The Quest

Of all the strange twists and turns that my life has taken over the last couple years I may be getting ready to embark on the strangest one. Next week I'm heading off to Guymon, Oklahoma with my great friend Sanford Zale. I teach with Sandy at Champlain and he is the founding member of the Gentlemen of Excellence. For the last couple years I've been hearing him lament the fact that he's visited 47 of the lower 48 states, having only, somehow, missed Oklahoma. Every year there is a new plan to somehow (insh'allah) make it to Oklahoma, but something always happens to delay/destroy the plans. Finally, I decided to take matters into my own hands and told Sandy that I would get him to Oklahoma, even if I had to drive the whole way.

As with most of my plans, what started out a simple and even whimsical idea has taken on a life of its own. With the help of my excellent friends Andy and Heidi, we now have our own blog (http://okexcellence.wordpress.com) and twitter account (@OKexcellence) to recount the adventures. I'm sure I'll be posting material from the trip onto this blog, but the trip is too epic to be constrained by the narrow borders of the On the Way Home blog.

We're taking off Wednesday and driving to Long Island to see Sandy's parents and drop off his cat Bacon (named after Sir Francis Bacon). Then we're off to Washington, DC so that Sandy can attend his college reunion, and I'll take the opportunity to spend a few days with my friend Debi and her family. After that we're going to head west on US 50 into the heart of darkness. Along the way we plan on spending a couple days in Cincinnati with my best friend David Kelley, and then hopefully on into Indiana to see my Dad.

The big mystery has been the final destination of the trip. That was revealed last night during a planning session at the St. John's Club (athough I left before the karoake part of the contingency planning). We're headed to Guymon, Oklahoma. Yes, another trip to Guymon, Oklahoma. Why Guymon? Well, if you go to the Guymon website it proudly points out that "As the largest, most centrally located city in the panhandle, Guymon is the business and retail center of the region." Sandy chose Guymon because "it's the city with the boldest print on the map of any city in the panhandle." I, of course, could not argue with that logic. I wanted to take US 50 because it goes through the Natti, so it has a certain romantic appeal to me. My understanding of the directions is that we just head west on US 50 and when we're half-way across the country we take a left.

I was recently explaining to my friend David my scheme of spending next Christmas in Samarkand, Uzbekistan and my next birthday in Sanaa, Yemen. He thought the Oklahoma trip sounded more dangerous and certainly more worthy of a David Lynch film.