Sunday, January 08, 2006

KSL in Kansas

So I was driving across country this weekend to deliver my good friends' car to them, and I was crossing into Kansas from Colorado on I-70. Whatever NPR station I had managed to snatch from the ether had finally faded, and I was itching for something else to distract me from the monotony of a night drive (and my all-too-frequent — and dangerous — episodes of falling asleep at the wheel)... when I remembered capturing the signal from KSL 1160 one cold night years earlier as I crossed the Mojave on one of too-infrequent pilgrimages to see my brother (not to mention the nearby IKEA).

At any rate, I decided to try my luck, and I dialed-up 1160... and there, in the middle of the Great American Prairie, was Doug Wright, et al. It was so surreal. Even though I prefer KSL 1160's daytime programming to its evening fair, I was mesmerized by the distance these voices had traveled — on gossamer wings, it seemed — to entertain me.

The signal was strong through to the border with Kansas, and then weaker — disappearing and then reappearing with every dip of the road — all the way to Salina, where I pulled-off for the night.

Maybe in 10 winters, I'll be somewhere else, and rediscover my erstwhile road companion — well, if satellite radio or something new doesn't kill him off altogether.

4 comments:

john f. said...

how funny that the reception for 1160 is pretty sketchy on some stretches of I-15 right in the middle of Utah!

Silus Grok said...

Hehe.

Indeed.

Anonymous said...

So I'm not the only one that falls asleep at the wheel, eh? When I was a teenager I fell asleep in a residential area one night and jumped my dad's car 40 feet before destroying the car I was driving and the one that I landed on.

Silus Grok said...

Oy.

Yeah... I don't sleep as much as I doze... I've never had an accident (thank heaven), and hope I never will. I try very hard to pull-over, but it's not always possible: rest stops are getting farther and farther away from eachother, it seems.