A visit to the most haunted city in Kansas

This past weekend Traci and I skipped our annual trek to the Brew Fest in Parkville, KS for the adventure of a lifetime. Our friends Jamie and Jeff invited us to go to Atchison, Kansas and take the "Haunted Tour" and then check out a house that was supposed to be inhabited by a ghost or two.

We drove about an hour North of Kansas City to the small town of Atchison and pulled into the Chamber of Commerce about 2pm. The haunted tour started at 6pm so we had some time to kill. We all decided to take the "Historical City Tour" and then go and grab something to eat. The city tour consisted of a ride on a pseudo trolley train through the streets of Atchison. We saw all three birthplaces of Amelia Earheart, the bluff that Lewis and Clark rested on for two days, lots of huge houses, and a half dozen haunted houses.

Our city tour chariot

Traci and Bill getting ready to board

The only way to ride.. back seat

This was a party house back in the day. The 3rd floor is a ball roomA view from the porch of the party house
Amelia Earhart's birth place

A picture of Amelia Earhart made of flowers

The tour lasted an hour and we were dropped off at the Chamber of Commerce with 3 hours to kill. We decided to drive back to some of the sites we saw on the tour and explored them on foot. We grabbed a bite of Mexican food and headed back for our 6pm scary tour.

Our haunted house tour chariot

The Gargoyle house

The gargoyles

The haunted house tour took place on the same trolley and went up and down some of the same roads we had been on earlier. The main difference between the tours was that the haunted one played ghost stories with scary music from an MP3 player. One other interesting thing that we noted on the tour was that there was LOTS of houses that had people gathered on the front porches. Not just one or two people, but 10-15 and they were grilling and drinking beers. Each group would stop what they were doing when the trolley rolled by and waved to us. I felt like a celebrity waving every couple of minutes to all the town folk. :-)

About an hour later, we completed our tour and wound up back where we started. One of the houses we saw on the tour was the Sallie house. This was a house that was allegedly haunted by a small girl that died from a ruptured appendix while she was being operated on before the anesthesia took affect. This place is usually closed to the public; however, it has been opened in the past for ghost hunters and some TV shows looking for ghosts. We were in for the treat of a lifetime as the house was being opened to the public for the first time ever and for a mere $10 a piece we were on our way.

We pulled up to the house and were greeted with a brief history of the house and asked to put on a pair of booties. The house was empty with the exception of an operating table, a bed, and some children's toys. People were milling about in every room taking pictures, laying on the floor and sharing ghost stories. The basement had been blocked off and no one was allowed to venture downstairs... more later... We took pictures all over the house and then ventured back on the porch to chat with the tour hosts. While on the porch, we were looking at the pictures we took and noticed that some of them had these white orbs in them. One of the hosts, Cindy, explained that these images were ghosts and we were lucky to have captured them.

The front of the Sallie house

The scary basement

In the living room... we have matching booties

Orb in one of the rooms

After dark orb

This got Traci, Jeff and Jamie all pumped up and they headed back in for more pictures. I spent the next hour getting to know the town people and hearing lots and lots of ghost stories. I learned that people thought that there were a couple of ghosts in the house. 1 was the small girl and the other was a not so friendly ghost who lived in the basement. Cindy explained that a while back a TV crew had been in the basement taping and ended up running out of the house as the ghost in the basement completely freaked them out. The crew said that they thought there was a vortex in the basement and they felt a lot of evil down there. Cindy believes that this is the reason the owner was keeping people from going down below. The house finally closed down at 9pm and Traci and company were kicked out. :-)

Two freaky things happened while I was perched on the porch. A lady came running out of the house completely freaked out. She was looking down into the basement and said she felt all the hair on the back of her neck stand on end and heard something coming from the basement directed at her. The second freaky thing came from a girl scout who was visiting from a nearby city. She took a picture out of one of the upstairs windows and in the reflection of the window was the image of a person in a dress. A real ghost hunter had been roaming around the house and was very interested in the picture. I saw the picture a couple of times and can confirm what was on the camera view finder. Weird stuff!!!

After the closing of the house, we went on a drive to find a place called Molly's Hollow. It was a place that was haunted by a girl who died after she professed her love to a boy and he told her to get lost. The Hollow was in the middle of a very dark park and we drove around for 15-20 before giving up on finding it. I asked everyone if they wanted to get out and walk in the park but no one stepped up to the challenge. :-)

We started our journey home and arrived about 11pm. We were all exhausted from our ghost hunting adventures in North Eastern Kansas.

I hope all your adventures are as exciting as ours.

Bill and Traci

Royal's home opener 2009

This year's home opener has already come and gone. Friday, April 10th was not only Good Friday but also the opening day for the Kansas City Royals. Every year one of our dear friends has access to a handful of tickets to opening day that includes a pre-game party, T-shirt and a ticket to a future Royals' game. This year a handful of tickets were reserved for fellow Cerner peeps and friends.

Bill, Scott, Bryan, Julie and Sarah "Cerner Peeps"

Last year, the weather was cold and rainy and unfortunately, it looked like we were in for more of the same as it was 44 degrees at 9am and raining pretty hard. Mother nature did her thing and by noon the sun was out and it was a balmy 50ish degrees out. About a 100 people gathered for the pre-game festivities and the game itself was sold out.

Bill and Traci

Matt and Amy Sims

Matt "double fisting"

Joy and Chuck

Julie and John Stoner - Yes, it is a Snuggy

Over the off season, the stadium underwent some significant upgrades and changes. Two major changes that were "supposed to" make a huge impact were more concession stands and a higher ratio of toilets per person. Either the area we sat in had LOTS of people or the stadium failed in their efforts. I spent about 3 innings waiting for the bathroom, they ran out of Miller Light and I didn't even attempt to get nachos as the line was TOO LONG at the only concession stand that sold them.

Statue of Royalty??

The Royals just came off a winning road trip and I was feeling pretty confident about taking on the Yankees and coming out victorious. The National Anthem was played by a jazz player on the saxophone and four A-10 Thunderbolts did a fly over.

A10 flyover

Regardless of the fact that we were in the nosebleed section, the view was incredible and we were one of the only sections that experienced sunshine for the entire game. The Royals ended up losing the game 1-4 and we ate way too many sunflower seeds and peanuts... My lips are still numb. Once the game was over, we sat on the tailgate of my truck and watched the mass exodus.

Bill, Matt, Amy and Traci

Someone has been working way too hard. ;-)

I hope your Good Friday was as good as ours!

Bill and Traci

How do you define a friend?

The picture below was taken about 8 years ago at Magic Mountain in California. We were getting ready to go into the park for a day of roller coaster madness when the camera people stopped us to take this picture. I purchased the picture later that day as it was one of the best times I had had in a while. I screamed like a girl the entire day. :-)

Me, Mike and Patrick McQueen

This picture has had a place on the top of my desk through all those years. It made the move from Tustin to Tucson and now with me in Kansas City. The other day I was looking at it and realized that I had a fanny pack on... funny, I didn't remember ever wearing one of them back in the day. ;-) So I asked Patrick, the guy in flip-flops, if he noticed that I wore a fanny pack. He laughed so hard and said "yeah man, I remember that fanny pack". I asked him why he never said anything to me or gave me crap and he said "that was just you".

So to answer my question: A friend is someone who will hang out with you regardless of how dorky you look. :-)

I hope you find and stay in touch with your true friends!

Bill

Oh boy

A while back the company I work for asked me to do a recruiting interview. The taping was to take place in a part of town known for its cool shops, fancy restaurants and basically a nice place to spend the day walking around, The Country Club Plaza.

As most of you know, I do not fair well in high heat and humidity. As luck would have it, the day of the interview the temperature was warm and the humidity level was just enough to suck the moisture out of my body.

The interview was 30+ minutes of them asking questions and me answering them with little to no thought behind what I was going to say. I am usually not short on words; however, with a two cameras in my face I found it difficult to remember my name.

About a month later, I received an email letting me know that the recruiting video had been edited and I could view it. I was pleased to see that they only used about 5 seconds of my entire interview. I think I said something like, "The Chief, Royals, blah blah blah.... :-)

This past weekend I took a recruiting trip to Arizona and made the most shocking discovery. The remaining portion of the interview was used and put on the Cerner recruiting site for all the world to see.

If you go to the link below and click on "Campus Candidates", you will go to a new page that has 5 silhouettes. Hover until you find me and click to enjoy my sweating story.

http://www.cernercareers.com/

Take care and I hope your surprises are a big as mine!!

Bill

Spring Break 2009

It is that time of the year again. Traci and I packed up and headed out to see my family in California. We planned out the trip so that we would arrive in Sacramento on Sunday night, drive up the coast and through the redwoods on Monday and hang out in Paradise until Thursday afternoon.

Our travel to California was uneventful and Monday morning excursion went off as planned. We drove from Sacramento to Fort Bragg in the morning and enjoyed some quality time on the beaches and cliffs overlooking the beaches. Our rental car was a convertible which made the trip up the coast that much more memorable. There is nothing more refreshing than having the wind whip through your hair and feeling the rain catch you on the forehead from time to time. Yeah, it rained on and off again during our drive but the faster we drove the more the rain went right over the top of us. :-)

Fort Bragg

You have to love the Pacific

Professing our love in the sand

Our coastal chariot

We left our scenic Highway 1 drive and headed inland to Highway 101 to go through the redwood forest. Traci had mentioned that she took a trip with her family many years ago to the redwoods and during that trip drove through a huge redwood tree. I broke the news that there were quite a few redwood forests and that the odds of finding that same tree were pretty slim. As we were making our transition from Hwy 1 to the 101, there was this LARGE sign that read "Drive through redwood tree ahead" and as luck would have it, it was the same one that Traci experienced as a young one. :-)

Traci re-living one of her childhood memories

We made it.. barely

We spent the next few hours getting in and out of the car to gawk at the monster redwoods and walk through the forest. The time spent out there was priceless! A light mist was falling, the wind was whipping through the tops of the trees, and the sound of the river could be heard when we were walking around.

Where the redwood trees live

One of many small rivers running through the redwoods

Redwood, fern, and us

I mapped our route in Kansas City and so far everything was going as planned. We were on time and about where I thought where we would be at 4 in the afternoon. According to the map, the most direct route to Paradise was Highway 36 and based on how fast we had been driving we should have been able to cover this distance in a couple of hours. That was before we knew that it was an old logging road that went right over the tops of the mountains and was nothing but curves. If you have been on a curvy road before, you have seen the 25mph warning signs for sharp corners. This road had them every 1/4 mile and the slowest warning was 10mph. We experienced the following during our 4 hour journey: Stripped cars, the lines disappeared from the road for several miles, clouds on the road, snow, rain, and unbelievable views.

We eventually made it to Paradise after spending 13 hours in the car and were able to spend some quality time with the family.

Hope your Spring Break was as exciting and memorable as ours.

Bill and Traci