May 18th – May 24th 2026
This post is continuing from https://myvoice.rajeevkuruganti.com/2026/07/22/columbia-to-denver/ . This post concludes my trip from Littleton, CO to Columbia MO.
After my night stay in Hays, Kansas, I drove into Denver, Colorado on Monday May 18th and took care of some paper work at the county offices in Littleton. After that, I checked into my hotel room and then went to grab a bite to eat. My friend and tennis doubles partner for over 8 years joined me for dinner.
Suraj Rawal
Suraj Rawal works (yes he is working at age 82) at Lockheed Martin. He still plays tennis. He was my first captain in tennis team in Denver Colorado. I played with him every weekend when I resided in Colorado. We also share other things like we both came as grad students for Phd and cooking, reading books, etc. It was good to meet him and catch up with him telling jokes in hindi and talking about our late tennis players and who is still playing etc. Suraj and I played on two different winning teams.
One of the tennis teams we played, I was the captain in 2007 and Suraj was the strategist (weak points on other teams, who to pair against which opponent etc), we went all the way to the finals without losing a set in 10 weeks of competition. We lost, in the finals, to an exceptional team; that was the same year New England Patriots went 16-0 and lost in the super-bowl to the NY Giants.
Another time, he was the captain and we went win the sectional championships for NTRP 3.0. He told me he still has my championship t-shirt (in his tennis bag for the last 17 years) and gave it to me on this visit.
Doug Oyer
The next day I met Doug and Jean and had dinner with them and caught up on the news of our kids and their grand kids. I have known Doug since 1995 and we have been friends approximately for that long.
Doug Oyer and I worked together in 3 different companies and unfortunately, for me he was my boss in all 3 companies. We worked on more than 10 different client projects as IT consultants between 1995 to 2004. We had a team of guys and we all worked when we could together.
Over time, as Doug and I lived close by, we became family friends. We were honored to be invited to Sara and Brad’s wedding which Prena and I attended in 2018.
When Sara was studying her fellowship in NYC, Doug came over to visit her. We all caught a Yankee’s game with Prena, Navan, Sara, Doug and Brad. There are photos of the wedding and the yankees game which I will post if i can find them.
Below is a pic of Doug and Jean and me on this visit.
During the day time, I worked at the storage trying to empty it out and move stuff into a smaller storage as most of the things in the storage was not needed and the monthly rates were going up. I also had some other paper work to complete at the Jefferson county office which I had to complete in person.
The following day I met with ex-co-worker from Altoros, Pavel Orda. Pavel and I worked in Altoros for a few years together. He had moved on from Altoros and moved to Colorado for another job. He is doing good. We had dinner the next day. Pavel is from Belarus and was an employee of Altoros in Belarus and then came over to USA for client work. He has taught me how to write unit tests using Mockito and also some cool stuff on cloud and of course, k8s.
Back to Columbia
I left on Friday morning on 24th May back to Columbia, MO. On the way, I stopped at Goodland, KS to see this below.
This is the 80 foot easel was erected in 2001 and is a replica (24×32 feet) painting of Van Gogh’s Three Sunflowers. This was painted by Canadian artist Cameron Cross in Altoona, Canada and was moved to Goodland, KS. More information can be found https://www.thetopsideofkansas.org/community/plan-your-visit/attractions/big-easel.
After spending the night midway between Goodland, KS and Kansas City, KS; I drove the next day to Columbia MO.
Harry Truman Library and Museum
Near, Kansas City, MO is a suburb/town called Independence, KS. This is where President Truman Library and Musuem is housed. He was the president before Dwight Eisenhower and after my favorite president (of US) Franklin Delano Roosevelt. During WWII while the plans were in motion for D-Day and FDR was meeting Churchill and other allies commanders, he passed away. the Vice president was Harry Truman who took over the reigns from FDR.
Truman got a lot of accolades and praise for ending D-day, Atom bomb on Japan and other stuff which FDR started and passed away before he could see the results. Public is fickle and they gave Truman the credit without looking at what he had already started doing to the country by running it down and adding more nepotism in the cabinet. For all of his wrong doings, it did not matter and he won in land slide victory to serve a second term.
His second term was poor as he spread a lot of fear into people of communism, started war in Korea (not needed), ignored the folks coming back from WWII who needed help to restart their lives with their families, and a host of other programs which did not succeed. This is well documented in the library. One of the quotes of Jean Paul Sartre actually (to me) captures how American government felt after bombing and most countries becoming communist, is below:
I did not like the man as a president and it showed me the flaws in our political system and so much so I did not click any photos of the library and musuem.
However, during my visit, there was an exhibition of 250 years of US circulating the country in honor of 250 years of US independence from the British. So I was able to capture those timelines as seen below:
Finally, I got out of the museum without any mementos or good memories of the man and his tenure in office, and drove to Columbia, MO to be with Navan and Prena.
Final Leg
For a week, Prena and I hung out at Navan’s place and then left on May 30th 2026 back to Monroe Township, NJ with a stop over in Dayton, OH.
The complete journey from Monroe Township, NJ -> Chicago, IL -> St. Louis, MO, Columbia, MO – Littleton, CO is about 1927 miles, one way and then back.
Thank you for reading the posts, and please leave a comment.
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