We're in St. Louis tonight, at the remodeled-Union-Station hotel. Normally, we really like this hotel... but as we drove up to it tonight, we noticed it seemed much more crowded than usual, and there seemed to be an awful lot of people milling about outside with plastic beads around their necks and drinks in their hands. Argh! Mardi Gras...
I never thought of St. Louis as much of a draw for the Mardi Gras crowd -- obviously, most people who feel the need to party into the wee hours and gratuitously pose for the "Girls Gone Wild" cameras are down in New Orleans right now. But I guess a few of the stragglers have settled here in St. Louis, and many of said stragglers have checked into the Union Station hotel. I'm just hoping we don't have any loud revelers camped out in the room next door to ours... On the positive side, we're hoping to leave rather early tomorrow morning, and figure we won't have much trouble with traffic -- not only will it be Sunday morning, but everyone else will be sleeping off their hangovers...
Before we left Austin yesterday, we ran over to mom and dad's to check the air pressure in our tires in case they needed to be topped off a bit. As Rick was doing that, I noticed a round metal thingy sticking in the right front tire. "Uh... is this a nail?" I timidly inquired. (I was "timid" because part of me was thinking that if I said nothing, the round metal thingy would disappear and we wouldn't have to worry about it... but if I actually SAID something, then I would have to admit that the metal thingy was REAL, and deal with the possible consequences...) Yep, it was definitely a nail. Or possibly a tack -- it was hard to tell. The tire, however, hadn't lost any air... and the nail/tack seemed to be quite firmly embedded within the rubber. So we've been driving on the tire anyway (because who knows how long that thing has been IN there, anyway? There's so much construction on mom and dad's street, it could've been there for weeks...).
And then tonight, as we neared St. Louis in the dark, we rounded a corner in the interstate and saw a white bag sitting in the middle of the highway. There was a car to the right of us, and the middle concrete divider to the left -- so we really had no choice but the hit the mystery object. It made a sort of "thwump" sound, and then the bag somehow adhered itself to the car. So we pulled over to a gas station, where I was certain we'd discover that we'd run over a bag of nails or a package of butcher knives... but once Rick freed the bag from the side of the car, we discovered it had been a bag of road salt. I'm sure it wasn't full -- if it had been, we would've felt more of a jolt when we hit it. And I was just relieved to know it hadn't been full of sharp objects...
So tomorrow we'll be in Chicago, hopefully in time to watch the Giants win the Super Bowl. Ha! Well, we can hope, anyway... :)
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