The other trip I took this past summer was to Kansas City, Missouri for the AP World History Grading. The past eleven years the grade was held in Colorado and Utah. I miss Fort Collins and will miss Salt Lake City but I was excited to go to KC.
KC's my hometown. But I haven't been back much since leaving the area to go to college in Oklahoma. I had only been back to Kansas City four times since 1992. So I was excited to meet up with old friends, catch a Royals game and eat the best barbecue in the world.
The College Board put me up in the Westin Crown Center which is still a very nice hotel. It might not be on Grand America Hotel Salt Lake level...but it's very nice. I had stayed at the Crown Center a few times in the past. When I was a kid it was considered the premier hotel in town. It's connected to a shopping center and just a mile up the road from Gates BBQ, one of my favorite barbecue joints in the world. I ate there three times in the two weeks I was in KC.
I ate barbecue nine of the fourteen days I was in town. I ate at Johnny's (my family's favorite spot growing up) twice. Ate at Gates three times. Arthur Bryant's is always amazing. I ate very well.
Got to go a Royals game in Kauffman Stadium. We saw the boys in blue defeat the White Sox. It was a Friday night so there were fireworks after the show. It was a beautiful night. It was my first time back to The K since I took my son to Game Two of the 2015 World Series.
The AP Reader Leadership dinner was held in the foyer that connects the American Jazz Museum and the Negro Baseball League Hall of Fame Museum. The food was great but even better was getting free admittance into both museums. I had never had a chance to visit either place. Both are fantastic. I also loved the Charlie Parker statue as the sun set behind. The 18th and Vine District is so much livelier and safe than when I lived in KC. They've done wonders to the area.
In fact, every area I visited was in better shape and in better condition than when I had lived in KC twenty years earlier. That's a rare and great thing.
I did get to drive the house I grew up in. Looked remarkably the same. Drove the my old high school and where my junior high used to be before it was closed and torn down to make way for a shiny school district resource center.
Met with my oldest friend, Paul, who I met when I was five. We caught up on old times while eating burgers at Winsteads. Met up with Tim, who I worked with in Barcelona, Spain. Tim and his wife now live in Lenexa. Good to see these guys.
There was a tornado that tracked about two miles north of the hotel on my second night in KC. Tornado sirens and everything. Got some pics of the foreboding clouds.
It was a good trip. I really enjoyed getting to know my new Jeep on this trip. Bonus was getting to have lunch with my Grandparents and family in Tulsa on my way back down to Texas.
The AP Read will return to Kansas City this June 2020. I'm already making plans of which BBQ joints to hit up!
