We got up really early on Wednesday knowing that we had a major project ahead of us. We had spent some time earlier in the week getting ready to paint the basement, but we had not made major progress. So we knew that we needed to get to Carin's as soon as we could. That morning we went to Semolino, a coffee shop in Hays, for breakfast. We arrived at Carin's somewhere around 8 and began painting. We started with the largest room first and soon realized that it was going to be harder than we expected. Some of the walls had a rough texture that was hard to paint over, so we had go back and put another coat on later in the day. Even after that, however, we still had to look for white spots. It was easy to miss spots on those walls. The smoother walls went a lot faster thankfully, and we began to make good progress by the middle of the day.
By lunch, we had finished much of the main room and had even begun painting the TV room, which was slightly smaller. There was food left over from the night before, so we all cleaned up so that we could eat. We ran out of paint multiple times; we got a bad estimate about the amount of paint needed from the guys at Walmart. So we waited for some other members of our team to get back before we ate. That is when the accident happened. Our fearless team leader came down the stairs (where we had one of the tarps laid out) and attempted to step over one of the wet paint spots. In the process she hit her head on the ledge above and got a serious cut. A nursing major on the team jumped up immediately to help. She did a great job and eventually took our leader to the hospital to get some staples. Thankfully, everything turned out fine, and we were able to continue on with our paint job. But while half of our team was gone to the hospital, the rest of us worried about what was going on.
We went ahead and ate and then got back to work while they were at the hospital. We finished the main room and the TV room and were able to move on to the office. The office was small, so only a few people could work in there anyways, which worked out nicely. By the end of the work day, close to 5, we had finished all the painting. We knew that there would be some spots that we missed, but we still had Thursday to touch those up. So we cleaned up and got things back in order, considering it a successful day of painting.
That night we had some free time and enjoyed spending a night on the town in Hays. First we went to downtown Hays and just looked around for a while. Then we went to Gella's and got a really good meal. Our team last year was introduced to this restaurant by some students, so I suggested we go there to eat at some point, and I think everyone enjoyed it. That was our biggest meal of the week. After supper we walked and drove around Hays for a while. We went into about three different churches randomly, a Baptist church (well it was locked), a Methodist church, and a Catholic church. The inside of these last two churches were beautiful, and we even got to listen to the Catholic choir practice for a little while.
We then just drove around for the rest of the night. I was driving, and we came up with a crazy idea. One of the team members suggested we just see where the road we were would take us. So we just set out, not turning at all. I drove for a good 10-15 minutes on this road alone before I gave it up to someone else (I had been driving a while before this as well). They drove for awhile longer, and then a third member of the team took over. After close to an hour of driving altogether, we decided to turn around and head back to campus, which was easy since it was a straight shot. We had arrived in a random town called Gorham when we decided to head back. While on the road, we had no idea where we were or where we were going. We knew that we were either headed for Colorado, Nebraska, Missouri, or Oklahoma. So when I got back to the room, I had my roommate look it up. We found the road that we had traveled on, some highway, and realized we had been headed home, running parallel to the interstate that led to Missouri. That was the end of a really long, busy, eventful day, and our next to last day in Kansas.
Matt
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