Another thing I learned from driving to Texas: Oklahoma sucks. I used to believe that Nevada was the absolute worst state in the Union (on the horrors of Winnemucca alone), but I suspect Oklahoma might be as terrible.
Don’t get me wrong – I’m sure most Oklahomans are good, honest, interesting people, and I’m sure there are many beautiful aspects of the state that I’m missing out on, but consider these travails:
I drove through two torrential rainstorms that nearly sent my cumbersome box van hydroplaning into the Sweet Hereafter;
I encountered one inexplicable traffic jam on the interstate — the interstate! — whereat all traffic stopped for half an hour, people lumbered out of the cars and stretched and stood around shooting the shit and doing other dust bowl types of things before everyone suddenly got moving again at 65 mph without any kind of plausible account for the gridlock anywhere in evidence;
I stopped at one of the state’s so-called “rest areas,” the memory of Kansas’ elegant and luxurious rest areas still fresh in my mind, to find that they didn’t offer so much as a dilapidated table, much less a bathroom or mowed lawn, just a row of dirty oil drums doubling as trash cans;
the wind — what is up with the wind in Oklahoma? Not cool when driving a giant sail of a box van at 65 (and why do they drive so slow there?).
My apologies to all Oklahomans, and my condolences; you folks got it bad.
