Last day in St. Louis

This morning I rushed over to the apartment from Chuck’s place to meet the guy to shut off the gas. That done, there wasn’t much left to do, so I went to meet grandma Loretta early at the Casino for brunch. I picked her up and she treated me to Cracker Barrel while we visited for awhile.

It was good to see her. She’s quite an adventuresome lady, RVing across the US several times a year it seems. I’ll catch up with her again in Oklahoma when I pass through, and again in Phoenix.
On the way back, I aired up the tires, filled the gas tank, and checked emails at the free wi-fi offered by the local Schnucks cafe. I remember really not long ago coming to the St. Louis bread company across the street for coffee and using their free wifi back when we first arrived in St. Louis. In those terms it doesn’t feel like much time has passed at all.

I stopped by the BBQ shop to pick up some dinner for Tay and I when I would get to Bloomington, and headed back to the apartment to meet Marijan, the property manager/handyman.

He was pretty satisfied with how I’d left it, except he thought the carpet in the stair needed to be seriously cleaned. I’d suggest a vaccum and then a steam cleaning are in order for it. Actually, putting carpeting in the stairs seems like a pretty stupid idea to me, as its the first thing people step on upon entering and then put a lot of wear on it as stairs. Sounded like they had a few days of work to put into it- fixing leaky faucets, touching up paint, that kind of thing.

The last thing I took out of the apartment was the crate containing suki and my freitag bag. I will miss that apartment, and all the good times there. I will miss the lovely pancake mornings and drinking coffee with Saori looking at the squirrels playing out in the tree limbs. I will miss coming upstairs and seeing the apartment open to me.

I drove straight to Bloomington, a trip of a little less than four hours. Shitty weather. Kind of a pissing mist which made things hard to see and wet the windshield but not enough moisture for me to keep the wipers on. Shared a beer with Tay and we enjoyed our dinner, comparing the relative merits of Vernon’s BBQ with Pappy’s. Tay still credits Pappy’s with the best ribs, and its a hard claim to deny, although whenever you’re dealing with five hour old ribs its hard to make a good comparison.

So here I am. Out of the apartment, a gypsy at last.