What started out as a “What if?” conversation between friends has evolved into what is being called The Race Across Missouri. What is the fastest way to get from downtown Kansas City to downtown St. Louis? We’re about to find out.

Contestant Name: Justin Meyer (@kcjetsetter on twitter)
Employer: Kansas City Int
l Airport, Aviation Dept. (@KCIairport on twitter)
Mode of transportation: KCATA bus route #129, Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 flight #1391, St. Louis taxi.

Contestant Name: Kris Nielsen (@krisnielsen1 on twitter)
Employer: Aristocrat Motors (@AristocratKC on twitter)
Mode of Transportation: 2011 Porsche Panamera 4

The race will commence at the doors of Kansas City’s tallest building, One Kansas City Place (1200 Main St, KCMO 64105) at 9:30am. Kris, with the Porsche, will depart immediately – and will be required to obey all posted speed limits throughout the trip.

Justin will stand by for KCATA Bus #129 which, per their schedule, will pick him up at 9:49am at 10th & Main. KCATA will drop Justin off at Kansas City Intl. airport Terminal C at 10:43am. He will have sufficient time to check in and clear security before boarding begins for Southwest Airlines flight #1391, set to depart Kansas City Intl. at 12:00pm and arrive at Lambert Intl. airport at 12:55pm.

Logistically, Kris will not have the Porsche parked right in front of the doors to One Kansas City Place, so it will take him a few minutes to retrieve the car and get on the road. The following calculations have been assembled per Google Maps, based on him taking 5 minutes to get to the Porsche.

9:35am: Porsche departs from One Kansas City Place.
9:49am: Porsche is passing Van Brunt Blvd – mile marker 11. KC Metro bus leaves One Kansas City Place for KCI.
10:02am: Porsche is in Oak Grove, MO – mile marker 28. KC Metro bus will 53 minutes.
10:40am: Porsche is in Concordia (MO-23) – mile marker 58. KC Metro bus will be at KCI in 16 minutes.
10:58am: Porsche is at junction of I-70 and US-65 – mile marker 78. KC Metro bus arrived 2 minutes ago.
11:41am: Porsche is entering Columbia – mile marker 124. Plane departs in 19 minutes.
12:04pm: Porsche is in Kingdom City – mile marker 148. Plane departed KCI 4 minutes ago.
12:48pm: Porsche is in Warrenton (MO-47), mile marker 193. Plane scheduled to arrive at STL in 7 minutes.
12:55pm: Porsche is in Wright City – mile marker 200. Plane has touched down.

Going off of the above calculations, Kris and the Porsche will be at I-70 mile marker 200 at the point when Justin touches down at Lambert St. Louis Intl. airport. The access road for Justin’s taxi to connect into I-70 from the airport is at mile marker 238 (which the Porsche wouldn’t arrive at until 1:35pm. Giving Justin a generous 15 minute window from the 12:55pm plane arrival to de-board and catch a taxi (as Justin will obviously not be picking up any checked-on luggage), the taxi would enter I-70 at mile marker 238 at approximately 1:10pm – 25 minutes ahead of the Porsche.

The exit off of I-70 to reach the Gateway Arch’s garage is at mile marker 250, which the Porsche should reach at 1:50pm. Going off of the previous calculation for the taxi, Justin would reach the exit at 1:35pm. A 4-minute drive from exit 250B to the entrance to the Arch’s parking garage puts the Porsche’s arrival at 1:54pm, and the taxi at 1:29pm.

Based on straight calculations, the Kris and the Porsche will face a 25-minute disadvantage. These calculations are under the assumption that there are no unexpected delays of the Porsche (and Justin’s STL taxi) due to traffic or construction, and that the departure and arrival times for Justin’s flight take place as scheduled. FlightAware will provide real-time tracking of flight #1391, and Garmin will be equipping the Porche with its Nuvi, GTU-10 and Edge 500 systems. This will allow “spectators” to monitor the progress of both participants (with Google Latitude as an option to track Justin’s progress while in the taxi).

Decision: Justin wins by 25 minutes.

I invite you to join me and see how this all actually plays out. You can follow real-time conversation of the competition on twitter under the hashtag of #RaceAcrossMO.

The early morning hours of Tuesday, September 11, 2001 started out as any other at that time. I was living in Parkville with my at-the-time fiancee, Lee. She was planning to be up semi-early, as she was going to provide the ride for her cousin to the airport for a late morning flight (more on that later). We always slept with the radio on, and almost always on 98.9 The Rock, so we’d wake up with the Johnny Dare & Murphy morning show on. She woke up first, and after AA Flight 11 was flown into the WTC North Tower, 98.9 switched their audio feed over to CBS. I woke up at that point, groggy and confused as to why I was hearing CBS (I believe it was the voice of Peter Jennings) instead of the usual routine. The radio spoke of a tragic accident. We turned the tv on to CBS, and mere moments later, it happened.

“Accident” quickly turned into “ATTACK”.

We watched live as cameras showed UA Flight 175, at full speed, plunge into WTC’s South Tower. I felt a lump in my throat, and instantly got sick to my stomach. I was at a loss for words. What had we just seen? Who was doing this? What was next?

Well, we found out what was next pretty quickly. AA Flight 77 was reported as flying into the Pentagon. Now, regardless of the fact that all of these events were taking place on the east coast, I can safely assure you that I wasn’t the only one sitting in front of my tv, in tears, fearing for what was next – even while living smack-dab in the middle of the country. As far as I was concerned, nothing was off-limits. No place was safe or immune from attack. There was nothing saying that Kansas City, or any other city, couldn’t be a subject of attack.

What was left of my heart on that day got properly destroyed as we watched the WTC South Tower collapse upon itself. What was one-half of the most recognized part of the biggest skyline of America a mere 73 minutes earlier now.. simply did not exist. Then we heard the reports of UA Flight 93′s crash in Shanksville, PA. Then we saw WTC’s North Tower suffer the same fate as its counterpart.

I was numb. Paralyzed with fear of the unknown.

Somewhere amidst all of this, Lee called her cousin to inform her that plans for the airport ride wouldn’t be necessary. Her cousin had not had any sort of tv or radio on, and was completely oblivious to everything that had happened. Lee told her that her flight wouldn’t be going anywhere. She asked “Why not?”. Lee told her to turn on the tv. She replied “Which channel”? Lee’s response: “Pick one.” Moments later, she said she would call us back sometime later. The rest of my day was a blur. I would have moments of disbelief, which were quickly shunned by the fact that it was all laid out before me, on literally any channel I picked to watch.

As I mentioned towards the beginning of this, we were living in Parkville. For those not familiar with the area, Parkville is less than 10 miles south of Kansas City International Airport. We were used to being in the flight patterns of aircraft all the time. The three days of grounded commercial airlines was so surreal. We’d stand out on the balcony, used to the sounds of jet engines and sights of contrails – and there was nothing. Clear skies. Complete silence. I felt out-of-place, despite being exactly where I was supposed to be.

Then, a weird thing happened. After the numbness wore off and we all started to wake up from the fog of everything, we united as a country. Race didn’t matter. Neither did religion, or anything else. We were AMERICANS. Strangers were exchanging eye contact and courtesy nods. There was a newfound pride, and we were one. Sadly, that didn’t last very long, and we as a country were back to our old ways. The only time since then that has stood out to me, temporarily unifying us as one, was the night (and day after) President Obama went on-air and announced that Bin Laden had been captured… dead.

Here I sit, 10 years later. 3,652 days have passed, and yet the thoughts and memories of everything bring it all right back like it was just 10 days ago. I shed a few tears writing this, and channeled bits and pieces of emotion that I would be perfectly happy never feeling again. I pray that my daughter never has to experience anything like what we went through on that day. No matter how rude and inconsiderate the rest of this country may be, no matter how many more tragedies or attacks may or may not take place, the fact remains that I love my country. I am an AMERICAN. Nothing, and nobody, can or will ever take that from me.

I humbly dedicate this to everyone we lost 10 years ago this morning. We will never forget.

Tuesday, January 28th, 1986. Along with the rest of my 1st grade class and a number of other classes in my elementary school, I was in the school library. With the presence of Christa McAuliffe, the first member of the “Teachers In Space” project, watching this shuttle launch was supposed to be a pretty big deal.

We watched as the countdown commenced, reached zero, and Challenger lifted off just like it should. In what seemed like moments later (73 seconds, technically), a beautiful piece of technology suddenly became a flying cloud of smoke and debris. School staff hurried over to turn the tv off, and didn’t really know exactly how to explain what had just happened.

How DO you explain something like this to a bunch of kids?

President Ronald Regan’s address to the nation that day rang through millions of televisions. In the mind of a 7 year old, it was confusion and knowing that something went wrong, and that a teacher and her shuttlemates weren’t okay. At that time, I was too young to grasp what my parents felt when they heard the news of something like JFK’s assassination. Looking back on it now, I know exactly how they felt. I sit here now at the age of 32. 25 years later, we’ve had more than our share of moments that fall into that same category. Moments that you’ll always remember where you were when it happened.

Challenger was my first.

Word came out earlier today regarding a recall of Similac baby formula, manufactured by Abbott Laboratories (see CNN article: “Similac recalling 5 million cans of baby formula“). A few months ago, my thought would have been “Oh, that’s not good”. Now, as a father, my first thought was “Oh (crap), that’s what we give to our daughter”. After a check of the lot numbers of the two canisters that we have for our daughter (one of which she’s finished, and another which was recently started), it was verified that our two canisters were indeed a part of the recall.

Per the CNN article, Abbott Laboratories gave two sources for customers to reach out to for more information and to initiate service. Inquiries could be made either through their website (http://similac.com/recall10) or their 24/7 Customer Service hotline (800-986-8850). Their website has been unaccessible all afternoon/evening (more on this later), and the Customer Service line was giving a busy signal for quite a while.

Finally, my girlfriend Amy was able to get through and reach a CS representative on the phone. Said CS representative was very rude and disrespectful to her, and when the issue of the unavailable website was addressed, the representive’s response was “the website wasn’t built properly”.

1) Don’t ever make excuses to a customer – and if you choose to break that rule, don’t make it such as weak of an excuse as this.
2) If your website was truly not built properly, your webmaster needs to be fired, along with whoever still pays them.

As an individual, I can understand the trials and tribulations involved in running damage control, especially when it pertains to something as important as children. With that said, a positive response can yield you positive feedback from satisfied customers. Likewise, as is the case with us, a negative response will almost guarantee negative feedback.

To Abbott Laboratories, your Customer Service representative’s handling of this situation was both unprofessional and inexcusable. My family will no longer use your product.

To other parents out there who may be giving Similac to your children, I can only hope that if you’re able to get through and speak with someone on their support line (since their recall website is still unresponsive, 8+ hours later), that you get treated better than Amy did.

Sincerely,
A Concerned Father

BaconFest returned for its 2nd annual event in KC, again hosted by (and benefiting) the Rehabilitation Institute of Kansas City. Taking place in Waldo this year, BaconFest featured even more vendors, several tables of bacon-related merchandise, more live bands, and of course, another bacon-eating contest. There were also contests for the best bacon recipe (which also took place at last year’s event) and the best bacon/pork related t-shirt contest (new to this year’s event).

With more than double the competitors from last year’s event, 22 entrants took part in this year’s bacon eating contest. Contestants had 5 minutes to consume as much bacon as possible, and were allowed bottled water to assist in washing down the pork product. For the record, the winner rooted his way through 1/2 pound of bacon.

Thanks to Ameristar, Farmland Foods, Wendy’s, Shook Hardy & Bacon, 75th Street Brewery, Brookside Bistro, Grandmas Catering, Julian, KC Hopps, KC Sausage Company, Kennedy’s Kansas City, Lew’s Grill & Bar, Murray’s Ice Cream & Cookies, Pieroguys, Planet Sub, Polsinelli Shughart, The Well, Waldo Pizza, Zest, InkKC, and the city of Waldo for their involvement in this year’s event. Thanks to the Rehabilitation Institute of Kansas City for organizing this 2nd annual event, and hopefully the 3rd annual BaconFest next summer will be even bigger and better.

From video game cartridges to a D20 on a rope, from Doctor Who to binary blocks, GEEKSOAP is sure to have something to appeal to your interests. Go check out geeksoap.net and see what sort of creations Lesley has available. You can also follow her on twitter at @geeksoap.

Fast-forward to April 19th, the three chosen flavors have gone official. Introducing White Out, Distortion and Typhoon.

Dew drinkers, it’s up to you. Voice your opinions to Mountain Dew and help decided which of these three flavors will be added to the Dew roster as a permanent flavor, joining Mt Dew Voltage (the winner of the first Dewmocracy).

Cheers!

Since 1924 the American Heart Association has helped protect people of all ages and ethnicities from the ravages of heart disease and stroke. These diseases, the Nation’s No.1 and No.3 killers, claim more than 910,000 American lives a year. The association invested more than $543 million in fiscal year 2005-06 for research, professional and public education, and advocacy so people across America can live stronger, longer lives.

It’s another year, which means time for another push at supporting research for stroke and heart disease. The 2010 Kansas City HeartWalk, benefiting the American Heart Association, is on Saturday, May 22nd. This is my third year participating in HeartWalk, and my second year as a team captain (those of you who were around for the 2009 event surely remember my fire engine red hair to support the cause). Last year, I expanded my search for supporters to join my team, and the majority of my team was ultimately assembled from pure social networking. I’m hoping for 2010 to be bigger, better, and more successful. Our goal, through whatever means you have, is to collect as many donations as possible, raising funds that go directly to the American Heart Association. The HeartWalk event is whatever you wish to make of it – a destination for your journey, a celebration for your team, or even a dedication to loved ones lost to stroke or heart disease.

ABOUT THE HEARTWALK EVENT:
The HeartWalk originates and concludes in Theis Park (immediately east of the Country Club Plaza). Upon departing from Theis Park, the course takes you up and around the Nelson Atkins Museum. From there, walkers make their way down Rockhill Rd to Volker Blvd and head west. For the 1-mile walkers, the loop to return you to Theis Park brings you back up Main Street. The 1-mile walk has two designated water stations – the 4-mile walk has an additional 3 water stations throughout the course.

For the 4-mile walkers, the journey continues along the Brush Creek Walkway and through the south end of the Plaza, onto Wornall & Ward Parkway until reaching Roanoke. From there, Roanoke’s path will hook right and back onto 47th St/Cleaver II Blvd for the home stretch along the north end of the Plaza.

Before and after the walk, booths and tents are set up inside Theis Park from the various event sponsors. You can pick up educational material on how to live & eat healthier, grab a banana and some yogurt, pick up a pedometer or a stress ball, and so much more.

(note: as much as I would love every team member to be present for the HeartWalk event itself, you do not have to be present at the event in order to participate on the team)

HOW TO GET INVOLVED:
I’m looking for anyone who is interested in joining to help raise money for a good cause, as well as wrapping up the campaign by doing something that’s good for *you* as well. Anyone who would like to join team “Exist To Inspire” can do so by visiting the “Exist To Inspire” team page and click on “Join Our Team”.
http://heartwalk.kintera.org/kansascity/kcsocmed

For those involved with the Social Media Club of Kansas City, I will likely have my laptop present at the next breakfast event (April 2nd) to answer questions that anyone may have, and to provide the opportunity to register in-person.

A separate Twitter account is active, specifically for this annual event. Be sure to follow KCSocMedAHA for information. The account will be pushing out details for the HeartWalk, progress for the team, statistics for the overall Kansas City organization and much more.

If you have any questions, suggestions, or feedback of any sort, please feel encouraged to pass them along – either through comments on this blog, on twitter to the team account (KCSocMedAHA) or my personal account (vivid13).

(image courtesy of AMC Entertainment)

For the fourth year, AMC Entertaiment presents the Best Picture Showcase. I had the pleasure of taking in last year’s event, which featured five of the films nominated for Best Motion Picture for the 2009 Oscars. The moment that event wrapped up, I immediately began looking forward to this year’s presentation. With 10 films getting the nod for the Best Motion Picture race, AMC decided to split them into back-to-back Saturdays leading up to the Oscars on Sunday, March 7th. After seeing the first five movies on February 27th, I returned to see the remaining five nominees along with my partner in crime and resident movie geek Jeff Smith, was joined again by Bryan Truta of 105.1 Jack FM and recent addition to the AMC family, Shane Adams.

Up:
If there were an Oscar award given for “Excessive Cuteness”, Up would win it – hands down. Excellent movie, and Pixar delivered (as they typically do). It’s definitely not catered towards kids as much as it is to the adults, though. Some of the content might be a little strong for kids, which is justified in its PG rating. Perhaps my favorite part of Up was the dialogue expressed through the “canine-to-English” translator collars. The artwork is worth noting as well, if you’re into that sort of detail. I would love to see this be the first film of its type to win for Best Picture, although I think its competition is just too strong. With that said, Up is a MUST-SEE film, whether you’re 10 years old or 110 years old.

An Education:
A beautiful example of just what kind of quality work can come from the other side of the pond. Carey Mulligan’s lead role is brilliant, while Dominic Cooper’s character also stood out to me. Plenty of beautiful scenery due to the filming locations, and director Lone Scherfig did a wonderful job of depicting what (I can assume) is a pretty accurate depiction of London in the 1960′s.

The Hurt Locker:
Reasonably strong as far as war movies go. Its main focus is around an Army bomb squad, and part of the enjoyment of the movie is seeing how the unit comes together as a team after somehow getting their lead bombsuit operator (portrayed by Jeremy Renner) under control. The action is well-played througout, as each scene gives off the feeling of “something could go horribly wrong at any moment”. Call it a simple aspect of the overall movie, but I enjoy any scene that depicts the skill and necessary perfection of a sniper/sharpshooter.

A Serious Man:
My brief Twitter review of this stated: “Like a bad laxative, it really didn’t move me”. I’ll elaborate more here. Of all my years watching movies, “Bride Of Chucky” is the only movie I ever went to see in theaters and walked out of it, asking the venue’s manager for a refund. After seeing A Serious Man, I will never speak a negative word of BoC ever again. Utterly horrible movie, and while I did have a few spots which had me snickering at the dialogue, but even that wasn’t enough to save this trainwreck. It’s not even an issue as to whether or not I “get it” in regards to the applications of math and science. Typically, I’m not opposed to movies with open endings, because it keeps the possibility for a follow-up out there. Unfortunately, A Serious Man was an hour and 46 minutes of my life that I can never get back, and I dread even the thought of there being more where this came from.

District 9:
It felt a lot longer than the hour and 52 minutes that it is, but managed to not lose my interest overall. I was originally going to comment about shortening or outright cutting several scenes to improve the flow of the film and cut down on time, but after looking up the actual runtime, I retracted those thoughts. Part of that, however, may have been a result of my trying to wake up and recover from my mind being raped as a result of the previous film. Because of that, I do plan to give District 9 another viewing sometime, and I’m fairly sure my opinion of it will improve. For this viewing, however, it just didn’t have enough to pull me into it the way I had hoped it would. I’ve never been the biggest fan of the genre of alien movies, so there’s something to be said for that.

Out of these five films, I have to go with Inglorious Basterds. Hands down. If I had to rank them, I would go:
1 ) An Education
2 ) Up
3 ) The Hurt Locker
4 ) District 9
5 ) A Serious Man (only because I couldn’t rank it any lower)

Given my ranking of these five movies, and running that together with the five from last week (which I’ve had extra time to think about), I’ll give my opinion for how *I* would vote for this year’s Best Picture, based on nothing more than my own opinions as a movie fan.

1 ) An Education
2 ) Inglorious Basterds
3 ) Up In The Air
4 ) Avatar
5 ) Up
6 ) The Blind Side
7 ) The Hurt Locker
8 ) District 9
9)  Precious
10 ) A Serious Man

(image courtesy of AMC Entertainment)

For the fourth year, AMC Entertaiment presents the Best Picture Showcase. I had the pleasure of taking in last year’s event, which featured five of the films nominated for Best Motion Picture for the 2009 Oscars. The moment that event wrapped up, I immediately began looking forward to this year’s presentation. With 10 films getting the nod for the Best Motion Picture race, AMC decided to split them into back-to-back Saturdays leading up to the Oscars on Sunday, March 7th. I took in the first Saturday along with my partner in crime & resident movie geek Jeff Smith, and enjoyed conversation inbetween movies with Bryan Truta of 105.1 Jack FM (thank you, sir!). With that said, here are the five movies we watched, and my thoughts on each one.

Avatar:
I remember going to the movies a while back – it may have been to see Coraline. At that time, I saw a trailer for Avatar and I thought to myself, “This looks… interesting?”. After its release in December, I followed the stats week-by-week and watched the earnings for Avatar continue to grow. I haven’t had a chance to go out to movies much over recent years (due to an old work schedule that has since changed), so I never got around to forcing myself to go see it. Now I’m legitimately questioning why I didn’t. The 3D experience made it very fun, and perhaps it’s the kid in me who still enjoys going into Spencer’s Gifts, but the colors throughout the film (especially in the forest scenes) really brought life to it. I can’t deny the credits of a movie that not only keeps me “into it” and not bored at all for close to three hours, but also manages to capture my emotion throughout – from smiles and snickers to sadness and moist eyes. The score complemented the film well in many places, and that will always stand out to me.

Up In The Air:
Jason Reitman did a fine job with this, and I’m not just saying that as a St. Louis native who got plenty of view of both the inside and outside of Lambert St. Louis Intl. Airport as well as several shots in downtown STL. A friend of mine, Shane Adams, commented that Anna Kendrick arguably stole the show with her role as Natalie Keener. I would find that hard to argue, even if I wanted to. Her on-screen chemistry with George Clooney (Ryan Bingham) didn’t feel forced, nor did Clooney’s with Vera Farmiga (Alex Goran). Plenty of good lines, and a quality plot led by a solid performer. I really like UITA and think it has some strong legs.

Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire:
This one was tough to watch, I won’t lie. I do think that Mo’Nique has a strong run at best supporting actress, but that might be the only thing I really see coming out of this one (although Lenny Kravitz playing a male nurse got a good chuckle out of me). The fewer movies Mariah Carey appears in, the better.

The Blind Side:
I’d been looking forward to seeing The Blind Side since I saw trailers for it last year. For never having been a fan of Tim McGraw, I didn’t mind him at all in his role as Sean Tuohy. TBS is truly a feel-good movie (as well as a biopic), but I finished this one with the feeling that it has the feel of an ABC after-school special or a Lifetime original movie rather than a legitimate contender for Best Motion Picture. I enjoyed it as much as I was hoping I would, but I don’t see it being at the top of the list.

Inglorious Basterds:
Two words: Quentin Tarantino. When you hear that name, several things come to mind. Good screenplay. Plenty of action. Copious amounts of violence and/or blood. Basterds lived up to all of that and then some. Despite being a 2+ hour movie, there wasn’t a moment where I felt like the film was dragging or causing me to lose interest. Plenty of stereotypes, but they’re played out well. Arguably, the one thing I personally enjoyed most out of IB was the buildup to the climax of the film. You knew it was coming, all the details were worked out. it was just a matter of getting there. Then, with Shosanna Dreyfus (aka Emmanuelle Mimieux) being taken out of the picture, there was a moment of questioning whether or not the fourth spool in the film was already in place and ready to show, or if the entire plan was ruined.

Out of these five films, I have to go with Inglorious Basterds. Hands down. If I had to rank them, I would go:
1) Inglorious Basterds
2) Avatar
3) Up In The Air
4) The Blind Side
5) Precious

Coming up this Saturday (March 6th) will be the remaining five films up for Best Motion Picture: Up, A Serious Man, The Hurt Locker, An Education and District 9. I’ll follow up with another blog entry summarizing my thoughts on those five movies, and my opinion of the Best Motion Picture winner, next week.
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