Point E: St. Louis

Start drive time: 10:02 AM MST

End drive time: 11:46 PM CST
Pit stops: Bennett, Colby, Abilene, Kingdom City
Miles driven today: 865
Total miles this trip: 2,284
Number of anti-abortion billboards spotted: 10
Number of individual rage attacks inspired by anti-abortion billboards spotted: 10

CARville woke up looking like this:

And he was all like, "Seriously? We drove through like 500 miles of snow yesterday and you couldn't find me anywhere to sleep indoors? Where is the humanity? Also, how did you make this picture snow?"

But he got over it pretty quickly and was a totally chill bro about driving through the unplowed roads of Boulder. There were a handful of times on the way out of Colorado when the snow was packed so deep on the roads that one could only conjure up the Governor of New Jersey and declare emphatically that "If you think I give a damn about lanes right now, then you don't know me."

Winter, it seemed, was upon us and there was no going back. We had left the drizzly, kinda temperate embrace of the Pacific Northwest and we were headed into all snow, all the time. Welcome to winter. Forever.

That is, of course, until Kansas didn't get the memo. 

Now mind you, I had been dreading this drive since I made up my mind to return to the Motherland. I mean LOOK at this:

There is no justifiable excuse for Kansas's size. It could easily be cut into two or three states but then, horror of all horrors, we would have 4-6 Senators from The Lands Formerly Known As Kansas

Not only would I have to endure 417 miles of prairie, but it's Kaannnnnssssaaaasssssssssssss.....

But to my surprise, the Kansasy parts of Eastern Colorado and deep into Kansas were...a paradise of sorts. Kansas seemed oblivious to winter. The skies were cloudless and blue. The sun was shining. The grass was green. It was beautiful. Is it always late August in Kansas? Is this a secret of the Plains States that Kansas remains glorious year-round as a fertile bread basket of America? How has this not become one of the hot destination spots for snowbirds fleeing the Midwest? I began to question if I had judged Kansas unfairly. Maybe it wasn't so bad after all. I mean, I haven't even seen any anti-abortion signs yet. Maybe I'm a closed-minded bigot who just didn't understand. Maybe they're "pro-life" because the state is so empty and they're just lonely for company and will do whatever they can to share the beauty of Kansas with others. I began to smile and to compose an ode to Kansas as an apology for my rash judgment. There was a fine crop of windmills growing beautifully in the fields. Swarms of swallows were impersonating psychedelic screensavers. If the rest of my drive was as lovely as Kansas, I would be home in no time at all. I could drive through Kansas forever.

I stopped in Colby to refuel and check my tire pressure and AAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!! OH MY GOD!!!!!!! WHAT'S HAPPENING? OH MY HANDS!!!!! COLD!!!! WIND!!!!!! STABBING!!!!! IT'S STABBING MY BONES!!!!!!!!! THE WIND IS STABBING MY BONES WITH ICE SHARDS!!!! MOM!!!! MAKE IT STOP!!!!!!!

Oh look how pretty everything is!

KANSAS HAD LIED TO ME.

I held my blackened, withered hand to my chest and whimpered. A few years ago when I was hanging out with a lot of other people's kids (because I was a nanny, you guys, not a weirdo), I came down with a cold and thought that I had the whooping cough. Now, lots of my mom friends are crunchy woodland hippies who eschew vaccines and a dear friend of mine had a daughter who came down with Scarlet Fever in the 21st century, so I didn't think it was that unreasonable for my hypochondriac brain to jump from influenza to whooping cough...Anyway, when I requested the whooping cough test, the nurse practitioner asked me if I was sure that I wanted it and warned me that it was "extremely unpleasant." Medical professionals are notoriously blithe about the awful things they do to you in the name of modern medicine:

"Will this amputation without anesthesia hurt?" 

"Oh, you'll just feel a little pinch." 

"Isn't childbirth excruciating?" 

"You'll feel a little pinch. Perhaps some minor cramping." 

So when a medical professional freely proffers a phrase like "extremely unpleasant," and you brush the dirt off your shoulders because you're a CHAMP and then they stick a six-inch long metal rod STRAIGHT BACK (NOT UP!) YOUR NOSE ALL THE WAY TO THE OTHER SIDE OF YOUR SKULL AND SCRAPE THE MUCOUS MEMBRANE OF YOUR NASAL CAVITIES, you, if you are not accustomed to violent abrogations of your physical and psychological well-being, respond by immediately scrunching up your face and sobbing deep guffaws while tears stream down your face.

The sub-arctic wind biting my bare skin was comparable to that. 

KKKKKAAAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNNSSSSSSSSSAAAAAAAAAASSSSSSSSSSS!!!!! Why would you do this to me? How could you lie like that? I take it all back. All the good things. Damn you, Kansas. Damn you to...yourself.

And as I nursed my newly useless left hand, I began to get out of Kansas as fast as possible. No food. No breaks. It's not worth it. I must get out of this godforsaken place. The tumbleweeds playing Frogger will not slow me down. The unanswered questions posed by the billboards advertising the world's largest prairie dog (is it real?), a live five-legged cow (whaaaaa....?) and liquid fertilizer (ewww...?) will not tempt me into staying any longer in this state than I absolutely must. Why would Dorothy want to return? Did she have Stockholm syndrome?

And then I approached Hays. And the anti-abortion signs started. 

I Was Smiling Before I Was Even Born

Adoption Not Abortion (times 3)

Thank Mom For Choosing Life

Abortion Stops a Beating <3

Take My Hand Not My Life

Jesus Wept (a twofer? One of the 30 or so pro-Jesus signs clearly, but they're implying Jesus is weeping over fetuses, right?)

And my autonomic nervous system overtook my body and the rage centers of my brain caused me to gnash my teeth and dig my fingernails deep into James CARville's steering wheel as I pressed my foot even harder against the accelerator. (CARville, baby, I'm so sorry. You know I'd never do anything to hurt you. You know I love you, boo. Now come here. Come give mama a kiss.)

I am not so deficient in self-awareness that I would respond with "How dare they shove their ideology down the throats of passersby who are just trying to get from Point D to Point E? Don't they know that screaming your beliefs at someone doesn't win anyone over; it just fuels your opposition base?" No, dear readers, I am aware enough that my line of work is also the business of ideological gavage. HOWEVER, I've never blown up an establishment that provides the services I disagree with. I've never allowed a person seeking the services I disagree with to die because I passed legislation that made it impossible for them to access that service so that they had to resort to dangerous unscientific remedies that resulted in their deaths. I've never tried to take the physical autonomy away from a second-class citizen who is trying to reclaim some control over the course of their life and what they get to do with THEIR OWN BODIES. And I've never created a climate in which the natural recourse of the rhetoric I use to express my disagreement has resulted in the assassination of providers of those services.

Oh Kansas. Congratulations on your contributions to society:

The Westboro Baptist Church (based out of Topeka)

Scott Roeder from Merriam, who assassinated George Tiller while he was serving as an usher in a Sunday morning church service in Wichita

Becoming the first state in 1881 to amend the constitution to impose prohibition

Eliminating evolution from the state teaching standards in 1999

Koch Industries, Inc (based in Wichita)

Passing a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage in 2005

Setting a minimum age for now-totes-only-for-heteros-because-God-hates-fags marriage at 15 in 2006

Sam Brownbeck, whose major efforts include making Kansas the first state without an arts agency, supporting anti-abortion legislation that politicians in his own state referred to as "Taliban-esque," and attempting to shut down rehabilitation and social services in Lawrence. Because we LOVE babies. As long as they remain in utero to full-term. And then eff 'em. They're not my problem anymore. 

Kansas can eat me.

Do I hate all Kansans? No, I'm not a Kansist. I have a friend who's from Kansas. I like the band Kansas. Kansas City is great...oh wait, that's Missouri.

Missouri is also not off the hook. The two anti-abortion signs I was able to see there (because the sun set over Salina so I was spared much of the unlit anti-choice roadside screeds) reminded me that the state is responsible for Claire McCaskill. And Todd Akin. And the East St. Louis Police Department. 

Ugggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Thanks, Kansas and Missouri. You've inspired me to double my monthly contribution to the Planned Parenthood Action Fund. I know this is a departure from the general tone of this blog, but I don't have anything funny to say about states that don't value women enough to trust them to use their best judgment about what they can do with their lives and their bodies. As soon as you start murdering the medical professionals who provide life-saving procedures to women because your fee-fees are hurt by the idea of them not wanting to be relegated to choiceless mini-human factories, you have nothing to redeem yourself and light-hearted humor only serves to diminish the responsibility we have in condemning a culture that defines "pro-life" as the assassination of health-service providers. Well done, Kansas. You've officially become my least favorite state.