“Nebraska…I’m pretty sure you didn’t plan on biking to Nebraska when you woke up this morning.”
I was lost, and the last thing I needed was some sass from a road sign…
Act I: The Set-Up
By the time Labor Day 1999 rolled around, I had been a Freshman at Kansas State for a whopping 2 weeks and had made only a handful friends. Of those few friends that I had managed to make, every last one of them returned to their respective hometowns for the long weekend.
Given that my hometown of Rolla is literally the second-furthest Kansan town from Manhattan (KS, where K-State is), driving 11 hours in one weekend to guaranteed boredom never even occurred to me. Unfortunately, I didn’t get the memo that every other college student was getting the ----- out of Dodge,1Fun fact: yet another town in Kansas. so that Saturday morning I woke up to a ghost town and nothing to do.
At that time I was passionate about two things: dying my hair obscene colors and exploring my new world on my $100 Walmart mountain bike. I decided that my hair was starting to look a bit too natural, so first thing I did was make an appointment to get my hair trimmed and subsequently dyed half bright red and half bright blue.
That took up way less time than I had hoped, so around 2 that afternoon I found myself with plenty of time mercilessly to slaughter. Just a couple of miles outside Manhattan is Tuttle Creek Dam & Reservoir, so I thought why the heck don’t I hop on my bike and go check it out.
I had a general idea of where how to get there, and I figured that there would be more than enough road signage for me to find it without exact directions. I mean, it’s a dam towering over our town–it’s not exactly hidden.
Well, after piddling along for what seemed to be over an hour, I was certain that I should be coming up on a sign saying “Tuttle Creek This Way ->” any moment, so I kept forging ahead. Another good chunk of time passed and still nothing? Then I was starting to suspect that maybe–just maybe–I had missed my turn.
I was rather disappointed when I came to an intersection with another small highway, and in one direction the sign read “Riley, 4 miles” and in the other it said “Nebraska, I’m pretty sure you didn’t plan on biking to Nebraska when you woke up this morning.”
Confused that after all that I still hadn’t seen any signs of Tuttle Creek, I started to realize that the day was waning and since I was probably 5 miles from town, I was going to have to give up and head back from whence I came. I turned around and started to peddle home, when I almost immediately came across the mileage sign: “Manhattan, 13.”
Wait, what? THIRTEEN MILES. Oh, jeez, I had wandered in the wilderness more than I had realized. Welp, it was a good thing I decided to turn back then instead of going even further.
About a mile before I got back to Manhattan, I came across yet another sign, “<-Tuttle Creek Dam, 1 mile this way.”
Oh, ----- a mother. I guess had slightly overshot my destination, wouldn’t you say?
And, boy, was my ass tired…
What? You think this is merely a tale of a missed turn? Oh, just you wait…(until next week, that is!)
Content created on: 10 September 2020 (Thursday)
Footnotes & References:
I didn’t realize Rolla was the 2nd furthest Kansas town from K-State. I looked, and it’s way closer to Texas Tech, and by a small margin, closer to both major Oklahoma universities and Colorado University.