Sunday, June 6, 2010

Omaha, NE






The circus is in town! No really... In Omaha anyway. I'm reading a local paper and seeing all that we missed out on... Snoop Dogg played, if you could call it that, at the casino last night. Speaking of casinos... we do have some time to kill...

Recap:
Wednesday 80 miles to Corydon, IA
Thursday 108 miles to... I can't even remember anymore
Friday 111 miles to a state park SW of Omaha

through a few calls and a string of friends of friends, we ended up amongst what felt like family. We were more than taken care of thanks to Les Bruning and family. Since we cranked out nearly 500 miles in 5 days since St. Louis, we decided to take 2 days off. A new friend even lent us his truck so we could get into town and get some bike work done. If you need a shop in Omaha, check out Greenstreet's Cycles. I like to think of them as the sensible kind of bike shop. You won't find the latest model of carbon tubular racing wheels there but you will find bike gear that just makes sense. I took the plunge out bought a new leather Brooks saddle. Brooks has quite a following. I, and my arse, hope to understand why soon. I also bought a wider tire, 700x35, for my rear. I'm hoping to make the ride even smoother and relieve some of the stress on my rear wheel. I walked out of there $200 less and supposedly one of the best cycling investments, the Brooks saddle, I'll ever make. Plus, we got to hang out in and support a great Local bike shop (LBS). Not to mention that one of the mechanics threatened to take a leave of absence to ride with us.

So we're kinda glad to be out of Iowa. Two days after that crazy storm, we passed thru a town that got hit by $5mil of tornado damage that night. Though we didn't see the damage, I just took their word for it and kept pedaling. Apparently same-sex marriage is legal in Iowa, go IA! Seeing how we frequently get referred to as "partners" or "riding partners," we joked that we could finally tie the knot. It seems such an absurd notion to me that the state should dictate who one can partner with and love. I love people's ignorant remarks when speaking of gays and wondering if they are just going thru a phase. I can only imagine how differently oriented individual might respond: "maybe you're going thru a phase." Isn't funny how we assume that everyone is born straight and if they come out one day we want to know when they knew they were gay? No one has ever asked me how old I was when I knew I was straight. rant.

Another thing to do in Omaha is to check out the Hot Shops. My friend Les is a sculptor and rents the studios out to other artists. Apparantly it used to be a mattress factory... the place is huge. Sculptors, blacksmiths, painters, carvers, glassblowers, and on and on. There are 80+ artists that work out of the place; impressive. So it seems like Omaha is coming back to life. They have a new baseball stadium being build and some other cool shops. The Old Market is the hip part of town to drop in on. We'll doing an all you can eat spaghetti tonight.

My brother Dave wanted to do this trip with me but he had one small problem... it's called a J-O-B. Such is life. I guess that's one of the greatest reasons I am here right now. I have every intention of growing into responsible adulthood... just not yet. So, here I am. Living it up while I can. However, Dave does not have a hard time living it up on his downtime, or even on his ontime, I can assure you of that. I just so happens that he is going to be in Omaha tonight for work (he's a pilot) so we'll be staying in the Double Tree... yeah baby.

We depart tomorrow towards Fremont and Norfolk and into the Elk Horn Valley along the Elk Horn River. Oh yeah, Lee drenched his rainfly with waterproofing. We'll probably find out pretty soon whether or not that will be sufficient. The headwinds have started to get noticeably and won't get better for a while. Tuck and pedal. I was pushing thru Iowa at one point as low as I could get while just staring at the white line to keep out of the wind while also listening to Radioheads's Amnesiac album. It was then that the road start to melt together. The combination of exhausting winds and spacey music might not be a winning combo.

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