May 25, 2021 Day 38: Oklahoma City, OK

The kids are in the middle gazebo 两个小孩在中间亭子里

Met another good friend, see her face on the carpet? The one met before (new mexico, see blog)put moustache. 和另一个好朋友见面了。在看毯子上的她的t-shirt做的。上次见面的好朋友（new mexico, 看前面的博客照片)在她照片上画了胡子。

I met with a friend and as a joke, we decided to first go to the Banjo Museum. It was actually very informative and well-organized. It went through the origins of the banjo from African roots to people who were enslaved adapting it to their situation. There were banjos in glass cases of all different kinds - some very old and handmade, others plated with gold and embedded with intricate designs of mother-of-pearl. While we were exploring the women of banjo exhibit, a man from the office came by with a banjo strung around his neck and played us a few tunes. He showed us the style he usually uses, a three-finger picking style, and also a guitar-like strumming style that was used for the four-string banjos. He told us about falling in love with the banjo and going with his wife to a country in Africa where he learned about the roots of the instrument. His passion was palpable.

We went to Baker Street Escapes next, an escape room. The building had a TARDIS, and a vintage scuba helmet, and shelves of books. The man pulled open a bookshelf to lead us to our puzzle. Our room revolved around a mysterious murder and the grounds of a zoologist. We needed all the clues but were very close to solving it, as the man explained to us afterwards. Apparently, he created all the escapes. He told us about how he loved mysteries as a child and read Sherlock Holmes and other books. He even showed us a flow chart of a new escape room he was designing at the moment, with different colored blocks indicating alternative clue-streams. Apparently, the escape room in Baton Rouge Indiana is the best one, including such things as a moving airplane and a human-sized hamster wheel. The items in the rooms were sourced from antique shops and his mother painted some of the murals. There were also different easter eggs around the puzzles, like the chemical formula on the wall for escaping gravitational pull, and the painting sourced as a replica of a 17th century piece.

In the evening, we had a barbeque with my friend’s family in Hefner Park. We walked around the lake and while we were talking, the fish jumped out and made splashes. Her mother had made everything from hand, bean pie and bean soup made with navy beans, veggie and salmon burgers since her whole family was vegetarian too.