As we left the office and walked back to the room, Amanda had to point out everyone who had coffee! Under protest from Amanda, we waited until north of town to get coffee: a Chick-fil-A breakfast sandwich for me and Starbucks for us both. Once we got on the road, Amanda had a pre-coffee Power Nap. I looked over at her and asked if she was sleeping. She was out cold and popped up and said no, then she was back out again! It always cracks me up when she does that, just lying to my face. She gets so mad, too, saying why do you ask if you know I’m asleep anyway. The answer is simple: I love to push her buttons!
With the change in diuretics, we had to stop a lot for potty time. I knew then we’d never make it at a decent time to meet our friend. I tend to want to buy something from gas stations if we use the facilities, especially mom-and-pop stores, but I don’t like buying junk food or something we don’t need, so I’ll pull into a chain place we frequent—mainly Starbs or the Chick. I told Amanda if they were to say anything, show them how many points we have to confirm our patronage! We stopped for fuel in the DFW area at Costco, then grabbed Amanda’s lunch at Chick-fil-A; I was still running on my biscuit. Just in that short stop, there were a couple of potty breaks!
OKC was the next stop for our afternoon pick-me-up. We tried the new pecan oat milk lattes, both hot and cold, and on reward points, of course. The next stop was for dinner in Wichita. I had two places on the list: sushi or ramen. We landed on ramen at a chain place we fell in love with while living in Houston and having it delivered to our hotel room right after the transplant. We had some great plant based ramen and some appetizers. It was right in downtown Wichita in a newer building. It had a hip vibe and looked like the typical effects of gentrification on a downtown area.
We had planned on filling up a Costco, but dinner ran late; we weren’t watching the time, and it was closed. So we just hit the road. We ended up with a low tank and full bladders about Topeka. I looked for a gas station on CarPlay. It is terribly hard to navigate while using the map; Apple needs to get it together with that! It turns out I picked one that wasn’t so savory. We pulled up and were like I don’t know about this. There was what looked like a larger one a block away, so we went there; it wasn’t any bigger and was probably worse.
The low gas light was on, along with the full bladder light for both of us, so we took a chance. I put a little gas in the car, enough to make the Omaha, locked it up, and we went inside. It was shady for sure; bad enough, I almost returned for my pistol. We both just went in together in a single bathroom; Amanda didn’t want to be left alone. We got out, grabbed some candy for stay-awake purposes, paid through the glass window, and got out of there!
It was too close to midnight to want to keep going, but the reservation was past cancellation, so we were stuck with a little over two hours left. I watched the mileage left and would give Amanda landmarks compared to our drive home from San Antonio. I was driving fast, and it caught up with me in a small town an hour out of Omaha. The deputy sheriff ran with me for a while but lit me up once I didn’t get it down quickly enough in town. He was one of the nicest guys ever to pull me over. No ticket, just a warning.
We rolled into the hotel at about 1:30 a.m. and were out cold by two! It was a nice, big one-bedroom room, but we weren’t going to stay there long enough to enjoy it.