break that norm yesterday. When we got to their car, I got a ride safely to where I was heading: Jerusalem Cafe, but didn't have time to eat so I moved onto my next stop Tea Drops, before meeting up again and checkin' out the only WWI memorial in the country.

Oh yeah...keep in mind I was walking all over with a Chicago Cubs shirt on (luckily I wasn't in St. Louis instead...)

At the game, I surprisingly got more complements than insults for my Cubs shirt. I only got a couple of curse words thrown at me and one dude tried to "accidently" roundhouse kick me after the game. As I was walking up the stairs in the bleachers, this main caught my attention and showed me his chicago cubs tattoo on his leg! That was quite interesting.

After the game we were trying to get out of the parking lot while it was downpouring and hailing some and we saw two police officers arm-in-arm dancing in the rain while directing traffic! It was quite the funny site! As we drove back, there was an awesome lightning storm the whole way home.