Signs Along the Road

As we drove west this week, we noticed a few signs that made us pause and think, or in at least one case, left us puzzled.

1. In Missouri, we saw an ad for vacation home properties. The lots being sold are "oversize acres." We thought about that for several miles. When is an acre more than an acre--how do you oversize one?

2. In Kansas, near the first rest stop on I-70 after Topeka, there is a perennial sign about the productivity of Kansas farms. In 2008, we learned, "one Kansas farmer feeds 128 people + you!" For those who made it through basic math, that's 129 people. The first year we made this trip, 40 years ago, that Kansas farmer fed "57 people + you." We have to wonder if this kind of inflation is due to the same kinds of forces that have led to increased farm mechanization, the disappearance of the small family farm, etc. Or is it merely Better Farming Through Chemistry? If we could find that One Kansas Farmer, we would ask him.

3. Also on the road (we forget where) we saw a series of billboards entreating motorists to kindly share the road with motorcyclists, and not run over them. The billboard slogan I've been pondering for the last few days advised us:

Be Aware
Motorcycles
Are Everywhere!

Now that's vaguely disturbing, even threatening it seems to me. Our experience was that there weren't that many motor cycles on the trip, (we saw maybe 10) but plenty of other items to be aware of, including detours for construction. One amazing sight (again no pictures, but will try on the way home) was a giant wind turbine farm in central Kansas. Huge towers and immense propellers gleaming white in the sun, marching across ridges for at least 10 miles. They looked oddly menacing even though they weren't turning, and I finally understood why Don Quixote was so disturbed by those windmills he saw. Apparently these farms are all over the West as well as Texas, but they aren't in Missouri and two years ago, they weren't in this spot in Kansas, either. So on Thursday morning as we drove, I was thinking: Be Aware: Wind Turbines are Everywhere!

Of course by Thursday afternoon the slogan had changed: Be Aware, Tornadoes are Everywhere! So create your own slogan. But motorcycles were a minor part of the stimulating sights we saw along the highway this week.

I'll post some photos from Part I of the LInville reunion in the morning. At this point, I need to get iPhoto fired up and "develop" them.