Week 4
“Omaha- way down town in middle America.” I din’t really dig the Counting Crows when I was growing up, but now that I am older, respectively, I enjoy them much more. Omaha is a seriously rad city, with seriously cool things to do, in a seriously bland part of U.S.A. What the initial draw was to get people to come to this area, I’ll never be sure, but it seems that they got the right people in the right seats on the bus, because this city is the shit. I’m sure if you’ve lived here long enough, then you can find some problems with it, but even if you have the nicest car in the world, you still have to change the oil in it sometimes.
Once we depart with our last host, we pedal through the city until we reach our new host’s domain. Seems like a cool area. She(known from here on as KL) is waiting on the steps for us when we pull up; after the recent travel details, seeing her smile was one of the most uplifting things I’ve come across. She invites us in, multiple bikes piled inside the opening corridor. Her man(known as JH) was at work(high school band director; one of the more awesome jobs one can have. It always seems like one of those things that will stress you to no end, and you can hardly stand a minute of it, but always go back with pleasure. That is at least how every band director has ever came off in my mind). The house is awesome, she’s awesome, and he was awesome too. This was the best of conversations on the trip so far. I felt a connection to these two. The man of the house and I bantered back and forth about anything and everything through the whole weekend over plenty of beers. The woman of the house took us for some awesome tours on Saturday after Lauren, myself, and these two had toured around the city on bicycles for a few hours. Omaha has a few stock yards that reminded me of the stock yards in Fort Worth, which happened to be a way more awesome place than I would have imagined back when I was there in 2011. JH had to go to work in the early afternoon, as the band had a parade to march through. KL took us around after we picked up her two unbelievably well behaved and pleasant children. We had food truck tacos(inarguably one of the best things in the world) and went to the parade. I love these types of fans fairs. There is absolutely no reason for this many people to gather together, and yet they do it, just to show of, solicit, and advertise. But I feel it is more than that. Hometown parades are a bonding experience, and although most are there for solicitation, it really is a service to the greater community. You can see how people and businesses make improvements through the years, but if you take a second and look at what you really see–parents holding their children’s hands, kids smiling and laughing, and people enjoying each others company. I was glad to be a part of it.
Once the parade was over and we convened at the house, JH meet up with me, and he and I went around to some microbreweries and talked about music and personal preferences. This will remain one of my more memorable moments of the trip. JH commutes a fair distance to work every day, as does KL, but JH was taking me on the trip of a life time-for me anyways. He is a seasoned street rider, and he blows through the roads with an intensity that I’ve yet to see paralleled. When we were in Chicago and had our seasoned vet escort us out of the city, it was intense. When I was with JH on this day, it was near reckless, and I loved it. We were weaving through traffic and bombin’ down hills like I have never done. It was also an extreme pleasure because we had no weight to bare, and I feel in love with my bicycle as a machine I could use on a day to day basis upon my return to Asheville, at this very moment. We came down one hill that took us back to the KL/JH residence and my computer clocked us at thrifty four miles per hour, a new personal record(PR) at this point. I hooked up some Thai food for all of us, and we had organized a vehicular escort to pick us up later on the next day, so we got to chill on Sunday morning. JH and I had more beers, and more great conversation was had by all of us as the night went on.
We took it very, very easy on Sunday morning, waited for our ride, who was the cousin of our hosts in Iowa City, who put us up with her sister in Grinell the next night, and here we are in the next state, staying with another family member. These types of connections are so awesome, and one of the reasons why traveling like this has a huge up on other forms of travel. Unless you go to bars, it is hard to come across people in this manner who are willing to extend their network into yours, often seeming to over compensate, because we seem so limited by our mode of transportation. Very cool.
A storm is brewing and the cousins arrive. They are just leaving their sons graduation, who just graduated from UNO(University of Nebraska, Omaha). We feel like we are making good time, since we are traveling straight north, which is out of the way of our destination, which is Norfolk, NE, which is situated more east, but still north east. This alternate route is being executed because of the storm that you can see, as NE is flat, and is obviously about to become very, very nasty. As the weather reports unfolded, we had to find shelter from near golf ball sized hail. As further wether reports unfolded, the outskirts of Omaha were hit by a rather large tornado, and our host had posted a video on facebook of the wind ravaging their street. This shit was intense, and the fact that we had organized this ride, with these great people, through this terrible weather, turned out to be more lucky than we could have ever imagined. We made it to Norfolk, where we knew that we were going to take another rest day, as the weather reports had indicated that it was going to be cold, and rainy.
Cold indeed-thirty some-odd degrees, and windy. Tucked tight, we had organized with our host to cook Thai food, as today is Lauren’s birthday, and this was her one birthday wish. You can not go wrong with Thai food twice in three days, or two days, or one day for that matter. The husband had to leave town for work, and his wife and son were available to chauffeur myself to a grocery store to gather this dinner, and future provisions, as we have known that once we hit Nebraska, warmshowers hosts and campgrounds, not to mention grocery or convenience stores were becoming a thing of the past. Planning is important at this point. Dinner was great, and the company was very nice on the cold and gloomy day.
They showed us some of the wood work the husband of the house had completed, and it was truly world class. His brother had died in his late forties or early fifties from cancer, and he had always wanted to build a canoe from wood, so upon his death, the husband took on this role as a memoriam to his deceased brother. This was the nicest canoe I’ve seen in all my years, and everything else he had done and was teaching his sone to do were of the same quality. We had a long day planned ahead and an early bed time was in order.
We were excited to attack this day after being locked inside because of the weather, and also because our entire route was going to consist of one road, a bicycle trail dubbed the Cowboy Trail, for the entire ride. Our destination was O’Neill, NE, and it was going to be a long haul with prevailing winds pushing strong.
Step 1-alter plan to different route as Cowboy trail is indeed unfit for touring bikes. Choppy bullshit, pink quartz, gem wannabe, fucking shiester trail is what it should have been called. We were pushing around six miles an hour on the gravel, and eight miles an hour on the pavement, with the went coming against us. Getting there 33% quicker sounds awesome, pavement it is.
Step 2- If your goal is to go north west, you should never turn left. We turned left. After making amazing time and covering 24miles rather easily with the wind to our backs, we realized that we had went 24miles out of the way. It is quicker to continue on an alternate route, but round trip is going to put us 35+ miles out of our way, which is terrible, since we already had to go 80some miles against the wind to begin with. The wind was treacherous, and seemed to be a mockery to our existence. after we reach a lunch point, we sit down, and throw up the thumb.
A nice man doing lawn services lets us throw the bikes on his fresh grass clippings, and we sit in the truck with a break from the wind, for six miles. This was as far as he was going, but at the least this was an hour time saver. We pedal to the nearest gas station, which has coffee, and hope to come across another ride. The plan at this point was to camp at a church, and we had spoken with the pastor a few times already about what we were doing, when we were going to be there, and the like. Today I had spoke with him again about our predicament, and how it wasn’t going to work out. Tough luck.
After an hour, we give up hope on catching a ride and decide to just plop on another church lawn in the next town, 11 miles away. We’ll be getting there around seven p.m. Unwilling to accept our current fate, I look at the advertisement on the side of a large diesel with a trailer, and it says O’Neill, NE, on the side.
“Hello, Sir?”
“Uh, yeah?”
“Goin’ to O’Neill?”
“I am.”
“Okay. I know you have never seen me before, but my girlfriend and I am trying to make it to O’Neill today, and without the help of someone like yourself, that will not happen, and we will be forced to set up camp somewhere in the next 10 to 15 miles, and it is supposed to get down to 28degrees tonight. Would you be willing to help us out?”
“Ha ha, I don’t know man. I’ve never had any one ask me for a ride before.”
“Listen, I know it’s strange, but this is the only chance I’ve got, so I’m going with it.”
“Get your girl and let’s go.”….Fuckin’ A-right.
Once I get Lauren and we’re all loaded and in the truck, he mentions that it must have taken some balls to ask a total stranger for a ride, so if I was willing to do that, how could he say no. It was his first hitch hiking experience-Glad I could pop your cherry.
I call the priest of the church, and he welcomes us, again, to sleep at the church, except he’ll put us inside as it is supposed to dip well below freezing tonight. He’s out of town but his wife will meet us at the church.
Get to the church, meet with the wife, she takes us to the basement, and introduces us to a new friend, Jr. After the wife leaves, Jr offers to lock up the church and let us sleep at his house. Sound super. He throws us some cash for supper, and the keys to the old Chevy truck to grab some Mexican grub. Come to find out, Jr. is running for a political office, uncontended, and the primaries are tonight, so once we get back to his house, radios blair loudly with the ring of political cheers and jeers. He has offered to help us find a ride up the highway somehow, but was drawing a blank at the moment. Perhaps the primaries took a primary seat in the interior of his cerebral cortex. In the morning I sat with him while he made a few phone calls before conceding a ride would not happen going west. Lauren and I have decided at this point that if anyone were going clear to the Rockies in Wyoming, we’d be willing to go the distance. He called the local radio station and asked the radio host to put our pleas on the airwaves. Regardless, now we pedal. Onward.
We are pedaling, cold, windy, and relatively bitchy for the first few miles, we accept our current fate and strive further, one pedal stroke at a time. I hear the sound of gears winding as an engine down shifts, and see a huge tractor trailer pull beside me in my peripherals.
“You the bikers I just heard on the radio looking for a ride?”
“Yeah.” I holler back over the road noise and semi-engine clutter.
“Stop, I’m puling over for you.”….and righteous.
We throw our bikes in the empty trailer bed, hop in the cabin, and he tells us that he heard our story on the radio, and figured we had to be the only ones that were crazy enough to be biking in the Nebraska on the highway at this time of year. He also told us that his son had told him a story last night, about him picking up two cyclists form a gas station who were looking to cover some ground and stay in O’Neill, where he was going back home to. What luck. He is only going 44 miles, but that is more than a half-days journey for us. Once he drops us off, with some ridiculously good home made cookies(he used to own a bakery before his wife went into some health complications and he had to take a job as a trucker to be able to spread his time and money out), we pedal twelve more miles to a town called Ainsworth, NE. We try to hitch hike from here, unsuccessful and bike to a town called Johnstown. A friend of Lauren and mine has a friend in Johnstown, who’s house had flooded the night before and couldn’t host us, but he had a friend who worked at the post office, who lived in a town called Valentine, who would drive us there. He also had a friend in Valentine who wasn’t on warmshowers but had helped folks out before. We sit at the post office for a few hours, and the friend of a friend’s wife actually delivers us some cheesecake and other sweets. It was the friend of a friends birthday(lucky us). Sweet shit is tha shit after pedaling against the wind for eight hours. The post office man took us to the Snake River, and this is the moment that my eyes begin to open, and I start to realize that Nebraska is totally underrated.
We call the lady friend in Valentine, she sounds stuffy, but accepting of our situation, and willing to put us up. Post-office man drives us to her house, and she seems kinda stuffy in person as well, but says “kids, when you are in Nebraska, you eat steak.” She took us to a little dive spot in a flat-one floor motel, and it-fucking-rocked. I’ve got a little restaurant and culinary experience, and to the people who know the industry is in their hearts, this is the little hole in the wall that makes your wet dreams come true. An unsuspecting dive, that without the neon signs lit, you wouldn’t be the wiser to it even being open for business. The set up is cramped, but the food is absolutely perfect. Lauren had a NY Strip that could rival-equally- most that I’ve had. I had a brisket/pulled pork combo sandwich that almost brought tears to my eyes. Perfect coleslaw, a decent bun, gobs of thoroughly melted cheese, and a side of grilled fries-yes, grilled, fries. Shit was dank to the tenth degree.
Our new host(dubbed for our purposes as Major), with her two young boys, took us for a tour of Valentine. My eyes continue to open to Nebraska, and I believe that I am falling in love with the state. After a few conversations with Major(think Joseph Heller) she says that she is going to play hooky tomorrow, and transport us what ends up being around 180 miles, which is four days in ‘bike time’. Not only that, she is going to take us into South Dakota and let us roam around the Badlands. Holy shit, shit just took a major turn. She takes us through some National Park lands as the moon came up, and the full moon lit up the ground for exploration as we took the minivan on bumpy dirt roads. Maybe Major’s stuffiness was only a temporary cold that had been alleviated.
We wake in the morning, load up the gear, and hit the road after a ballin’ ass breakfast that Major had hooked up for from some of the leftovers the night before and we drank plenty of coffee. After the kids take off for school we head off through the plains, and the landscape becomes more amazing as every mile passes. We swing through an American Indian Reservation that invoked a somber mood; government housing totally neglected and run down, trash every where. We had seen a few filthy properties on this drive, as some of the people who live here have taken it on themselves to use their lawns as dumps since there is clearly no where within a reasonable distance to sling your trash. It was honestly kinda sad. Once we refuel and the landscape turns back to uninhabited, Major cranks the radio, and proceeds to put on one of the more amazing performances of my life. She couldn’t sing particularly well, but she did something that I love to do, and continued to play steering wheel drums to every song that came on while we cruised down the road in the minivan at over 90mile per hour. She was a teen in the ’80’s, and had clearly owned the albums of, and had be to the concerts of every artist that came on Classic Vinyl, and Classic Rewind on Sirius XM. We played name that tune and band for points- she knocked my fuckin’ socks off. Blew me out of the water with a score of something like 55 to 12. My youth could not be foiled at this point.
We come to the Badlands and eat at the restaurant just past the entrance. Major had explained to us that she was from ‘old money’, and we won’t have to worry about too much today. The food was decent, but I am more excited about this National Park than almost anything I’ve been excited for, because 1) my friends had visited here on an epic road trip and the pictures inspired me, and 2) we were not coming here despite being so close. One truth has remained through our journey thus far, and nothing is convenient when you are on a bicycle. Badlands was not supposed to happen because our time frame would not allow. The fact that I am here right now is beyond me, and despite how desolate and sparse NE was supposed to be, not to mention cold and windy, the warmth of people that we have met that we are now seriously ahead of what our schedule was, and are getting to see amazing things that we were not supposed to see. I’m so stocked at this point I can barely contain myself, not to mention that Major blared the tunes that warmed my soul. After this many weeks on the road, listening to the same classic rock station that I’ve heard my entire life that you can almost guess the set list to, broadcast through my home town, sounds like the best thing ever. These weren’t that radio station, but the music was on point.
We get to the first hiking point, walk a ways, and start to read some of the historical boards placed throughout the walking paths. I see pictures of people in the 1920’s and ’30’s with their Model T’s and picnic blankets thrown out with vast amounts of food, experiencing the same views that I am now, and the only thing that I could think was how when Fred T. designed the Model T, he clearly had a different vision of what traveling was supposed to be in comparison to the person who invented the bicycle. God bless the automobile; at this point, I’m experiencing first world problems, and so glad to be traveling with Lauren and Major in the minivan.
The views around Badlands are so amazing, the structures, rock formations, and life around is mind boggling. After we peace outta the Badlands, we end up taking a wrong turn, and Major decides that we might as well drive through the Black Hills and see Mt. Rushmore anyways, even though we had discussed how it wasn’t an option earlier that day. Life gets better and better. We stop in Rapid City, walk around the town which seems pretty darn awesome, and then drive by the Presidents, forever etched in stone, providing their faces don’t erode off. We also saw what was completed of the Crazy Horse memorial, and then continued on our journey to a place called Fort Robinson, in Harrison, NE. Major paid for our room, the time had changed to Mountain Time, and she had to get back to Central Time, and it was now 1:00a.m. Mountain Time, and she had 180+ miles to go. God speed, Major. Thank you for my most memorial moments of the trip. JH and LK, thanks to you, for allowing me to connect with folks other than Lauren, on a personal level for the first time in a month. And thanks to Nebraska, for taking the ranks as one of the most underrated places in the nation. Even though we saw so much in South Dakota, and it was bitchin’, Nebraska has earned a spot in my soul.
Young, Dumb, and full of Freedom 
You guys are awesome. You definitely spoiled us as our first Warm Showers guests! I love to read about your adventures!