I presume it has been firmly established by this point that I don’t like hotel overnights at my job. I have to spend time packing then unpacking — then packing again and finally unpacking — just for ONE overnight. Then I need to spend time deciding if I want the extra firm or completely flat pillow and get woken up 15 times a night by a noisy a/c or heater. Overnights are the worst! So when they slapped an Oklahoma City overnight on my schedule, I wasn’t tremendously enthusiastic. The only remedy was to persuade Nicole to join me and suffer the same issues by my side.

So despite a flight indicating zero seats, Nicole managed to snag 11A, a window seat with a nonfunctioning window. About three hours later we were touching down (with me as pilot flying) in Oklahoma City’s Will Rogers International. I believe the consensus was that it was a smooth landing as well. There was a random Asian woman that I hired to say, “Very smooth landing!” as she was deplaning to really reinforce that.

Jumping forward two time zones from Los Angeles, we arrived after 10pm, but weren’t particularly tired yet, so we went for a walk around an area called “Bricktown.” It is Oklahoma City’s attempt to reinvigorate itself by creating an area with bars, restaurants, and stores (all closed at this hour mind you) bordering a canal. It is like a nod to San Antonio’s River Walk, but without the people (unless those people were homeless).

Honestly, it was a little eerie. It was like a ghost town with the soundtrack of people cruising around in their souped up cars — loudly revving their engines in the distance. Maybe it is a more thriving area during the day, but Bricktown didn’t dazzle. We returned to the Courtyard Marriott to wind down despite a very rowdy crowd of older folks in the lobby for some sort of convention. A convention for what? Unclear. But based on the amount of hacking coughs, maybe it was a smoker’s convention. We attempted sleep.

It was a fitful night — aided by a noisy air conditioning unit. Often times, I will crank it up just before bed and then turn it off so it doesn’t wake me during the night, but Oklahoma City was going through a bit of a heat wave with temps around 98º, so I felt we had to keep it on. Breakfast was included through a voucher given to me by the airline. It would have otherwise been the extraordinary price of $19. The breakfast was standard hotel fare if not a little worse, so the $19 price tag was unjustified. Fueled by a couple of dry muffins and a banana, we set forth on our half-day of adventures.

Ever since I had been to the Oklahoma City bombing museum and memorial last year, I told Nicole she should check it out. “When am I going to be in Oklahoma City?,” was the typical reply. With the unpredictability of airline scheduling, that day is never far off. It was about a ten minute walk to the museum, which is presently under some renovations. As a result, the layout was a bit different from my last visit. I shan’t repeat all my thoughts about the museum as I wrote about it a few posts prior. Nicole adds that she found it very-well structured and informative.

We had arrived at the museum close to its opening time, so we had a fair amount of time for more adventures before I had to suit up and get ready to fly back to Los Angeles. I suggested we check out the Myriad Botanical Gardens. There is an outside portion that is free, as well as an indoor glass-enclosed area full of humidity and other plant life. It gave Nicole a headache, but unclear if it was from the heat or the children running around screaming for no reason.

Now it was time for lunch, which was a challenge. Downtown Oklahoma City is not exactly a thriving culinary scene. This seems to be mostly due to the fact that nobody actually seems to live downtown. The only lunch establishments we could find appeared to cater to the people working in the banks or other businesses in the area. Their hours were typically something like 11am-1:30pm. I ended up getting a sandwich inside the lobby of a high rise and Nicole got a bagel from Starbucks. Now it was time to head back.

It was another full flight, but Nicole nabbed another window seat (this time with working window shade). Whilst Nicole was able to go home after arriving back at LAX, I was punished with what we call a “penalty lap” (an extra round trip tacked on at the end) to Sacramento and back after sitting for two hours in LAX. Nicole was nice enough to watch me eat Panda Express in the international terminal before she headed off to catch a taxi back home.

I was grateful that Nicole could join me on this mini adventure. Her final thoughts on OKC are as follows — people (sketchy), food (pretty bad), and museum (good). And there you have it folks, an objective assessment of Oklahoma City. I would pretty much agree with Nicole’s thoughts, though. I applaud Oklahoma City for trying to reinvent its downtown with the gardens and Bricktown and all those things, but I just don’t think the people of Oklahoma City have taken to it all. Bricktown specifically seems geared toward tourists, but what kind of tourists are coming to Oklahoma City? It’s a bit of a pickle for them, especially for a city that is likely remembered above all for being the site of a horrific terrorist attack.

Nevertheless, Nicole enjoys seeing different parts of the country even if their food and people are a bit off. She enjoyed our takeoff over the farmlands and imagined what the people living in the sparse houses at the end of lonely roads would be like — probably different than us making Turkish tea in the middle of the day back in Los Angeles. Decent overnights are few and far between for me considering I try to avoid them altogether, but I’m sure the airline will send me somewhere else soon enough. Maybe Nicole will join me.