St. Louis Gateway Arch & Flammable Jesus

So let's get back (finally) to my trip with Dan... As luck would have it, the next leg of our journey now has a very topical news tie-in as of last night, but I'll get back to that shortly...

After our couple of days at the Tulsa CTCA, we headed for Cincinnati, Ohio, where my cousin, also Dan's brother-in-law, is a Methodist preacher. Dan wanted to go there to see some of the congregation and personally thank them for praying on his behalf.

Our route took us northeastward across Missouri on I-44. (Unfortunately for me I-44 passes just a few miles—if that, even—below the southeast corner of Kansas or I would have been able to add another state to my personally-been-in list. Oh well.) Eventually we got to eastern Missouri and St. Louis where I got to see the famous Gateway Arch. I took a few pics on the way by and in the first one you'll see Dan's dreamcatcher which he had hanging from the rear-view mirror of his truck...

   

   


On to Ohio... Dave and his wife live in Cincinnati in the church parsonage in Cincinnati, but they also have a "farm house" (though they don't actually farm except for a small garden) two hours north in a very rural area. We went up and stayed overnight to do a few chores the next day. Most notably Dave bought a new hitch jack for his heavy duty Trailer which Dan had built for him years ago. The old jack apparently was not quite as heavy duty as the trailer and had suffered some damage over the years. Dan cut a square through a half-inch steel plate, placed the new jack through the hole and welded them together, then welded the plate to the trailer...




While Dan took care of the first step of cutting the steel plate and inserting/welding the hitch jack into it, Dave and I had the pleasure of offloading a pile of horse manure into the garden. It had largely dried in the sun and as such things go it wasn't too bad, but it was ripe enough at times. Sorry, no pics of the manure work.

I-75 is the main route between the farm and Cincinnati. The most notable attraction along the way is a 62' tall statue of Jesus at the Solid Rock Church. He's known by various nicknames, but "Touchdown Jesus" is the one I've always heard Dave use. The name comes, of course, from the pose with the upraised arms (just like a football official signalling a touchdown) and the even more famous image of TD Jesus at Notre Dame (which easily pre-dates Ohio's by 40 years, 1964 vs. 2004).

The few times I've been by there now, I always wanted to try to get a picture of TD Jesus. I didn't think of it in time on the trip north, but coming back I opened the rear window of Dave's truck and held my camera out to try to get a couple shots as we passed by on the opposite side of the highway. They're not great (you can easily find much better shots on the web), but here's what I got...

   


And now suddenly TD Jesus is in the news as of just last night... Who knew he was flammable? Follow the link and there's also a video available, but I didn't try to view it for myself. (Here's a really good comedic line I just read... "The Almighty has challenged the ruling on the field of a touchdown..." I'm sure there will be others, but I like that one and think it will be hard to top.)