This blog post will begin with a submission: I will stop cheekily referring to you as "audience." It was a weak Demetri Martin (constant Twitter plugs!) reference that I perpetuated for my own amusement; it was borderline funny at best. I assume that most of you, my readership, think I don't actually know what "audience" means and that I lazily misuse it continuously. "Audience" implies listening. LATIN LESSON: "Audi"=sound. There is nothing to hear as you read these words. I am not reading them to you. I understand if repeatedly being referred to as "audience" made you angry. I understand that my self-serving humor may be what prevents most repeat visits to I've Been Gone a Long Time. And today, as I type on Monday, September 16th, I am vowing to respect you, readership. I won't take you for granted again. The future of this blog is filled with readership reverence.
For those readers who don't read my old blog posts and don't trust the links I provide (LINK: DIRECTLY 2 CPU VIRUS), a recap of the previous Wanderlust chronicles: Kate and I had just finished winding around Iowan back roads (farm roads) and rolled into Urbandale, IA "to lodge."
ON THE ROAD AGAIN: I-80 West continued through the large farmlands of western Iowa for us the next morning. There was still a vague friendliness/hominess (not homie-ness) about these farms from our vantage point on the interstate. These friendly vistas gave way to the next state on our hit list, Nebraska:
A colorful truck yard preceded our entrance into Omaha proper. For my readership unfamiliar with the geography of Nebraska (preaching to the choir), the city of Omaha serves as the state's gatekeeper when entering the Missouri River. Omaha also served as an oven, as it was well over 100 degrees by the time we rolled through its commercial district for lunch on this day. I am proud to say that Omaha is another major city I have set foot in. There will be a Travis Reyes major-city-foot-tally in a blog post from the future.
Much like Oklahoma and, to my estimation, every state in the longitudinal row of the "Great Plains," (North Dakota, South Dakota, and Kansas-Geography Editor) Nebraska feels like a transitional state. The farmland found in Iowa definitely remains, but something is different. Comparatively, Nebraskan farms seem a lot less friendly/homey. Everything seems a bit more sprawling. I did not grow up with sprawling. I grew up with close-quarters. I attributed these differences to many Nebraskan farms probably being of the factory-farm variety. By that I mean they don't seem to be owned by your "typical," down-home farmers that seemed to characterize most Iowan farms. This is not empirical evidence; these are my assumptions made from the passenger seat of a car on the interstate.
The day's highlight came at dinnertime. We exited in North Platte and pulled into a service plaza just off the exit. Behold:
To walk through the doors of Whiskey Creek is to walk into a time machine with the date set to "1987." To my knowledge, the spectacle inside has remained unchanged since at least then. Don't fix what ain't broken...right? Peanut shells EVERYWHERE, country music blaring, and Southern accents abound (another location in which I was surprised to find Southern accents. Are they just "America" accents?). Needless to say my outfit triggered a couple double-takes among the cowboy patronage. The only thing (curiously) missing were clouds of cigarette smoke swirling around in the lights. I am being totally unironic when I say it was paradise. It was an escape from 2011.
The party didn't stop when we sat down. As far as I could tell, any menu item not containing BBQ sauce had been outlawed. I ordered a sandwich consisting of just that and macaroni & cheez. It was amazing.The waitress charmed us with her sweetness and when we were finished eating asked us, in her Southern twang, "you two save room for Peach cobbler?" We vowed to be back.
Our journey into western Nebraska continued into sundown:
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| Hi-res photo of the Nebraskan sunset from the perspective of "passenger behind dirty window." |
Soon enough we came across the surest sign of the West (pun intended):
YES. As I crept up to 85, I imagined Nebraskan teens on an early summer night ride flying past me at 105. That didn't happen. But, still. We were in a foreign land. The humidity from earlier in the day remained as we cruised with our windows down, eventually needing to stop and refuel. We took an exit with "GAS" on the sign. We rolled in:
This anecdote is noteworthy (relatively) because this small station was all the eye could see. The adjacent road was complete blackness. The kind of eerie shit I live for (blogging is eerie). Just Travis, Kate, the Nissan Sentra, and hundreds of huge bugs crawling everywhere. Maybe because the humidity was at 120%, maybe because we were at the only gas station in a tiny country town in western Nebraska at 10:30pm. But I have never seen that many huge bugs in one place. We pumped up and got the fuck out.
We got all the way to Kimball before we called it a night. We lodged at a Super 8 in which the night staff asked us very suspiciously if we had "any pet?" They didn't know who they were dealing with. Luckily, we picked up a copy of the local paper at breakfast. As we stepped outside into the morning light we noticed the sky and the winds.
Please stay tuned for a breathtaking account of the longest day of Road Trip 2011. Thank you for reading these words.
Listening...Man Man-End Boss
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