It's The Good Life, If You Don't Weekend

The morning of the third day saw mostly clear skies, and shook off the rain the pelted Denver the night before. Bobby took the Saturn and Miriam and I were in my car. The fastest way out is a toll-road, which is only $2, so not that big of a deal. We have a bit of a freak-out, as we were paying the toll, when we saw an orange Vue zoom through the FastPass lanes. "That better not be Bobby," Miriam said. It wasn't. The Vue we saw was super-dirty (seriously dry-mud covered), and it turns out that Bobby was well behind us, having turned the wrong way out of the hotel.

The toll road dropped us off at the I-76, which led us through the farmlands of Eastern Colorado, the beginning of the Great Plains, and on into Nebraska, where the I-80 took over freeway duties.

The scenery remained much the same the whole day -- farms and fields and pasture land. But all quite green.

We crossed into Nebraska after a gas stop (where I spotted another California car). While the current state slogan is "Nebraska, Possibilites...Endless," the first slogan is still emblazoned on their welcome sign: "Nebraska ... the good life." We would put that motto to the test for a weekend, and see how well the state that spawned Arbor Day would treat us.

Around Kearney, we passed under the Great Platte River Road Archway, a huge structure, housing a mesuem over the highway. Meanwhile, ominous clouds loomed above and behind.

In Grand Island, we pulled off the freeway for...well, I wanted a DQ Blizzard, dammit. But no Dairy Queens were present on the "Food at Next Exit" signs. So I would settle for a Wendy's Frosty. But, on the way to Wendy's, we noticed a Sonic's, and we thought, "What the hell, seen the commercials, but never eaten there." So we did. I'm not a fan of the Sonic set up. Drive-thru is fine. But the parking and ordering through a poorly-working speaker -- not my thing. Nor was sitting in side and ordering through a poorly-working phone (never got my BBQ sauce!). And then I totally fried-food out, so I wasn't feeling so hot afterwards. And the shake wasn't that great.

Should've just gone to Wendy's.

Back on the road, we passed the state capital, Lincoln. There seemed to be a couple buildings that looked tornado-ified. As we were passing through, a hail storm hit. People were pulling over on the side of the road. I can understand if they were pulling over under bridges -- and some where -- but others were just pulling over. So I thought, Well, they have Nebraska license plates -- they must know better than I how the proper hail-storm conduct. Miriam had the same thought, and we pulled over for a second and jumped on the cell phones to each other. She thought it very unlikely that the hail would break our windows, and we're not under a bridge anyway, so why not just keep going. Which we did...just in time for the hail to stop as we pulled back into traffic.

Omaha was not far from Lincoln, and we passed by PayPal headquarters as we entered the city. We exited the freeway to see a guy getting taken in handcuffs from a house and into a cop car. Welcome to Omaha!

We were going to spending the night and next day with Nick and Jeannie, friends from Berkeley. The last time Miriam and I gone up to the Bay Area was for their wedding -- back in February '06. They rent the first floor of a house a couple blocks from the freeway, and across the main street from a large park. They have a daughter, Willow, who was excited to have visitors. She was just learning a couple words, but was very talkitive anyways, mostly conversing in a quick sort of baby-babble. Also, she seemed to have several meanings for the word "tam."

Nick and Jeannie were graciously letting us stay there for two nights -- their apartment (can you call the first floor of a large house an "apartment"?) was turned into a bed & breakfast for a couple days. We were/are most graciously thankful.

The first night they brought us to a local healthy/vegan restaurant which heaped the veggies high on all their fare. I had a veggie & cheese sandwich, of which the bread became surperfluous, and I ended up just going at the vegetables and cheese with a fork. It was a lot of food, and I think everyone left a lot on their plates.

The next day, N & J showed us around downtown Omaha:

There was the "brick district" Bobby had been told about; the lake-centered park, shadowed by the towers of downtown; a little ice cream treat; and then a little bit out, past the Qwest Center, to Saddle Creek building. For those not familiar with indie rock record companies, Saddle Creek is one of larger/most influential. Their roster includes Azure Ray, Bright Eyes, Cursive, The Faint, and Rilo Kiley. There's actually an "Omaha sound," characterized by a slight country twang, of which Saddle Creek records is a "flagship label" (according to the Wikipedia article). The label is named after a local waterway.

Anyway, Indie Rock 101 aside, we walked around the building, stopping at an unmarked door that we thought to be the Saddle Creek HQ -- so I took of Bobby in front of it. A walk to the next building over proved us wrong. There, written on an intercom next to another seemingly inconspicuous door, was "Saddle Creek - Press 1." Another picture was taken.

From there, it was back to the Choe-Dey B&B, where we waited out a thunderstorm to go on a walk through Hanscom Park. Our feet well trod, it was time again to attend to our stomachs. At this point, we (B, M & I) hadn't had any ethnic food sometime back in San Diego. So we called upon N & J to take us out for some good old fashioned country cooking...just, from someone else's country. So they brought us to Thai restaurant which was pleasantly delicious. The kitchen seemed to (wo)manned solely by an old Thai woman -- so the food took a while to come, but was worth the wait (though Bobby, of course, needed more hot sauce on his).

I think Nick & Jeannie's place needs a bit of description. It's got a retro feel -- but in a good way. Not in a bad, Tarantino film feel. It's like all the cool, cute things of the past are collected there. I love their kitchen. It's huge! There's a shelf above the stove perfect for boxes of tea. And the table is built into this nook area, with a window that would have looked out onto the backyard...had there not been an additional room added back there. It was just so...cozy. The only downside of the place I saw: just one bathroom. We managed just fine, I think. But I felt a little bad about it -- that sole bathroom was in their room. I'm just a 2, 1.5 at least, bathroom kind of person.

There was some nice hand soap in there, though.

Monday morning dawned and it was time to set out on the road again. I think all of six of us were a sad to bid farewell to the other trio. But maybe it was best we left: Jeannie wrote to us that a day or two after we left, a huge storm blew through, and knocked over a tree right where Miriam's car had been parked during our stay.

Of note is Jeannie's mix CDs. Two she had mailed to San Diego before we left. I have since become hooked to Sufjan Stevens (featured on both), re-enamored with the Jenny Lewis solo and She & Him albums, and garned a couple play over-and-over again songs (Fruit Bats' "When U Love Somebody"). When leaving Omaha, she gave us another set of CDs, this time burns of a collection of vignettes from NPR's "This American Life" series. The collection runs the gamut from hilarious to haunting, to downright depressing...but in a good way. You know, a good, story-telling way. That is by no means an endorsement depression or its parent company. There's just a couple of the stories that leave you in awe, thinking, "That is some seriously sad shit. Wow."

Heartbreaking true stories aside, all in all, I don't think Omaha is all that bad. Maybe it helps having friends who have lived there for a couple years, who've had a chance to scout things out and show you the cool places to go.

Back on the interstate, Omaha quickly faded away, the Iowa stateline was crossed, and we began our short trek through the flooded farmland of the Hawkeye State.

Once again, you can see corresponding photos at in my Picasa album, the aptly titled San Diego to South Carolina.