I will not compare people or places. That’s the rule I made for myself that summer I rode my bicycle from Orlando to Seattle to Anaheim. People kept asking me, “What’s the best place you’ve seen? Who is the outstanding person you’ve met?” I didn’t know what to say. How could I pick one person or place from the many? Why did I have to? But then I found my answer. “You are the most exciting person I’ve met. This is the best place I’ve seen. Wherever I am at the moment. Whoever I’m talking to this instant. These are the best.”
Scriptures of all faiths caution us that life is brief. That we should live in the moment and find meaning everywhere and all the time. Before that summer on a bicycle, I had never really understood. But now I did. This moment is all there is. Wherever I am and whoever I’m with! That’s all there is. All other places and persons are yesterday and tomorrow. This person! This place! They are my only present. To be fully present in this moment, I cannot let my mind and heart be elsewhere. If while I am in this place and talking to this person, I am mentally comparing them to others I know, I am cheating myself and them. Suppose I had come to this place or this person before knowing those others. I could not then compare. I would know them as themselves.
Since that summer that has been my goal. To know every place and every person without reference to another. Just as themselves. So today, Saturday, April 16, 2005, as the 14 of us pedal away from Biscari Brothers Bicycles in Liberty, we are bound for City Diner in Kansas City, Missouri. This is our second year of Saturday morning rides. But our first ride into the city. Country roads in other directions have beaconed.
“Home of the Big Foot Pancake.” That’s what the sign in the window says. But I see it only as we stand in the parking lot after breakfast. Russ and I had been the last to arrive. Everyone’s bike was lined up against the front of the diner, riders standing about. The door opens and a waitress steps out. “We have room for four, and two other tables are about to leave,” she says. We are soon seated at four nearby tables. Dave Biscari knew we were riding here. He makes a cameo appearance. Greet us. And is gone.
A half order of biscuits and gravy! My standard Saturday morning fare. And one pancake, I tell the waitress. “Can you eat all that?” Several ask at once. They must have seen the sign. I’ve been to City Diner only one other time, just 13 days ago. I ordered b&g then without looking at the menu. I didn’t see any pancakes.
I can’t believe my eyes when it comes. It must be a half-inch thick, On all sides it over hangs the dinner plate it comes on. It absorbs syrup like a sponge. I down the b&g while it’s hot. I have to leave half the pancake. Some guy named Troy ate six at one time, our waitress says. With sugar free syrup.
At the corner of 3rd Street and Grand Avenue, City Diner sits on the northeast corner of City Market. On this gorgeous spring morning City Market is alive with color and people. Out Liberty Drive to Midjay Drive to Stewart Road to Highway 69 through Claycomo to Vivion Road to Antioch Road to Prather Road to Vernon Road to Armour Road to Swift Street to 12th Street to Burlington Street, across the Heart of America Bridge to 3rd Street: 15 miles of fairly flat roads with shoulders and/or four lanes and moderate traffic. Flowering trees, gentle breezes and good company have whetted our senses for the soul-satisfying ambiance we find.
City Diner will join Fubbler’s Cove, Mill Inn, JJ’s, Sarah’s Table and Catrick’s as frequent Saturday morning destinations. Each is an incomparably good place where good people await.
HateBusters
Box 442
Liberty, MO 64069
Phone: 816-803-8371
e-mail: hatebuster@aol.com
No Boundaries On Our Soul!
